Shopping Bag
My AccountToday’s Featured Book Event:
David Hewson Reading (Murder By The Book, @7:30pm): In partnership with Friends of Mystery, DAVID HEWSON author of the Nic Costa series set in Italy will be here for a signing. (The Friends of Mystery social hour begins at 7:00.)
Other Book Event’s Today:
John Isles and Kristen Hanlon Poetry Reading (Lewis and Clark, Pamplin Room, @3:00pm): John Isles is the author of Inverse Sky (Iowa, 2008) and Ark (Iowa, 2003) and coeditor of the Baltics section of New European Poets. He received an award from the Los Angeles Review in 2004 and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005. His poems have appeared in such journals as American Letters & Commentary, the Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, and Pleiades. He lives with his wife and son in Alameda, California.
Kristen Hanlon’s chapbook, Proximity Talks, was published by Noemi Press in 2005. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Puerto del Sol, VOLT, and New Orleans Review, among others. She is a past recipient of the James D. Phelan Literary Award from the San Francisco Foundation/Intersection for the Arts. From 2002-2007 she edited XANTIPPE, an annual print journal for poems, poetics, interviews and reviews of small press/university press titles; it continues as a webzine. She works in an office at UC Berkeley and lives in Alameda with her husband and son.
The Wild World of Webcomics (Central Library, US Bank Room, @4:30pm): Warm up for the weekend’s Stumptown Comics Fest while learning about webcomics with Carolyn Main, a freelance cartoonist hailing from her native Portland, Oregon. She specializes in the cute, gross, and bawdy world of animation, comics, and graphic novels. Webcomics on Carolyn’s site include the sci-fi epic “Personal Mission” and the gags of “Quickies,” along with short animation, and comedies. Carolyn will show her work Thursday, April 16, 4:30-5:30 p.m. in the U.S. Bank Room at Central Library.
Kim Stanley Robinson Reading (PSU Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 228, @7:00pm): Kim Stanley Robinson, award-winning science fiction author, will speak on “Climate Change and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The lecture will focus on the benefits of shifting away from a “high carbon-burn lifestyle” to a permaculture model. Robinson will also discuss some of the ideologies expressed in various forms of environmentalism, capitalism and science.
Robinson, best known for his Mars trilogy Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars regularly incorporates themes of sustainability and environmental degradation into his work.
The talk is sponsored by the Humanities Sustainability Research Project, an initiative of the Portland Center for Public Humanities at Portland State University. For a complete list of lectures in the series, visit www.publichumanities.pdx.edu.
Miriam Gershow Reading (PSU Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 236, @7:00pm): Miriam Gershow’s stories have appeared in the Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review, and Quarterly West, among other literary journals. Her work was listed among the “100 Distinguished Stories” in The Best American Short Stories 2007 and appeared in the 2008 Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories. She was a Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches at TheUniversity of Oregon. The Local News is her first novel.
The Local News (Spiegel & Grau, Feb 2009) is the story of Lydia Pasternak, a precocious fifteen-year-old from suburban Detroit whose life—for better or worse—is irrevocably changed when her older brother, Danny, disappears. In the year following Danny Pasternak’s disappearance, his parents go off the rails, his town buzzes with self-indulgent mourning, and his little sister Lydia finds herself thrust into unwanted celebrity, forced to negotiate her complicated—often ambivalent—grief for a brother she never particularly liked but who is suddenly gone.
Binford Reading Series (Marylhurst University, Flavia Hall Salon, @7:30pm): Poets John Morrison, John Isles, and Eleanor Berry read from their recent poetry collections in the Flavia Hall Salon, at 7:30 pm. Free and open to the public. Parking free. This event marks Marylhurst University’s third annual National Poetry Month Celebration.Steven Galloway Reading (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): Inspired by a true story, Steven Galloway’s novel The Cellist of Sarajevo (Riverhead) is an “accomplished, important work” (Chicago Sun-Times) that poignantly explores how war can change one’s definition of humanity, the effect of music on our emotional endurance, and how a romance with the rituals of daily life can itself be a form of resistance.
Mark Sloan and Judy Norsigian Reading (Powells Books on Hawthorne, @7:30pm): In Birth Day (Ballantine Books), seasoned pediatrician Mark Sloan explores why, in the 21st century, having a baby is still so hard. He looks at other delivery room events, from the intense moments immediately preceding and following birth to an eye-popping history of painkillers, birthing methods, and infant resuscitation. Sloan will be joined by Judith Rooks, who is featured in the book.Judy Norsigian presents Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth which contains information about the tools you need to take care of yourself and your baby during and after your pregnancy, from tips on eating well during pregnancy to strategies for coping with stress and depression.
Please check your community Libraries schedule using these links: Washington County, Multnomah County, Clackamas County. For other book events this week, please check the list.
