Portland Book Events: February 27-March 5

From what we could find (please contact us if you have an event you would like us to add to this or future schedules), the local book events for the week of February 27, 2010 through March 5, 2010 are:

Saturday February 27-

8th Annual Teen Art Show (Beaverton City Library, @10:00am): The Beaverton City Library Once again invites area teens to display their artistic visions at our 8th Annual Teen Art Show! The show will open with refreshments on Saturday, February 27 at 10:00 a.m. and run until Sunday, March 7. During the week, the show will be open from 3:00 p.m. until the library closes, from 10:00 a.m. until close on Saturday, and from 1:00 p.m. until close on Sundays. Come by to enjoy art from our community’s youth!

Voices in Verse (Cedar Mill Library, @10:00am): Bring along a cup of coffee and share your own poetry or listen to others read their favorites. The group meets on the fourth Saturday morning of each month in the library’s upstairs meeting room.

The Godfather and Hoodlum (Midland Library, @1:30pm): Join a special book discussion group comparing Mario Puzo’s classic “The Godfather” to bestselling urban writer K’wan Foye’s “Hoodlum.” Both plots focus on a criminal family, particularly good college sons who eventually run the family business. What makes this storyline so compelling? The discussion will be led by a Midland Librarian and Walidah Imarisha from Portland State University.

Scott Cherney (Hillsboro Main Library, @2:00pm): Meet local author, Scott Cherney, and hear about his fiction books. Copies of the books are available to borrow from the library, and will be on sale at the event.

Erotic Poetry Jam and Potluck Fundraiser for Haiti Relief (Q Center, South Room, @4:00pm): Bring a dish of your choice and erotic poetry to share with others. If you don’t have any poetry, come anyway to give support and have fun. We will be requesting a $5 to $10 donation at the door. Larger donations are also welcome. All proceeds will be donated to The American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund.

Black History Month lecture: Peniel E. Joseph (Reed College, Vollum Lecture Hall, @6:00pm): Peniel E. Joseph, professor of history at Tufts University, is the author of Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama (2010) and the award-winning Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (2006) as well as editor of Neighborhood Rebels: Black Power at the Local Level (2010) and The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era (2006). For more information, visit the Black History Month website.

Sunday February 28-

Writers Resource Fair (Central Library, @12:00pm): Writers and potential writers are invited to meet representatives of organizations offering support and opportunities for writers. Attend the Small Press Book Sale. Visit the Sterling Room for Writers. Tour the John Wilson Special Collections. Light refreshments provided. Visit the Resource Fair website for further details.

Christine Fletcher (Cedar Mill Library, @2:00pm): Young Adult author Christine Fletcher gives a multi-media presentation based on her novel Ten Cents a Dance. She’ll discuss teen life in the 1940s, taxi dancing, and the home front during WWII. For all ages.

Moonstruck Literary Series (Moonstruck Chocolate-Lake Oswego, @6:30pm): Arrive early to order chocolates and beverages for listening to prose and poetry selections presented by Barbara Drake, Oregon Poet Laureate nominee; Heather Strang, poet; Sophie Tree, poet; and Elizabeth Ciz, non-fiction. Hosted by Joan Maiers. Free and open to the public Donations welcomed to assist girls’ orphanage in Haiti.

Monday March 1-

Adult Book Club (West Linn Library, @6:45pm): Join the adult book club to discuss The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers. The Adult Book Club focuses on contemporary literary fiction, although non-fiction and classic works are read as well. All titles are selected by the members of the Book Club.

1,000 Words Reading Series (The Maiden, @7:00pm): 1,000 Words returns with a terrific slate of readers and our beloved former house band to tackle four prompts on the theme RESOLVE. Four writers each wrote four 250 word snippets of literary genius, including phrases and words provided by the series curator; they’ll perform alongside a duo headed by Reid Trevarthen, half of the We Play Quiet Brain Trust, offering musical renditions of the prompts. Free, fanciful, not to be missed. Reading: Nick Carter (New kid on the block, but we expect great things!); Joe Pitkin (for the FOURTH time now, Joe? Well, we never get enough of you…); Jacob Aiello (Also a 1K Words frequent flyer–more impressive than ever); and featuring Ethan Camp (he’s been penning emo-punk songs to the prompts for more than a year in the band–now, he’ll take the mike spoken-style).

Caffeinated Art No. 84 (Three Friends Coffee House, @7:00pm): Jeff Ettlin, Ana Hurtado-Gonzalez and Davey Plunk present a brave poetic and musical attempt at creating Star Wars poetry for accordion and guitar.

Susan Kirschner (Lewis & Clark College, Manor House, Armstrong Lounge, @7:00pm): Susan Kirschner is a senior lecturer in the humanities at Lewis & Clark, where she teaches creative non-fiction. She has written essays on Virginia Woolf, Alice Walker, and pedagogy. Her current project is a memoir about her family’s life in pre-WWII Austria, and their flight on the eve of war.

Max Watman (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): Journalist Max Watman’s Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine (Simon and Schuster) offers an intoxicating look at the inner workings of the moonshine business. According to Publishers Weekly, “[Watman's] historical writing is lively as well, and he profiles fascinating, little-known characters and events.”

Shane Harris (Powells Books on Hawthorne, @7:30pm): Using exclusive access to key insiders, Shane Harris’s The Watchers (Penguin) charts the rise of America’s surveillance state over the past 25 years and highlights a dangerous paradox: the government’s strategy has made it harder to catch terrorists and easier to spy on civilians.

Tuesday March 2-

Steven Johnson: The Ghost Map and The Future of Cities (Portland State, Smith Memorial Center Ballroom, @11:00am): Author Steven Johnson will talk about how The Ghost Map’s 19th-century cholera epidemic can help us understand the future of our cities: the power of neighborhoods to solve problems, new forms of digital mapping and information sharing, and the challenges facing mega-cities in the developing world.

Author Talk: Scott Burns (West Linn Library, @6:30pm): Scott Burns will speak about his book Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula Floods.  Dr. Scott F. Burns is chair of the Department of Geology at Portland State University where he just finished his 19th year. He has been teaching for a total of 39 years, with past positions in Switzerland, New Zealand, Washington, Colorado and Lousisana. Scott specializes in environmental and engineering geology, geomorphology, soils, and Quaternary geology.

Willamette Writers Meeting (Old Church, @7:00, $5-$10): F.I. Goldhaber will speak to our Portland meeting about “What Prose Writers Can Learn from Poetry.” She is the author of Pair of Poems.  Poetry does not require rhyme, complicated structure, or esoteric language and imagery. At its best, poetry distills narrative and imagery down to the fewest, strongest words possible. By embracing poetry, prose writers can learn how to find the core essence of their stories, allowing them to condense their narration into fewer, more powerful words.

Schoenfeldt Writers Series presents Paul Theroux (University of Portland, Buckley Center Auditorium, @7:00pm): Paul Theroux, one of the world’s finest travel writers, is also a prolific novelist whose works have been made into several films. Among his best-known works of travel are The Great Railway Bazaar,Sailing Through China, and The Pillars of Hercules; among his notable novels are The Mosquito Coast, Half Moon Street, and Picture Palace, which won the UK’s Whitbread Prize. “A large, lively, outrageous talent, without peer as the merciless obituarist of colonialism,” says Nobel Prizewinner Nadine Gordimer.

R. Gregory Nokes (Broadway Books, @7:00pm): Journalist R. Gregory Nokes will be here to read from his recently published book, Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon (OSU Press). In 1887, more than thirty Chinese gold miners were massacred on the Oregon side of Hells Canyon, the deepest canyon in North America. This book is the first authoritative account of the unsolved crime. It unearths the evidence that points to an improbable gang of seven rustlers and schoolboys, one only fifteen, as the killers. This book traces the author’s long personal journey to expose details of the massacre and its aftermath, and to understand how one of the worst of the many crimes committed by whites against Chinese laborers in the American West was for so long lost to history.

Horton (Fairview-Columbia Library, @7:00pm): The magical words of Dr. Seuss will come to life through Emily Alexander of Tears of Joy Theatre. Emily gives voice and body to Horton, the elephant who was faithful one hundred per cent, and that good for nothing bird, run away Mazie. This story also includes an inventive circus with monkeys, and a tight rope walker.

Steven Johnson: The Ghost Map and The Future of Cities (Bagdad Theater, @7:00pm): Author Steven Johnson will talk about how The Ghost Map’s 19th-century cholera epidemic can help us understand the future of our cities: the power of neighborhoods to solve problems, new forms of digital mapping and information sharing, and the challenges facing mega-cities in the developing world.

Gabriel Thompson (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): Gabriel Thompson’s Working in the Shadows (Nation Books) shines a bright light on the underside of the American economy, exposing harsh working conditions, union busting, and lax government enforcement — while telling the stories of workers, undocumented immigrants, and desperate U.S. citizens alike, forced to live with chronic pain in the pursuit of eight dollars an hour.

Wednesday March 3-

Oregon Literary Review’s First Thursday Reading Series (Blackbird Wineshop, @7:00): Oregon Literary Review co-hosts First Wednesdays, a series of readings, performances and wine-tasting. Readers for March 3 are Mark Thalman, John Blackard, Penelope Scambly Schott, and Pedro Ponce. This show is 21 and over.

CFI/Freethinkers Book Group (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): This month’s nonfiction book group meets to continue their discussion on How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. Join us!

Chitra Divakaruni (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): The award-winning author of The Mistress of Spices returns with One Amazing Thing (Hyperion), which draws on Chitra Divakaruni’s personal experience of Hurricane Rita to explore what happens when people from different walks of life are trapped together in a crisis situation.

David Relin (Mercy Corps Action Center, @7:30pm): Relin will talk about the writing of Three Cups of Tea, as well as See How They Shine, his soon-to-be published book about blindness in developing countries. The author will sign audience members’ copies of Three Cups of Tea after his presentation.

Joe Hill (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): Joe Hill, the New York Times-bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box — “a major player in 21st-century fantastic fiction” (Washington Post) — returns with Horns (William Morrow), a relentless new supernatural thriller that’s Hell on wheels.

Thursday March 4-

First Thursday Book Club (St. John’s Books, @5:30pm): Join us for the inaugural meeting of our First Thursday Book Club. Get in on the ground floor of a book club in the making! Our first selection is Jane Austen’s immortal, inimitable Pride & Prejudice. We invite you to read (or reread) this classic tale of money and marriage in Regency England–then sit down with us to discuss it over tea and cookies.. Future discussion books will be selected at this meeting.

MADAME XANADU – The Art of Joëlle Jones (Floating World Comics, @6:00pm): This March First Thursday, join writer Matt Wagner and artist, Joëlle Jones, as we present her enchanting artwork from the hit Vertigo series, Madame Xanadu.  We will have Joëlle’s original artwork on display and Matt Wagner will attend to talk with fans and sign books.

Yeti Art Opening (IPRC, @6:00pm): Ever since Justin and AM began to inhabit the Staff Cabin at the IPRC, there has been much talk of a yeti (or more than one!) entering the office late at night. In order to figure out exactly what’s been happening here at the IPRC, the computer lab will be turned into the Yeti Research Station. Please join us for the debut of this creative (and scientific) project. The event will be furry and free!

Contributing artists include: Scrappers, Betsy Walton, Jill Bliss, Brent Wick, Jess Hirsch, Jess Fogel, Apak, Todd Edward Bak, Bwana Spoons, Tim Karpinsky, BT Livermore, Nicole Georges and MORE!

Visiting Writers Series: David Shields (Reed College, Psychology 105, @6:30pm): Audacious, sharp-eyed, hilarious, and self-deprecating all at once, David Shields is one of the strongest voices in contemporary American nonfiction and fiction. His nonfiction story, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, is forthcoming from Knopf. Shields lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle, where he is a professor in the English department at the University of Washington. Co-sponsored by Reed Arts Week. For more information, visit the Visiting Writers website.

First Thursday: Camille Rose Garcia (Powells City of Books, @6:30pm): The Basil Hallward Gallery is pleased to present Creepcakes and Doomdreams: Selections from the Printworks of Camille Rose Garcia. The artist herself will join us in person next week, Thursday the 11th, to discuss and sign her newly illustrated edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

VoiceCatcher Reading (Cover to Cover Books-Vancouver, @7:00pm): Join us for a reading by several of the authors in VoiceCatcher4, an anthology of writing–poetry, prose, essays–by Portland and Vancouver area women writers. Featured this evening will be Frances Bates, Kristin Berger, Jenny Chu, and Cover to Cover Books favorites M, Carolyn A. Martin and Toni Partington (author of Wind Wing). This is a special event we’ve been looking forward to for a long time. Cover to Cover Books is committed to supporting local writers, and the VoiceCatcher series is a large part of what makes that possible.  Free admission. Come early for good seats. For more information about VoiceCatcher, visit their website.

Honorable Mention: Installation and Prints by Brittany Powell (Reading Frenzy, @7:00pm): Brittany Powell is coming to work her contact paper cutting magic on the walls of Reading Frenzy! She will install a near life size parade of about 20 dogs on the upper portion of the walls and gocco dog prints on display below.

Jennie Shortridge and Erica Bauermeister (Broadway Books, @7:00pm): Jennie Shortridge and Erica Bauermeister will read from their new novels. Jennie’s novel is When She Flew (New American Library), the story of a girl and her father found living off the grid in Forest Park. Inspired by real events that many of us remember, this novel is a warm-hearted story that imagines what happens when an injured war veteran and his 12-year-old naturalist daughter are brought back to “civilized” life after being on their own. Erica’s novel is The School of Essential Ingredients (Berkley), a tale of a cooking teacher and her students that navigates readers through each character’s personal dramas, memories and musings as they handle, slice, chop, blend, smell and taste. It is a remarkable debut novel that creates a captivating culinary world where the pleasures of sophisticated food come to mean much more than simple epicurean indulgence.

Jane Mead (Portland State, Smith Center, Rm 236, @7:00pm): Critic/poet Christine Pugh wrote of Meads newest book, The Usable Field (Alice James Books): “How beautifully she has inaugurated a collection that is so infused with the combined and paradoxical virtues of simplicity, lyricism, and unstinting thought.”

Eric Puchner (Powells Books on Hawthorne, @7:30pm): The “heartrending first novel” (Publishers Weekly) from award-winning writer Eric Puchner, Model Home (Scribner) is a bitterly funny, deeply moving novel about a family reckoning with failure, guilt, and love.

Friday March 5-

Dave Eggers Booksigning (Powells City of Books, @12:00pm): Join us when bestselling author Dave Eggers signs copies of his most recent books, The Wild Things and Zeitoun (McSweeney’s). A riveting work of nonfiction, Zeitoun explores the life of a prosperous Syrian-American who chose to stay in New Orleans through Hurricane Katrina — and then abruptly disappeared. Loosely based on the picture book by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay co-written with Spike Jonze, The Wild Things is about the confusions of a boy, Max, making his way in a world he can’t control. Please note: This is a booksigning only; the author will not read from his work.

First Friday: Art and Letters (Downtown Camas, WA, @5:00pm): Local authors will sign, sell, and read from their books in shops and locations throughout downtown Camas. A collection of signed books donated by the authors will be raffled to benefit the nonprofit Friends of the Camas Library. Authors and local students will read from their works in the new Journey Community Church located on 4th Ave in downtown Camas.

In addition to the literary offerings, participating Downtown Camas businesses will showcase the art of local students at this First Friday event. Paintings and drawing and will be juried. Prizes will be awarded for People’s Choice, Judge’s Choice, and Honorable Mention for both middle school and high school levels. This event is intended to feature the depth of artistic talent of the students in our community.

James Davis (Hillsboro Main Library, @7:00pm): From fall salmon runs to wintering waterfowl and raptors, The Northwest Nature Guide offers more than 150 best bets for wildlife adventures throughout the Northwest. Join author James Davis as he shares his best wildlife watching opportunities throughout the year with his orginal slides.

Kathleen Norris (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): In Acedia and Me (Riverhead), Kathleen Norris, author of the bestselling Amazing Grace, demystifies a spiritual concept, exploring acedia — or soul-weariness — through her life as a writer; her marriage and the challenges of commitment in the midst of grave illness; and her keen interest in the monastic tradition.

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

Image credit Zorger.