“Watching you is, in fact, what your government does best,” Shane Harris told an audience of about 45 at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne. Which is a pretty good crowd for a Monday night. Portlanders like to keep a close watch on their civil liberties.
A native Portlander, Harris lives in Washington, DC, where he writes for the National Journal. He was in town to promote The Watchers (Penguin Press HC), his new book about the rise of terrorism surveillance in the United States, told through the stories of five men who have been instrumental in this effort.
Well spoken and well groomed, Harris addressed the crowd confidently. He explained how writing about intelligence, homeland security and counterterrorism for the National Journal gives him access to all sorts of covert folks. Intelligence is a strange beat in journalism because it’s built around secrets and deceptions. “If there’s ever a story that lands in your lap,” he said, “be very careful.”
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While it was exciting to see legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in person Friday evening, I regretfully have to say that like many writers, Hersh is better at the written word than the spoken. Or perhaps I am better at reading than listening.
Hersh spoke to an overflow crowd at the University of Oregon’s Portland campus. The main lecture room was filled to capacity. We who constituted overflow sat in two separate rooms with large video screens.
For forty-plus years, Hersh has investigated political and military issues. He gained worldwide recognition – and a Pulitzer Prize– in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, and its ensuing cover-up. He has also written about Gulf War Syndrome, the treatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, and controversial CIA projects. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters.
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We passed around souvenirs from the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair, feeling the softness of a silk scarf, prying open a 70-year old compact to smell the face powder inside. Kelli Stanley, research maniac, had brought her beloved ephemera along on her book tour.
A small group was privileged to meet the brilliant and outgoing Stanley Thursday night at Murder by the Book. In town to promote City of Dragons (Minotaur), she shared her love of research and her hopes for this and future books.
“I do the research more for myself than anyone else,” said Stanley, who haunts the San Francisco public library and the city’s old buildings. “I’ve got to feel it’s real.”
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Would America’s founding fathers have anything to say about modern fights over intellectual property? According to Lewis Hyde – poet, essayist, cultural critic—they would say plenty.
Hyde is in Portland this week to discuss his upcoming book, Common as Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership. Wednesday night he addressed a bursting-at-the-seams crowd of more than three hundred. The event was held, brilliantly, in Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Swigert Commons. So as we listened to his talk about common ownership, we sat in the commons, a huge open area that stands between the individual classrooms. And we were surrounded by a variety of power-to-the-people poster art. I sat near the anti-apartheid wall.
Hyde is best known for his 1983 book, The Gift, a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of which came out in 2007 (yes, I realize those numbers don’t add up, but it was December of 2007). The Gift is a study of creativity in a market-driven world. I saw two professional artist friends at his talk, and both were raving about this book and urging me to read it. Which I want to, after hearing Hyde speak.
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Collaborative writing between two friends is a challenge, especially when they live in different time zones and have very different backgrounds. But Molly Best Tinsley and Karetta Hubbard managed to see their project through and produce Satan’s Chamber (Fuze Publishing).
Tinsley, who lives in Ashland but keeps an apartment in Portland, talked to a small crowd at Murder by the Book on Sunday afternoon. It was an informal gathering, with about fifteen people standing between bookshelves, listening and asking questions, and trying not to block the aisle.
According to the books summary, “Junior CIA operative Victoria Pierce is posted to Khartoum, Sudan, where her father vanished five years before. Obsessed with solving the mystery of his disappearance, she uncovers a horrific plot that threatens to ignite World War III. A fast-paced spy thriller, Satan s Chamber shuttles between Washington, DC, and war-torn Sudan, geo-political intrigue and ancient mysticism.”
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Nick Flynn packed Powell’s last night for a reading from his new book, The Ticking is the Bomb, a memoir about becoming a father for the first time while immersed in the stories of Abu Ghraib detainees.
Flynn traveled to Istanbul in 2007 to hear the testimony of Iraqi prisoners who were tortured by American military personnel in the Baghdad prison. This book, like his last one, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, is written in brief sections that hang together like poems, koans, or songs. (Flynn called his selection of pieces a “playlist,” and laughed that he’s been following Patti Smith’s reading tour for weeks. “She’s playing for free. How do you compete for that? Patti Smith playing for free at a reading?”)
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John Kroger doesn’t watch police shows. “When you’re living it every day,” Kroger says, “the last thing you want to do is come home and watch crime on TV.”
But Oregon’s attorney general tells some crackerjack stories about his years as a federal prosecutor. He entertained about 75 people at Friends of Mystery’s meeting on Thursday night. The group of mystery enthusiasts meets at Terwilliger Plaza, an upscale retirement community with a killer view of the dark Willamette and the bright lights of downtown. They also put out a great spread of treats: chocolates, cookies, pound cake and brownies for free, and wine for purchase.
Kroger read from his award-winning book, Convictions: A Prosecutor’s Battles against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins and Enron Thieves (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He also graciously answered questions from the crowd, be they on his book, on Oregon law, or on legal issues in general.
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This recap is provided by contributor Cara Holman. You can read more of Cara’s book musings on her frequently updated and always entertaining blog Prose Posies.
Many writers braved the elements Sunday to attend the writing workshop presented by Amber Keyser: “Don’t Suffer Alone: How to Use a Critique Group to Enhance Your Writing” at the Wilsonville Library. This was the fourth workshop in the 2009-10 Northwest Author Series, presented by Christina Katz, and supported by the Friends of the Library and the Wilsonville Arts & Culture Council.
Amber’s engaging presentation was divided into roughly three parts. She began by introducing herself , and describing her unusual path from evolutionary biologist to freelance writer of children’s literature. As different as these disciplines appear at first glance, they both, she told the audience, rely on keen powers of observations and a sense of creativity. For scientists, it takes creativity to design experiments, while writers utilize creativity in translating life experiences into a story. And just as science utilizes critiques in the form of peer reviews, writers can also benefit from critiques.
In the second part of the talk, Amber went on to distinguish criticism from critique, and to present a case for the usefulness of critique groups. To criticize is to list faults, while to critique is to analyze what works and what doesn’t, with the goal of offering solutions. With audience participation, Amber listed the main benefits of a critique group: Read the rest of this entry »
This recap is provided by contributor, Teresa Bergen. Ms. Bergen is the author of the novel Killing The President, and in addition to writing, transcribes and edits oral histories, paints animal portraits, makes costume devil horns, teaches yoga, and plays bass in an indie rock band.
Who ever expected to see a romantic and musical take on George Orwell’s 1984 that featured violin, piano, police whistle, duck calls, a pie tin and a baby in the audience laughing, perfectly timed, during the rests? Not me. But that’s what I saw at Reed College Friday night, when about 300 people gathered to see “Hearing Voices” by the Third Angle New Music Ensemble.
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This recap is authored by contributor Karen Munro. The Head of the UO Portland Library and a recipient of an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, Karen discusses books, reading, and writing on her wonderful blog Munrovian.
If you missed Sunday’s inaugural Publication Fair at the Ace Cleaners, I’m sorry to say I can’t really recap it for you. Put me in a room with that much printed matter and I’m just agog. But here are a few things worth checking out while you mark your calendar for next year’s fair…
- Add Tiger Food Press’s blog to your RSS reader, and delight in their beautiful letterpress work. I’m a big fan of their small-dog cards, as well as the broadside of what looks like a ‘67 Impala poised to cruise into the sunset, alongside this text: “‘She takes it slow,’ she purred to the skinny gas station attendant. She saw his knees buckle just a little.” Bitchin’.
- Octopus Books (also the home of Octopus Magazine) creates gorgeous poetry books and chapbooks. You can subscribe to everything they produce in a year…intelligent, ink-oriented, and arranged cleverly around ideas of eight. You might also want to submit your full-length poetry MS to them next April.
- You probably already know about Plazm Magazine, but did you know they’re the geniuses behind the New Oregon Interview Series? I didn’t. But I’m definitely heading to their next panel sessions. On January 27 they’ll be talking fashion, and the February bill lists Randy Gragg, Brad Cloepfil, and Mayor Sam Adams for a conversation about urban planning. Yowza.
- If you’re in more of a stay-at-home mood, you may be intrigued by artist Zach Rose’s home lending library, where you can borrow some of his favorite books over email and the post. Zach’s brother Josh just started library school, and this is a collaborative venture incorporating the best of the traditional lending library and the wide-open plains of the Internet.
- Container Corps, which just opened a new storefront on Killingsworth at Montana, has beautiful, sturdy handcrafted xylobooks for sale. What’s a xylobook? It’s “durable information storage,” according to their website. And it’s good-lookin’.
- And of course, Matthew Stadler and Patricia No’s Publication Studio offered a wide array of manila-bound books printed on Stadler’s print-on-demand machine. Great books by Sarah Meadows, Matt Briggs, Stacey Levine, and a slew of others. The Publication Studio blog also has great pictures of the fair, where you can actually see the books leaving the shelves.
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This recap is authored by contributor Karen Munro. The Head of the UO Portland Library and a recipient of an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, Karen discusses books, reading, and writing on her wonderful blog Munrovian.
The revolution may have begun at SW Third and Clay, but it continued yesterday at Ziba Design’s new digs, where Randy Gragg presided over the launch of a new book on the history of Lawrence and Anna Halprin’s extraordinary contributions to Portland’s cultural and civic life.
Where the Revolution Began, published by Spacemaker Press, is a gorgeous compilation of photographs by Susan Seubert and essays by Gragg, Janice Ross, and John Beardsley. Archival photographs, sketches, and drawings help bring to life the chain of public plazas that the Halprins helped create in Portland in the turbulent 1960s.
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This recap is authored by contributor Karen Munro. The Head of the UO Portland Library and a recipient of an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, Karen discusses books, reading, and writing on her wonderful blog Munrovian.
Melissa Sillitoe and the good folks of Show and Tell Gallery hosted another reading last night at Three Friends Coffee House. The reading series works like this: Melissa & Co. invite one performer, who might be a poet, fiction writer, musician, or professional plate-spinner. That person invites two friends to share the stage–and so, a great night is born.
Last night’s Number One Friend was Sage Cohen, author of Writing the Life Poetic and Like the Life, The World. Sage invited Kristin Berger and Sara Guest, who is–full disclosure–a friend of mine. I got the sense the room was full of friends: usually at poetry readings, people hold their applause until the end. Last night every poem got clapped for, until Kristin started dropping curtsies to the crowd.
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“Watching you is, in fact, what your government does best,” Shane Harris told an audience of about 45 at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne. Which is a pretty good crowd for a Monday night. Portlanders like to keep a close watch on their civil liberties.
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