One silver lining from no travel and minimizing in-person contact is that event access is not geographically-dependent. This year, it means that the celebration of 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Award-winning the authors and books is online and open to all registered book lovers. The event will be presented as a Zoom webinar Wednesday, February 10 …
My brother and I made our dad’s headstone ourselves. We bought a bag of Quikrete from Home Depot. We built a form, poured the cement, and carefully pressed metal letters in as the slab cured. We kept the words simple; Loyd’s name, relevant dates, and a fragment of his favorite poem. If you love something, …
What books would you recommend to contemplate and celebrate the life and works of Martin Luther King, Jr.?
When I was fifteen, my parents returned to South Korea and left me behind with my brother in America. My mother started writing me letters in Korean, a language I could not fully understand at the time. Over a decade after she wrote me, I translated her letters into English. In one letter, she writes: …
The winners for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Awards have been announced. The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) is a non-profit association of independent bookstores from five Northwest states, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. Since 1965, the annual Book Awards have recognized such luminary figures in Northwest literature as Ivan Doig, …
“One of the great figures in Western literature has passed on to the last best place. He will be sorely missed.” –Pamela Lehman Meyer From the obituary in the Missoulian by Cory Walsh December 5: “What we find in these stories, over and over again, is talk of home, lost or sought after, or in …
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association is happy to announce the 2021 Book Awards Shortlist, selected by a committee of independent booksellers from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska. This year’s committee chose the following 12 finalists, crafted by Northwest authors and illustrators, from a list of nearly 400 nominated titles published during 2020. The six …
I hope it doesn’t trivialize [the previous] week’s … Book of the Week, Erica C. Barnett’s memoir of alcoholic blackouts and self-destruction, to say that the humiliating confessions in this book are nearly as relentless and excruciating. Because the humiliations, in the case of this graphic memoir, are tiny: failed bookstore events, comicon party snubs, parenting meltdowns, …
This delightfully illustrated graphic memoir is an emotional and straightforward account of self-discovery and acceptance. Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, explores coming to terms with eir genderqueer identity and asexuality in a way that is personal, thoughtful, and educational. Kobabe’s self-aware recollections range from uncomfortable and painful to awkward and joyful and liberating. The artwork …
In My Autobiography of Carson McCullers author (and former bookseller!) Jenn Shapland discovers love letters McCullers wrote to a woman named Annemarie. This discovery leads Shapland to look at a part of McCullers’s life never fully discussed publicly, and in part examine her own life. I love the way Shapland wove her life in with …
