Literary Arts is pleased to announce the lineup of our 40th annual Portland Arts & Lectures season.
All lectures take place in person at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland, OR.
Subscriptions start at $115 for the five-part series.
AMY TAN: OCTOBER 9, 2024
Amy Tan is the author of the bestselling novel The Joy Luck Club, which spent 40 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list after its release. When the novel got adapted into a film in 1993, Tan served as co-producer and co-screenwriter with Ron Bass. Tan wrote five additional novels (all New York Times bestsellers), two memoirs, and several essay collections. Tan has received many honors, including the Commonwealth Gold Award and the Carl Sandburg Literary Award. She currently lives with her husband and dogs in New York and California.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE: NOVEMBER 19, 2024
Abraham Verghese is a physician, writer, tenured professor and senior associate chair for the theory and practice of medicine at Stanford University. Verghese’s first book, My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, was inspired by his early years practicing medicine as an orderly, taking care of terminal AIDs patients. The book was selected as one of the best books of the year by TIME and was turned into a film directed by Mira Nair starring Naveen Andrews. Verghese has written several other books and his most recent novel, The Covenant of Water, was named one of the Best Books of 2023 for NPR, TIME, Kirkus Reviews, and a New York Times notable book of 2023. In 2010 Verghese launched the “Stanford Medicine 25” initiative to promote a culture of bedside medicine exam skills to students, residents, and healthcare professionals.
TIMOTHY EGAN: JANUARY 16, 2025
Timothy Egan is an American journalist and author of ten books. The most recent, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, was an immediate New York Times bestseller. Egan worked for The New York Times for 18 years, first as the Pacific Northwest correspondent, and then as a national enterprise reporter. As part of a team of reporters Egan won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2001 for writing a series called How Race is Lived in America. Egan lives in Seattle with his family.
MASHA GESSEN: FEBRUARY 13, 2025
Masha Gessen is a Russian American author, activist, translator, and journalist. They’ve written 11 books, including Surviving Autocracy, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaiming Russia (winner of the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction). They’ve written for many US publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. Gessen is a distinguished professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and a distinguished visiting writer at Bard College. They live in New York with their wife and children.
EMILY WILSON: APRIL 15, 2025
Emily Wilson is a classicist, translator, professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of the bestselling translations of Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad (winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Best Literary Fiction and Classics). In addition to Wilson’s translated works, her other books include The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca, The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint, and Mocked with Death: Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton. Wilson is a professor of classical studies and chair of the program in comparative literature and literary theory at the University of Pennsylvania.
Purchase or pre-order books from our upcoming season’s authors from Broadway Books .
Between now and June 20th, use the code BBPAL2425 online or in the store to get a 10% discount on these authors’ books.
Buy at least one copy of each author’s book and get a free Broadway Books tote bag!
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la@literary-arts.org
