Books

arsenal pulp press/photo by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey Casey Plett is often overlooked as an Oregon writer. With her recent collection A Dream of a Woman, Plett continues to be at the leading edge of trans storytelling, but her collection is also one of the deepest and most insightful works to date crafting trans stories rooted […]

Beloved Portland author Ursula K. Le Guin’s legacy will be celebrated and discussed at this year’s Portland Book Festival. EUAN MONAGHAN/STRUCTO I knew the pandemic isolation had really gotten dire when I started missing everything about in-person author events, including those inevitable nine words that can sink an otherwise good time: “This is more of […]

Brandon Taylor, author of Filthy Animals, will speak as part of the “Tenderness” panel at the Portland Book Festival. penguin random house The 2021 Portland Book Festival will be offering something new to festival goers this year by hosting the first hybrid virtual and in-person event in its history. The virtual festival will take place […]

COURTESY OF MILKWEED EDITIONS I burned through Philomath: Poems, the debut poetry collection from Devon Walker-Figueroa, in one sitting. A narrative coming-of-age poetry collection laced with searing imagery and gut-punch single-line revelations, Philomath is about Walker-Figueroa’s childhood in Benton County’s rural community, Kings Valley, and in nearby town Philomath. (You can read the collection’s titular […]

Courtesy of Graywolf Press It seems impossible, but Maggie Nelson’s new book On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint made me feel better about climate change. It also made me feel worse, because to get through the book, which examines the idea of freedom through themes like art and drugs, I had to read […]

P.C. and Kristin Cast are mother-daughter authors best known for the House of Night series, which P.C. penned and Kristin edited at age 19. They have lived in the Portland area since 2014. photos Courtesy of P.C. and Kristin Cast As young adult authors, P.C. and Kristin Cast don’t talk down to their readers. P.C., […]

Funeral For Flaca: Essays by Emilly Prado is out July 1 from Future Tense Books. Photo by Josue Rivas / Cover art by Francisco Morales Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Funeral for Flaca: Essays, a new book by Portlander Emilly Prado that’s out on July 1. The excerpt is from an essay […]

images courtesy of Keith Rosson. God sends the four horsemen of the Apocalypse on a team building retreat aboard a cruise. An ex-Nazi works as the muscle for a revivalist cult on the road. A chain smoking tooth fairy wonders what to do when she witnesses child abuse. These quandaries propel the pages of Folk […]

Fabrizio Grassi / EyeEm / Getty images The winners of the 2021 Oregon Book Awards—an annual competition from Literary Arts honoring the best works from local authors—were announced yesterday. As someone who perennially identifies as “looking for a good book,” I can’t wait to delve into this list. If you feel the same, here’s an […]

Love Is a Revolution Bloomsbury Press When trying to impress someone you like, one should never lie or pretend to be someone they’re not. It pretty much always blows up in one’s face. That lesson of self love and self acceptance is at the core of Reneé Watson’s new young adult (YA) novel Love Is […]