Shopping Bag
My AccountToday’s Featured Book Event:
Kevin Sampsell (Portland State, Smith Memorial SU, #238, @6:00pm): Kevin Sampsell reads from “A Common Pornography,” a memoir, told in vignettes, that captures the history of one dysfunctional American family. An extension of a 2003 “memory experiment” of the same name, “A Common Pornography” weaves recollections of small-town youth with darker threads from his families story, including incest, madness, betrayal, and death. A regular contributor to Dave Eggers’ The Believer and McSweeneys, Sampsell has written “the kind of book where you want to thank the author for helping you feel less alone with being alive” (Jonathan Ames).
Other Book Events Today:
Pete Rock (Lewis & Clark College, Armstrong Lounge, @7:00pm): Pete Rock is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is the author of the novels The Unsettling, The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, This is the Place, and Carnival Wolves. Rock attended Deep Springs College, received a BA in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He has taught fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Deep Springs College, and in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. His stories and freelance writing have both appeared widely. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
Pico Iyer (University of Portland, Chapel of the Christ Teacher, @7:00pm): Pico Iyer, one of the world’s finest travel writers and spiritual essayists, is the author of many books of nonfiction, two novels, and a book about His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Among his best-known travel books are Video Night in Kathmandu, Falling off the Map, and Imagining Canada. Born in Oxford, England, and a graduate with top honors from that ancient institution, he now lives in Japan and in a monastery in California; he is “Thomas Merton on a frequent flier pass,” as the Indian writer Pradeep Sebastian has said. “As a guide to far-flung places, Pico Iyer can hardly be surpassed,” says The New Yorker. Iyer has written of saints, grace, prayer, and the rock band U2 in the University’s Portland Magazine.
Patricia Briggs (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): In Silver Borne (Ace), the latest installment in Patricia Briggs’s New York Times-bestselling urban fantasy series, shapeshifter Mercy Thompson attempts to return a powerful Fae book. But it seems the book contains secret knowledge — and the Fae will do just about anything to keep it out of the wrong hands.
Classics Book Group (Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, @7:00pm): This month we meet to discuss both On the Road by Jack Kerouac and Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg. Join us!
Book Group Social (Tigard Public Library, @7:00pm): Librarians will share book talks, book lists, news about the latest great books, tips and tricks for running book groups and online and library resources for your group. Then meet, eat, mingle and talk about books and book groups with fellow enthusiasts! Refreshments! Prizes!
Peter Nathaniel Malae (Powells City of Books, @7:30pm): A blazing and authentic new literary voice, Peter Nathaniel Malae — a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Literary Award — has written a bold debut novel. What We Are (Grove) tells a raw, powerful, and bullet-fast story that looks at contemporary America through the eyes of one disillusioned son.
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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.
