Today’s Featured Book Event:

Ralph Ellison Book Release and Reading (Lewis & Clark College, Agnes Flanagan Chapel, @7:30pm): At his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison left behind roughly two thousand pages of his unfinished second novel, which he had spent nearly four decades writing. Long awaited, it was to have been the work Ellison intended to follow his masterpiece, “Invisible Man.”

In order to bring “Three Days Before the Shooting…” to life, John Callahan, the literary executor for Ellison’s estate, enlisted the help of Adam Bradley. A former student of Callahan’s, Bradley is now a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Together, Callahan and Bradley sorted through Ellison’s collected notes, files, and manuscript pages. A profile in The Washington Post details Callahan and Bradley’s collaboration as they edited the posthumous novel, released January 2010.

Other Book Events Today:

Writers Talking: Bonnie Jo Campbell (Central Library, @6:00pm): Bonnie Jo Campbell’s energy and biting wit make her work both brutal and laugh out-loud funny. All is weird, immediate and raw in Campbell’s stories and poems. Bonnie Jo Campbell’s new story collection, American Salvage, was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award. She is also the author of the novel Q Road, and the story collection Women & Other Animals. She has won the AWP award for short fiction, the 2008 Eudora Welty fiction prize, and a Pushcart prize, and she was named a Barnes & Noble Great New Writer. The New York Times has called her stories “Bitter but sweetened by humor,” and Publisher’s Weekly said Campbell details, “domestic worlds where Martha Stewart would fear to tread.”

Death Magazine Launch Party (Reading Frenzy, @7:00pm): Fresh from his Portland Stock victory, Forrest Martin will launch his new magazine tonight at Reading Frenzy! Death magazine isn’t simply reports of human mortality, but perspectives on how death arranges, enhances or obfuscates life – at times metaphorically, at times not. In a bed, on the train, at a computer, at the mall; we all have daily relationships with it. Alongside every overlooked gesture, death is the shadow reality reminding us, “this isn’t going to last forever.” Free beer from Ninkasi!

Figures of Speech featuring Daniel Skatch-Mills and Anne Jennings Paris (100th Monkey Studio, @7:00pm): Daniel Skach-Mills award-winning poetry has appeared in a variety of publications and anthologies, including: The Christian Science Monitor; The Christian Century; Sojourners; Open Spaces; and Prayers To Protest: Poems That Center And Bless Us (Pudding House Publications, 1998). His chapbook, Gold: Daniel Skach-Mills’ Greatest Hits, 1990-2000 appeared in 2001 from Pudding House; and a full-length collection, The Tao of Now, (Ken Arnold Books, 2008) was recently cited as one of the 150 outstanding Oregon poetry books.

Anne Jennings Paris is a writer and visual artist living and working in Oregon City. She has an MFA in creative writing from San Jose State University and a BA in English Literarture from Wesleyan University. Anne’s first book, a collection of historic, narrative poetry entitled Killing George Washington, was just released by Ooligan Press. Anne’s work–both her painting and her writing–explores the intersection of natural history and popular culture. Anne currently teaches grades 3-12 at Alliance Charter Academy in Oregon City.

Mountain Writers Series featuring Barbara Drake and Bill Siverly (The Press Club, @7:30pm, Suggested Donation $5): Barbara Drake’s most recent book of poetry, Driving One Hundred, was published in 2009 by Windfall Press. Other books of poetry include What We Say to Strangers, Love at the Egyptian Theatre, Life in a Gothic Novel, Bees in Wet Weather, and Small Favors. She is also the author of Writing Poetry, widely used as a college textbook, and Peace at Heart: an Oregon Country Life, a memoir, which was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 1999.

Bill Siverly has published three books of poems:  Parzival (1981), Phoenix Fire (1987), and The Turn (2000). He taught literature, composition, and creative writing at Portland Community College for twenty-five years. Since 2002 he has been co-editor with Michael McDowell of Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place, which features poetry of the Pacific Northwest and appears twice yearly on the equinoxes. His most recent book of poems, Clearwater Way, was published by Traprock Books in August 2009.

You can find other events on your community Libraries schedule using these links: Washington County, Multnomah County, Clackamas County, and the rest of this weeks Portland book events here.

Image credit IndieBound.

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