Portland Book Events: October 13-18

From what I could find (please contact me if you have an event you would like me to add to this or future schedules), the local book events for the week of October 13, 2009 through October 18, 2009 are:

Tuesday October 13-

Zinesters Talking (Hollywood Library, @6:30pm): Local independent publishers read from their zines in the fifth annual Zinesters Talking series. Glamorize your life “Golden Girls”-style with Scott and Zach, the editors of “Miami, You’ve Got Style” (and “Degrassi Digest”) and take a hilarious trip with Dr. Danny Q. Swank and his “Tales from the Bus.”

Sarah Baker Munro (Broadway Books, @7:00pm): Sarah Baker Munro, author of the recently published book Timberline Lodge: The History, Art, and Craft of an American Icon, joins us tonight to talk about the beauty and history of our own historical treasure — a National Landmark since 1977 –Timberline Lodge. The book, published by local Timber Press, is illustrated with historical photos and stunning new color photos by Aaron Johnson. In compiling this gorgeous book, historian Munro drew on oral histories, personal correspondence, and rare documents from public and private archives. The book also presents biographical sketches of nearly 60 artists and describes more than 250 works of art in the Timberline collection.

Nature Night: Crow Planet with Lyanda Lynn Haupt (Heron Hall, Audubon House, @7:00pm): Life on Earth is complicated, interconnected, and always changing—environmental and philosophical truths that Lyanda Lynn Haupt, as a naturalist, author, wife, and mother, knows all too well. Her new book, CROW PLANET: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness, documents Haupt’s journey to becoming an “urban naturalist” through the study of crows—the big, gutsy, boisterous, intelligent, and sometimes unsettling birds that have managed to adapt and thrive in expanding urban and suburban areas, where so many other species of native wildlife have been pushed back.

Lyanda Lynn Haupt encourages readers to realize that nature is found not only in the pristine wilderness but all around us, and to understand that what affects the natural world comes directly back into our lives. Crows—as they hunt, play, grow, and learn right in the midst of the human world—are intriguing avatars for the urban ecosystems and natural cycles that surround us every day: complex, overlooked, and immensely important.

Science Fiction Book Group (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): This month we meet to discuss The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin. Join us!

Christopher Kimball of Cook’s Illustrated (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): Christopher Kimball, editor of Cook’s Country and Cook’s Illustrated magazines, presents two new cookbooks from America’s Test Kitchen. In an effort to preserve old-fashioned meals, Cook’s Country asked its readers to submit their favorite dinnertime recipes. The test kitchen then tested and perfected the best to present in Cook’s Country Best Lost Suppers. More Best Recipes, a companion to The New Best Recipe, offers a comprehensive collection of 650 foolproof recipes, up-to-date equipment ratings, and ingredient taste tests.

Leigh Radford: One More Skein (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): Leigh Radford’s One More Skein (Stewart, Tabori & Chang) features 30 diverse projects that can be completed with one or two average-sized skeins of yarn or multiple bits of leftover yarn.

Wednesday October 14-

Exurbia – Scott Allie Book Signing (Floating World Comics, @5:00pm): Written by Scott Allie, editor of Hellboy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Umbrella Academy, and The Goon, with dynamic art by newcomer, Kevin McGovern.

Gage Wallace’s day seemingly couldn’t get any worse. After breaking up with his girlfriend, he finds himself framed for blowing up his apartment building — the latest in a string of deadly bombings in this doomed suburb. After the neighboring Fat City fell into the river during an earthquake, these hapless exurbanites have been waiting for their own town to sink. The only glimmer of hope is a talking rat, whose drunken ramblings are taken as the prophecy of a better time ahead.

Now Gage finds himself being pursued by well-intentioned friends, bored cops, and the bloodthirsty Bald Suzie, a local firearms enthusiast whose brother was killed in a recent explosion.

Milwaukie Poetry Series featuring Lex Runciman (Milwaukie Ledding Library Pond House, @7:00pm): Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Lex Runciman has lived most of his life in the Willamette Valley. He holds a graduate degree from the writing program at the University of Montana. Starting from Anywhere (2009) is his fourth collection of poetry, following Luck (1981), The Admirations (1989) which won the Oregon Book Award, and Out of Town (2004). Lex and Deborah Jane Berry Runciman have been married thirty-eight years and are the parents of two grown daughters. He taught for eleven years at Oregon State University and joined the faculty at Linfield College in 1992. As one critic put it, Lex Runciman’s poetry “derives from art, poetry and life, getting the balance right while keeping the mystery”.

Jerry Harp (Barnes and Noble Vancouver, @7:00pm): Our second Wednesdays event highlights local poet, Jerry Harp. He will read from Creature which is available for order before and during the event. We’ll feature free treats, an open mic, and as always, the area’s largest selection of poetry titles.

Sarah Vowell (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): From the bestselling author of Assassination Vacation comes The Wordy Shipmates (Riverhead), an examination of the Puritans, their covenant communities, deep-rooted idealism, political and cultural relevance, and their myriad oddities.

Michael Chabon (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay offers his first major work of nonfiction with Manhood for Amateurs (Harper), an autobiographical narrative that is as inventive, beautiful, and powerful as his previous works.

George Wright presents Driving To Vernonia (St. John’s Booksellers, @7:30pm): The author of Roseburg 1959 returns to St. Johns Booksellers with his new novel, a journey into old and new landscapes of the heart.

Thursday October 15-

Reading & Signing with Joey Comeau, Zack Vandezande and Mike Lecky (Reading Frenzy, @7:00pm): To warm you up Mike is gonna read from his zine, BRUCE SPRINGSTZINE, and maybe from a new book Loose Teeth has coming out. Then Zach is going to read from his novel, Apathy and Paying Rent, before passing the mic to Mister Joey Comeau who will be reading from some of his older books as well as his new novel Overqualified. Plus, free beer courtesy Ninkasi Brewing!

• Joey Comeau is a Canadian writer. He is best known as co-creator of the webcomic A Softer World.
• Zack Vandezande hails from Houston, Texas and feels uncomfortable in photos and in long pants. He’s working on a doctorate in English at UNT.
• Mike Leckylives in Vancouver, BC. He is a writer and proprietor of The Loose Teeth Press, and can therefore publish his own work whenever he damn well feels like it.

Loose Teeth is an independent publishing house based out of Vancouver, BC, Canada. They make small, handsome books of stories featuring angry queer punks, grandmother zombies, ducks from hell, invisible friends, and exploding pigeons, to name but a few.

James Loewen Lecture (Lewis & Clark College, Olin Room 301, @7:00pm): James Loewen, bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, will offer a lecture and a workshop during his two-day visit. Thursday’s lecture is entitled “The Most Important Era in U.S. History You Never Heard Of, and Why.”

Darya Funches presents I Send My Blankets Over You (In Other Words Women’s Books & Resources, @7:00pm): Dr. Darya Funches Author, Teacher, Coach, & Consultant for Visionary Leaders, Change Agents & Sustainable Organizations.  WWW is not only the worldwide web. It is also “Wise Your browser may not support display of this image. Words for Women,” spoken words woven for healing and empowerment by poet and teacher, Dr. Darya. Reading selections from her book, I Send My Blankets Over You, and other writings, Dr. Darya engages audience participation and brings lessons of love for women that make a positive difference in business, relationships, and community. Don’t miss the opportunity to participate in one or both of these book events. It’s time to reap your harvest and have the right food for the feminine soul. Whether you are feeling well or wounded, this talk offers insights in love, work and healing. Those who attend her book events are glad they did: “This is great medicine for the soul.” “Hilarious & healing.” “Deeply touching and thought provoking.” “The most fun I’ve ever had at a book event.”

John Brown & David Farland (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): John Brown’s Servant of a Dark God (Tor) introduces an elaborate new world, a strange and dark system of magic, and a cast of compelling characters and monsters. In David Farland’s Chaosbound (Tor), the world of the Runelords has been combined with another parallel world, the beginning of a process that may unify all worlds.

Binford Reading Series (Marylhurst University, Villa Maria Hall, @7:00pm): Marylhurst University alumni will read from their recent work. Writers include poet Marianne Klekacz ’05 and fiction writers Gina Colantino ’07 and Jenny Chu ’08.

Edward Morris presents There Was a Crooked Man (The Human Bean-Hillsboro, @7:00pm): Edward Morris was born on Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina in 1975, and grew up in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. He graduated Temple University in 1998 with a BA in Film, and lived in the Bay Area for a year before transplanting to Portland, Oregon: where he lives and works with his Muse, gallery artist and graduate art therapy student Serena Blossom Appel. Morris was nominated for the 2009 Rhysling Award and for the 2010 Bram Stoker; he was a 2005 nominee for the British Science Fiction Association Award, and was considered for the 2005 Sidewise Award for Alternate History.Morris’s novels include The Frank Principle, Blood of Eden, O Fortuna, and Atlantis 1999: A Memoir. His shorter works have appeared thrice in Murky Depths, twice in Interzone, and forty-two times elsewhere, in seven countries and four languages. There Was a Crooked Man is his first collaboration with Mercury Retrograde.

Anthony Flint (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): Wrestling with Moses (Random House) is the David-and-Goliath story of activist Jane Jacobs’s clash with power broker Robert Moses, an urban-planning battle that forever changed the way we look at cities. Co-sponsored by Portland Spaces and the City Club of Portland, author Anthony Flint appears in conversation with Carl Abbott, Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at PSU.

P.S.: What I Didn’t Say (Powells Books on Hawthorne, @7:30pm): In P.S. (Seal), editor Megan McMorris collects an anthology of unsent letters written by a range of women. McMorris will be joined by contributors Michelle Goodman, Jane Hodges, and Sarah Bowen Shea.

Friday October 16-

James Loewen Workshop (Lewis & Clark College, Templeton Campus Center, Thayer, @9:45am, Educators $60-Students Free w/ID): Friday’s workshop is entitled “Teaching What Really Happened.” The teaching of U.S. history and social studies in grades K-12 is in crisis.  National surveys show these are students least-liked subjects.  Students do especially poorly in them, compared to students in other nations.  The performance gap between “haves” and “have nots” (affluent white males vs. poor nonwhite females, say) is greater in history than any other discipline.  Just teaching the textbook isn’t working. In this workshop, Loewen will suggest some ways to teach history that DO work.  He will cover organizing the course, going beyond the textbook, getting students doing history themselves, and expecting a lot from every student.  The workshop will also cover several content areas, including secession and the Nadir of Race Relations.

Kate Greenstreet and Linda Russo (Portland State, Neuberger Hall 407, @6:00pm): Ahsahta Press published Kate Greenstreet’s first book, case sensitive. Her second, The Last 4 Things, will be out from Ahsahta in September 2009. This is why I hurt you, her most recent chapbook, is available from Lame House Press. New work is forthcoming in journals including jubilat, Court Green, Hotel Amerika, Practice, Saltgrass, and MAKE.

Linda Russo is the author of MIRTH (Chax Press, 2007) and o going out(Potes & Poets, 1999), and her poems appear in recent issues of Bird Dog and Fence. She wrote the preface to Joanne Kyger’s About Now: Collected Poems (National Poetry Foundation, 2007), and is currently writing an essay on writing that braids journal writing, literary criticism, & biography. A graduate of the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo, she currently teaches creative writing at Washington State University.

Lift Off Signing Event and Release Party (Bridge City Comics, @7:00pm): Bridge City Comics is proud to announce a special release party for Lift Off.  You’ll be able to purchase copies of Lift Off hot off the IPRC copiers, meet and greet with the issue’s contributors, as well as enjoy some choice beverages provided by Stumptown Underground from 7pm until 9pm. Lift Off is the second monthly anthology from Stumptown Underground, centralized around the theme of flight. In this issue, you’ll find comics, writing and illustrations from Dylan Williams, Sean Christensen, Joseph Demaree, Alicia Moreland, and many more.  Stumptown Underground contributors will be on hand during the party to sign copies and talk about the creative process! Copies of Lift Off will be available for purchase!

This event is open to the public and free to attend. Please come down and support our local comics talent!

Nicholas Kristof: Half the Sky (Bagdad Theater, @7:00pm): In Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf), two Pulitzer Prize winners issue a call to arms against the oppression of women in the developing world. Co-author Nicholas Kristof appears in conversation on stage with Maria Wulff, president of the World Affairs Council (WAC) of Oregon, in an event co-sponsored by the WAC and Mercy Corps. Please note: This ticketed event takes place at the Bagdad Theater, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Tickets, $28, include admission and a copy of Half the Sky, and are available at the Bagdad Theater box office, the Crystal Ballroom box office, Ticketmaster.com, and all Ticketmaster outlets.

Cheeky Pages Romance Book Group (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): This month we meet to discuss Knight of Desire by Margaret Mallory. Join us!

Joseph Kanon (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): The author of The Good German returns with Stardust (Atria), a novel of Hollywood glamour, postwar espionage, and family secrets.

Refusing War, Affirming Peace (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): In Refusing War, Affirming Peace (Oregon State University Press), Jeffrey Kovac offers an intimate view of the Civilian Public Service Camp at Cascade Locks, Oregon, one of the largest and longest-serving camps for conscientious objectors in World War II — and one of the most unusual.

Saturday October 17-

The Secret to Keep Writing: Sustaining the Creative Life (Marylhurst University, @9:45am): Facilitator: Marian Pierce, fiction writer and Marylhurst faculty member. Panel: Monica Drake, novelist; Endi Bogue Hartigan, poet; and Jessica Page Morrell, writing coach and nonfiction writer.

Marian Pierce, fiction writer and Marylhurst faculty, facilitates a panel of professional writers. Pierce’s short stories have been published in commercial and literary magazines. She has also won writing awards from GQ Magazine, Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Literary Arts, and Marylhurst University, where she teaches creative writing.

Writers Talking: Tom Spanbauer (Central Library, US Bank Room, @1:00pm): As a writer, Tom Spanbauer explores issues of race, sexual identity, and how we make a family for ourselves in order to surmount the limitations of the families into which we are born.  As a teacher, his innovative approach combines close attention to language with a large-hearted openness to what he calls ‘the sore place’ — that place within each of us that is the source for stories that no one else can tell. His novels are are notable for their combination of a fresh and lyrical prose style with solid storytelling. They include “Faraway Places,” “The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon,” “In the City of Shy Hunters” and “Now Is the Hour.”

GOLDEN LEAF: Memoir of a Khmer Rouge Genocide Survivor (St. John’s Booksellers, @2:00pm): Join us to celebrate the release of this compelling, shocking, uplifting memoir by Kilong Ung.  A survivor of Cambodia’s notorious “killing fields” era, Ung has persevered, established himself in a new country, and become a Royal Rosarian.  Follow Ung’s journey from the cruelties of the Khmer Rouge purges to a life of opportunity and service with a family of his own.

LaVerne Gagehabib presents The Blacksmith and the Doctor (In Other Words Women’s Books & Resources, @4:00pm):Roshima is an African-American/Lakota Indian woman living on a lesbian land community in Oregon in 1982. She travels back in time to post Civil War Missouri, when women were making progressive moves toward their independence and when Native Americans and newly freed slaves were being sold, killed, or removed from their land to make room for the America we live in today. Against this backdrop, Roshima and her past life-self, a blacksmith, fall in love with a woman physician who turns out to be their soul-partner.

La Verne Gagehabib is African-American-Lakota Indian. She lives with Jan, her life partner of 27 years in a small rural Oregon town on seven acres, with their three dogs and two cats. She is originally from Berkely, CA where she grew up prior to joining the Women’s Army Corps after graduating from high school. She did two tours in Okinawa, Japan and left the military after eight years in the Medical Corps. LaVerne received her MS from the University of Oregon where she taught Sociology.

Ink-Filled Page Red Anthology Launch Party (The Writers’ Dojo, @6:00pm): Join many of our literary friends to party into the night. We’ll celebrate the launch of Ink-Filled Page’s new Red Anthology with readings, treats, wine, music. It’s also a post-Wordstock wrap-up and the one-year anniversary of this Web site.

Ink-Filled Page is a quarterly literary journal published by our friends at Indigo Editing. Hope to see you there.

Star Wars: Death Troopers (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): Horror writer Joe Schreiber presents two new novels. No Doors, No Windows (Del Rey) asks a terrifying question: When madness is your inheritance, how do you escape it? In Death Troopers (Lucas Books), the first-ever Star Wars horror novel, a deadly virus that turns its victims into the vicious undead spreads on an Imperial prison barge. This event features the Cloud City Garrison of the 501st Legion of Stormtroopers.

Sunday October 18-

Celebrate Oregon Through Poetry with Liz Nakazawa (Hollywood Library, @2:00pm): How would you describe Oregon through poetry? Do you have a favorite Oregon poet? Have you written a nature poem about Oregon? Share it with us!  Liz Nakazawa, editor of the anthology “Deer Drink the Moon,” will be reading from her book, which features the works of 33 esteemed poets of Oregon. She will also invite audience members to share their favorite Oregon nature poems.  Please keep readings to five minutes. We will be recording and offering these podcasts as part of the Oregon 150th celebration.

L. K. Madigan (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @2:00pm): In Flash Burnout (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), L. K. Madigan captures her photo-prone protagonist with balanced wit and seriousness as he navigates crucial moments in his adolescence.

David Biespiel (Powells Books on Hawthorne, @4:00pm): Biespiel’s fifth poetry collection The Book of Men and Women (University of Washington), addresses our time and human condition in ways both domestic and global.  A book party at The Saphire Hotel follows the reading.

For further events check out the links to the community calendars for Tri-County area Libraries: Washington County, Multnomah County, Clackamas County.