Literary Arts is pleased to announce the first event of the 2011 Oregon Book Awards Author Tour, featuring Oregon Book Awards authors. Three Oregon Book Awards finalists will be reading in Manzanita, on Saturday, February 19th at 7:00 p.m. at Hoffman Center Annex. The reading is part of the Manzanita Writers Series.

Authors appearing will be:

• Emily Chenoweth of Portland, finalist in fiction for her novel, Hello Goodbye (Random House). The writer Alice Sebold called Hello Goodbye, “a beautiful novel about a family on the brink of loss.” Emily Chenoweth is a former fiction editor of Publishers Weekly. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Bookforum, and People, among other publications

• K.B. Dixon of Portland, finalist in fiction for his book, A Painter’s Life (Inkwater Press). The Oregonian called A Painter’s Life “a slyly funny and perceptive take on creativity and the artist’s life, and a gentle skewering of the art establishment and critics.” Dixon’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and journals. He has written on the visual arts for The Oregonian, and is the author of My Desk and I, a collection of short stories and The Sum of His Syndromes.

• Lisa Ohlen Harris of Newberg, finalist in general nonfiction for her book, Through The Veil (Canon Press).The book is a collection of essays about life in the Middle East. Harris lived in Syria and Jordan in the 1990s, and her work has been published in journals like River Teeth, Arts & Letters, and The Laurel Review.