Shopping Bag
My AccountToday’s Featured Book Event:
Loggernaut Reading Series (Urban Grind East, @7:30pm, $3-5): Joel Bettridge, Tom Bissell, and Peyton Marshall will tackle this month’s prompt, “Arrival.”
Tom Bissell is the author of Chasing the Sea; Speak, Commentary (with Jeff Alexander); God Lives in St. Petersburg; and The Father of All Things. He is working on a long book about the tombs of the Twelve Apostles entitled Bones That Shine Like Fire and a much shorter book about video games entitled Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter—and Why They Don’t Matter More, and has recently joined the faculty at PSU.
Joel Bettridge is the author of two books of poetry, That Abrupt Here (The Cultural Society Press, 2007) and Presocratic Blues (forthcoming from Chax Press). He co-edited, with Eric Selinger, Ronald Johnson: Life and Works (NPF) and his critical study, Reading as Belief: Language Writing, Poetics, Faith is forthcoming from Palgrave in Fall 2009. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of English at Portland State University.
Peyton Marshall is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the recipient of a Maytag Fellowship and the Richard Yates award for short fiction. Her story “Bunnymoon” was published in Best New American Voices 2004, and her work has appeared in such magazines as A Public Space, Etiqueta Negra and fivechapters.com. She is writing a novel about California’s infamous Preston School of Industry.
Other Book Events Today:
Abby Denson presents Dolltopia (In Other Words Women’s Books and Resources, @6:00pm): Dolltopia, Abby Denson’s new graphic novel, focuses on feminist / queer themes such as individuality, self-expression and the need for free will. It touches on topics such as plastic surgery, heteronormativity and alternative lifestyles. Green Candy Press is an indie niche book publisher, and Abby herself is a jane-of-all-trades; a woman who inhabits the male-dominated worlds of comics books and rock and roll, but isn’t afraid to let her more ‘homely’ side out by reviewing the best cupcakes in New York!
B.T. Shaw Poetry Reading (International Culinary School at the Art Institute of Portland, @6:00pm): Poet B.T. Shaw will read Wednesday, Nov. 4, at Livestock, an urban conversation designed to explore the literary and literal aspects of killing our dinner. Organized by Watershed Culinary Productions, in collaboration with Camas Davis, food writer and founder of the soon-to-be-launched Portland Meat Collective, Livestock will be held on two consecutive Wednesdays, November 4th and 11th, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the International Culinary School at the Art Institute of Portland. Tickets are $25 each with $10 from every ticket sold going to Friends of Family Farmers, an organization working to promote and protect socially responsible agriculture in Oregon. For tickets, call (503) 827-6564.
John Irving (Bagdad Theater, @7:00pm, $28-includes copy of book): A story spanning five decades, John Irving’s Last Night in Twisted River (Random House) is set in 1954 New Hampshire, where an anxious 12-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear.Please note: This ticketed event takes place at the Bagdad Theater, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Tickets, $28, include admission and a copy of Last Night in Twisted River, and are available at the Bagdad Theater box office, the Crystal Ballroom box office, Ticketmaster.com, and all Ticketmaster outlets.
Chase Twichell Poetry Reading (Lewis and Clark College, Manor House, Armstrong Lounge, @7:00pm): Chase Twichell’s books of poetry include The Snow Watcher (Ontario Review Press, 1998), The Ghost of Eden (1995), Perdido (1991), The Odds (1986), and Northern Spy (1981). She has won awards from the Artists Foundation (Boston), the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught at Princeton University, Goddard College, Warren Wilson College, the University of Alabama, and Hampshire College. In 1999, Twichell founded Ausable Press.
Oregon Literary Review First Wednesday Reading Series (Blackbird Wineshop, @7:00pm): Oregon Literary Review co-hosts First Wednesdays, a series of readings, performances and wine-tasting at the Blackbird Wine Shop. This show is 21 and over. Readers and performers interested in participating should contact Julie Mae Madsen at maemadsen [at] gmail.com with an expression of interest and sample work.
The readers for November 4th are Christy Caballero, Dan Raphael, Cody Meyocks, and Rosanne Parry.
CFI/Freethinkers Book Group (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): This month’s nonfiction book group meets to discuss The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. Join us!
Jonathan Safran Foer (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): On the brink of fatherhood — and facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child’s behalf — Jonathan Safran Foer’s casual attitude toward food takes on a new urgency. In Eating Animals (Little Brown), he explores the many fictions used to justify eating habits and how such tales justify a brutal ignorance.
