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.
How the Literary World Reinvented the Book Festival in Real Time (LitHub)
“As the literary world moved online in 2020, a central question for many organizations was how to manage the annual festivals that gather thousands of readers from around the world. Here, the directors of five festivals—Sara Ortiz of the Believer Festival, Lissette Mendez of the Miami Book Fair, Amanda Bullock of the Portland Book Festival, Steph Opitz of The Loft’s Wordplay, and Conor Moran of the Wisconsin Book Festival—discuss how their teams made it work.” READ MORE
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.
Pop-Up Readings at Portland Art Museum
Follow us on Facebook and 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.
VIRTUAL FESTIVALS
East Portland Arts and Literary Festival 2020
November 11-20
Free and online
Miami Book Fair
Miami Book Fair Online starts streaming November 15
Miami Book Fair x Portland Book Festival: Lisa Hanawalt & Adrian Tomine
November 15 | 1:00–2:00 p.m. PST
Miami Book Fair x Portland Book Festival: Marcus Samuelsson and Dawn Davis
November 21 | 12:00–1:00 p.m. PST
Texas Book Festival
October 31–November 15
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.
Black Mountain Institute
Black Mountain Institute, in addition to partnering with Portland Book Festival on West X Midwest with Claudia Rankine and Jericho Brown; and Black Talk, Black Feeling with Danielle Evans, Bethany C. Morrow, and Khadijah Queen, will be running virtual programming all year long.
RESOURCES & OPPORTUNITIES FOR WRITERS
Artist Relief Program—Oregon Arts Commission
Deadline: November 10
The Artist Relief Program provides relief funding to Oregon artists who have experienced financial hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic due to cancellations of exhibitions, performances, rehearsals or other activities with a stipend, events, teaching opportunities, book signings, or other professional presentation opportunities.
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
Northwest Children’s Theater presents:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
An Original Adaptation
In partnership with Anita Menon
Most enjoyed by ages 8 & up Streaming November 12 – December 6
Journey through a wooded Fairyland where the powers of magic, mischief, and love rule. Artistic Director Sarah Jane Hardy and award-winning choreographer Anita Menon of the Anjali School of Dance join forces to bring this abridged version of Shakespeare’s comedy to life in a brand new way, blending classic English literature with Indian dance and culture, and featuring an all-youth cast.
A ticket to the show unlocks all four episodes of this NWCT Online original. You have the option to watch all of the episodes in one sitting or at your leisure. There’s no limit to how many times you can watch each episode. A ticket also grants you access to exclusive BONUS content!
Reading is Resistance: November Boxes Now Available
Please shop this list for our November Book Boxes. Each “box” is a curated collection of three hand-picked own voices books that spark anti-racist conversation and imagination. Pick one or pick all three!
PICTURE BOOK BOX
- May We Have Enough to Share by Richard Van Camp
- We Are Grateful by Traci Sorell and Frane Lessac
- When We Are Kind by Monique Gray Smith and Nicole Neidhart
MIDDLE READER BOOK BOX
- A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
- The Brave by James Bird
- I Can Make This Promise by Christine Day
YA READER BOOK BOX
- Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith
- The Grief Keeper by Alexandra Villasante
- With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
#PDXBOOKFEST AUTHORS IN THE NEWS
2020 First Novel Prize: The Short List (The Center for Fiction)
Featuring Raven Leilani and C Pam Zhang
In trying times, homemade dumplings are like a warm hug: Portland food writer Liz Crain captures their universal appeal in her new cookbook “Dumplings = Love.” (The Oregonian/ Oregonlive)
Marcus Samuelsson: Erasing Black Culinary History Ignores ‘The Soul Of American Food’ (NPR)
Jill Lepore: ‘When did we hand Google, Twitter and Facebook the reins?’ (The Guardian)
Karen Russell on Geek Love, The Last Unicorn, and Hating Atlas Shrugged (Bookmarks)
Kirkus Prize 2020: ‘Luster,’ ‘Stakes Is High’ win Austin book award (Austin360)
Congratulations to Raven Leilani!
Nicola and David Yoon Launch YA Romance Imprint Starring Heroes of Color (Publisher’s Weekly)
Picturebook legend Oliver Jeffers: ‘I’ve got my wife’s bite marks tattooed on my finger’ (The Guardian)
The 2020 National Book Awards finalists are a strikingly fresh group (Washington Post)
Where Words Often Fail: Talking with Bryan Washington (The Rumpus)
FILM
Ursula K. Le Guin and the Movies (NWFC)
Mondays, Nov. 9th, 16th, and 23rd, 6:00-7:30 p.m. PST
This interactive, three-session Zoom course explores expressions of the late Portland author Ursula K. Le Guin’s work in the medium of film and television, looking at successful collaborations with filmmakers as well as now-infamous misrepresentations of her magical archipelago, Earthsea.
The course’s overarching theme reckons with the opportunities and challenges of representing Le Guin’s — and any writer’s — imaginative worlds onscreen. Filmmaker Arwen Curry, director/producer of the 2018 feature documentary Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin (2018), is the course instructor. Each class will include never-seen original interview footage with Le Guin.
Use code partner2020 to receive a $20 tuition discount
