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.
Featured Indie Bookstore:
Third Eye Books Accessories & Gifts
Thank you to one of our readers who brought this recently opened bookstore in SE Portland to our attention. Note that due to COVID-19, Third Eye Books Accessories & Gifts is taking online orders only.
Third Eye Books Accessories & Gifts LLC was founded in 2019 in Portland Oregon by Michelle Lewis and Charles Hannah. Our vision is to be the number one supplier of African Centered books, accessories and gifts in the Portland Metro Area. We believe our products can be used as a tool to motivate, inspire, restore or enhance a persons cultural pride and to bring forth happiness and healing into the hearts of our customers.
As a proud 100% Black owned and operated business. We believe in practicing cooperative economics by giving back to the community and supporting community based organizations that uplift and empower Portland residents.
Virtual Events
Historical Roots of the Pandemic’s Racial Disparities (New York Times Live at Home)
Thursday, June 18
Noon, P.T
Black Americans have experienced a vastly disproportionate death rate during the Covid-19 pandemic, magnifying and revealing persistent inequalities that remain an undeniable force in this country. A recent cover story in The New York Times Magazine addressed these tragic disparities and showed how they are connected to a history of systemic racism in the United States. This same history was explored in the magazine’s landmark 1619 Project last summer. Join us for a conversation about how this country’s past has affected its present disparate health outcomes.
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 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
Rose City Book Festival (Cascade Booksellers)
June 11–13
Join us for the very first Rose City Virtual Book Fair. You’ll find many of your favorite booksellers from the Rose City Book & Paper Fairs of the last 13 years, along with some new ones. Check the exhibitor page for an up to date list of participating book and ephemera dealers.
You’ll be able to shop the virtual booth experiences of our exhibitors for a wide variety of the best in used, rare and collectible books, paper ephemera, prints, postcards, maps and more.
Virtual Book Launch – Walking the High Desert: Reading and Q&A with author Ellen Waterston (High Desert Museum)
Wednesday, June 17
6:00–7:00 p.m.
FREE (Registration required)
Join us to hear author Ellen Waterston read from her new title, Walking the High Desert: Encounters with Rural America along the Oregon Desert Trail. Uniting stories from across this diverse landscape—the humans and non-human voices—Waterston weaves an incomparable narrative of wonder, science, history and prose. Walking the High Desert is at once travelogue, meditation, memoir, history, philosophy, social commentary, and commonplace book. It deeply explores the desert and the complex interplay of humans with this piece of the Intermountain West, calling out regional challenges that, more often than not, turn out to be issues the nation, and in some cases, the world, are grappling with. A selection of stunning images will accompany the reading. A live audience question and answer session will follow.
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!)
Watch now: The Witness We Bear: Writer to Writer with Jericho Brown and Nikky Finney (Bay Area Book Festival)
Wisconsin Book Festival
Follow their Crowdcast page for upcoming events and to watch replays of past events.
Featured event:
Radio/ Podcasts
A Racist History Shows Why Oregon Is Still So White (OPB Radio)
OPB host and reporter Tiffany Camhi talks with Black studies educator and writer Walidah Imarisha.
And more…
The Attic Booksale (Attic Institute)
Friday, June 12, 12-5pm
Saturday, June 13, 11am-4pm
The Attic is selling off their amazing library of books (and bookcases)! Thousands of books priced at $1 and $2 each. A percentage of all sales will go to Don’t Shoot Portland.
Blog cover image courtesy of the Attic Institute.
