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.
Portland Book Festival Wraps 11/21
The Portland Book Festival ends this Saturday, November 21. There are still several exciting events coming up, but if you missed one event, never fear! Just register for an account at PDXBookFest.org and log in to see past events in our Festival Video Library.
Pop-Up Readings at Portland Art Museum
Follow us on Instagram to view this year’s #PDXBookFest pop-up readings! The readings are a partnership between the Portland Book Festival and the Portland Art Museum where Festival authors are thematically paired with artworks in the Museum. A celebration of creatives, the pop-ups highlight the intersections of visual art and the written word.
Visit our Virtual Vendor Fair
Support independent publishers, authors, and other literary creators by visiting our virtual marketplace!
Purchase your Festival books from one of our great independent book store partners: Annie Bloom’s, Broadway, Grean Bean, and Powell’s.
VIRTUAL FESTIVALS
Northwest Film Center x Portland Book Festival: Film and New Media Happy Hour
November 20 | 4:00 p.m. PST | Email december@nwfilm.org to RSVP
Join award-winning writer Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown) and Director of the Northwest Film Center and Curator of Film and New Media at the Portland Art Museum, Amy Dotson for an in-depth discussion on telling stories and sustaining creativity across multiple platforms.
East Portland Arts and Literary Festival 2020
November 11-20 | Free and online
Miami Book Fair
November 15—22 | Free and online
Miami Book Fair x Portland Book Festival: Marcus Samuelsson and Dawn Davis
November 21 | 12:00–1:00 p.m. PST
Bay Area Book Fest
Ongoing | Free and online
Wisconsin Book Festival
Check out their free, year-round programming
Wordplay (The Loft)
Wordplay 2020 is over, but you can still access all of our virtual events on the schedule page! Wordplay 2021 will be happening in early May.
Catalan National Poetry Festival
Online
The National Poetry Festival of Sant Cugat celebrated its 20th anniversary with a programme conceived of as a hybrid between poetic virtuality and the face-to-face warmth of poets. Watch the videos (subtitled in English) here.
Black Mountain Institute
Black Mountain Institute will be running virtual programming all year long. Watch replays of WestXMidwest and Black Talk, Black Feeling in the PDXBookFest.org Video Library.
RESOURCES & OPPORTUNITIES FOR WRITERS
2021 Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes
Deadline: November 30
The 2021 Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes will be awarded to three print publications and two online publications.
Tualatin Valley Creates Arts and Culture Leadership Incubator Program
Deadline: December 1
Open to artists and cultural advocates residing in Washington County, OR. The Incubator Program is free to apply to and participate in, and those who complete the program will receive a $500 stipend to advance their work. Applicants should have a passion for building creative projects that incorporate social activism. TVC’s unique Leadership Incubator program bridges a critical opportunity gap in Washington County, where residents have less access to arts and culture services and experiences compared to other urban areas around the state.
Authors League Fund
The Authors League Fund provides assistance in times of emergency, when a writer is struggling to afford necessities. Recipients of Authors League Fund assistance must be career writers with a substantial body of work.
Dramatist’s League Foundation
DGF provides emergency financial assistance to individual playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists in dire need of funds due to severe hardship or unexpected illness.
FOR KIDS/TEENS
I Matter Poetry Contest: National Youth Foundation
Reading is Resistance:
Graphic Novel Gift Guide
Want reading recommendations for middle-grade readers FROM middle-grade readers? Vera and Charlotte from Reading is Resistance’s Middle Reader Advisory Team have picked out a wonderful, dynamic collection of graphic novels for gifting this winter, all of which you can purchase at a discount directly from Two Rivers Books.
Own Your Magic:
Tor Teen & East City Bookshop Present Mark Oshiro, Lauren Shippen, and Bethany C. Morrow
Thursday, November 19 | 6:30p.m. EST | Pay what you can | Virtual
East City Bookshop welcomes author Mark Oshiro with their new novel Each of Us a Desert in conversation with Lauren Shippen and Bethany C. Morrow.
The Youth Passion Project
The Youth Passion Project creates a space where high school students can share their passions with others by offering free, online courses taught by high schoolers to encourage younger students to expand and supplement their learning. Classes range from Songwriting to Introduction to Coding in Java.
Stumptown Stages Young Artist Program
Les Misérables Virtual Student Auditions
December 5–13 (new dates may be added)
Grades 9–12 & ages 7–9
Stumptown Stages Director of Education and Les Misérables cast member alum Jim Charles is seeking 40 students from around the country for an all-youth performance of Les Misérables.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: An Original Adaptation
November 12—December 6 | Ages 8 & up | Online
Tickets start at $20
Journey through a wooded Fairyland where the powers of magic, mischief, and love rule. This abridged version of Shakespeare’s comedy comes to life in a brand new way, blending classic English literature with Indian dance and culture, featuring an all-youth cast.
#PDXBOOKFEST AUTHORS IN THE NEWS
2020 National Book Award Winners Announced
Portland Book Festival author Charles Yu wins the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction with Interior Chinatown.
Four Generations of Cherokee Women Navigate Love and Disaster (Electric Lit)
Portland Book Festival author Kelli Jo Ford (Crooked Hallelujah), on mother-daughter relationships, displacement, and rejecting religion.
2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Portland Book Festival author Souvankham Thammavongsa has won the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize, recognizing the best Canadian fiction of the year.
2021 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Shortlist Announced
The six shortlist titles for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence include Portland Book Festival authors Megha Majumdar, Ayad Akhtar, and Claudia Rankine.
Publisher’s Weekly Q & A with David Yoon
“I think writing a young adult story is all about hope and potential. Generally, YA deals with what we as society have decided is worth our time and concern. On the adult side, the stories tend to be darker and more mysterious because we’re dealing with stuff we haven’t come to any conclusions about.”
“Ghost Cat” a Poem by Margaret Atwood
From her new collection, Dearly.
And when I go that way, grow fur, start howling,
scratch at your airwaves:
no matter who I claim
I am or how I love you,
turn the key. Bar the window.
Best Fiction of 2020 (Powell’s Books)
The Scotiabank Giller Prize, founded in 1994, recognizes the best Canadian fiction of the year.
WHAT WE’RE READING
Walter Mosley’s National Book Awards Speech (LitHub)
Winner of “The Medal for Distinguished Contribution
to American Letters”
“I love writing: its slippery slopes and foolish errands, its silly puns and bone-shaking metaphors, its ability to offer over the millennia the deep well of human invention in defiance of despots, wars, poverty, and ever-encroaching techno-babble… Stories keep their deep connection to the human heart word by word, sentence by sentence.”
