Each week, Literary Arts staff will round up news, events, and more happening in the literary community. Let us know if you have any events or book news to share.
Virtual Festivals
Bay Area Book Festival #UNBOUND
#UNBOUND presents notable authors in free, stimulating literary conversations highly relevant for our challenging times. Programs debut on YouTube Premiere with live audience chat, then remain as recordings there and on our site. (Some special ticketed programs include live audience questions to the authors —join their mailing list to find out!)
Wisconsin Book Festival
Follow their Crowdcast page for upcoming events and to watch replays of past events.
Featured event:
Virtual Events
Book Launch: The Secret Music at Tordesillas, by Marjorie Sandor (Hidden River Press)
Monday, June 1
4:50 – 6:00 p.m. PDT
The novel is set in 16th Century Spain. It is April, 1555, and Juana I of Castile, the Spanish queen known as “la loca,” has died after forty-seven years in forced seclusion at Tordesillas. Her last musician, Juan de Granada, refuses to depart with the other servants, forcing two functionaries of the Holy Office of the Inquisition to interrogate him in the now-empty palace. But is it really empty? Or is there, as Holy Office suspects, a heretic hidden on the premises, a converso secretly practicing the forbidden rites of Judaism?
Jack Straw Reading Series (Jack Straw Cultural Center)
Streaming Live via Facebook on Fridays in June at 7:00 p.m
Hosted by Curator Anastacia-Renée
Friday, June 5, 7pm
Maisha Banks Manson, Elaina Ellis, Wryly T. McCutchen, and Ebo Barton
Friday, June 12, 7pm
Michelle Goodman, Ching-In Chen, Rob Arnold, and Helen K. Thomas
Friday, June 19, 7pm
Jeffrey Lee Cheatham II, Arianne True, Jose Trejo-Maya, and Troy Osaki
Live Stream Reading: Marilyn Sewell (Annie Bloom’s Books)
Tuesday, June 2
7:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Annie Bloom’s welcomes back Portland author Marilyn Sewell for a live stream reading from her latest book, In Time’s Shadow. She will be in conversation with Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita Paulann Petersen. Register here.
Our Brilliant Friends After Lunch Book Club (Europa Editions)
Thursday, June 9
1:00 – 2:30 p.m. PDT
Join Elena Ferrante’s international publishers and translators, celebrity super fans, Ferrante’s English translator Ann Goldstein, and some of Ferrante’s most erudite commentators for a teatime chat and a reading from Ferrante’s new novel, The Lying Life of Adults.
What We’re Reading
Feeling like you’re back in the 1930s and ’40s? Here are 8 books that channel the era (The Oregonian/ OregonLive)
Five Books Set in Portland You Should Be Reading Right Now (Willamette Week)
For Kids & Teens
Choose Your Own Adventure SPIES Houdini Interactive Reading (Rose City Book Pub)
Sunday, May 31
2:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Join author Katherine Factor for a live Choose Your Own Adventure Zoom event where she will read from her new book, SPIES: Harry Houdini and YOU will make the choices.This is family-friendly event for all ages showcasing interactive fiction by a local author. Fun for all! Signed copies of the book will be available through the Rose City Book Pub.
J.K. Rowling introduces The Ickabog
“I think The Ickabog lends itself well to serialisation because it was written as a read-aloud book (unconsciously shaped, I think, by the way I read it to my own children), but it’s suitable for 7-9 year olds to read to themselves.
I’ll be posting a chapter (or two, or three) every weekday between 26th May and 10th July on The Ickabog website. We plan to publish some translations soon and will post further details on that website when they’re available.”
And more…
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