From debut Eugene, OR author Rebeca Lee Morales, Winter Song is a moving, pitch-perfect novel of love, community, and the redress of past wrongs in working-class America, for fans of Elizabeth Strout and Kent Haruf. In the frozen Minnesota hinterland of 1986, police chief Gordon Trent, facing mandatory retirement, squares off with Byron Lugo, a …
Choose-your-own-adventures are back! And cooler than ever. Search for a Mysterious Mushroom is the perfect adventure for young readers. This book is packed full of fun facts and amazing art. The ideal book for science lovers or the perfect book to inspire! –Sophie, Hodgepodge Books & Taps, Eugene, OR Learn about the world in very …
Beloved literary community member Steve Arndt died on February 6, 2026. Fond memories and deep appreciations abound. This piece is from a social media post by Nikki Darling of Eugene, OR. Steve Arndt coined the term “Spanbauerian” to describe all that he’d learned and loved at the hands of his friend and mentor Tom Spanbauer. …
From Miriam Gershow, the author of Closer: This week saw the culmination of a year’s work on the 100 Notable Small Press Books project I started last winter. Forty remarkable reviewers spent 2025 reading small press books, and Lit Hub published the final list on Monday. Click on the image to read the list. Sign up to …
From LitHub: Miriam Gershow Recommends Zoe Heller, Emily St. James, Jim Shepherd and More I am a writer living comfortably in middle age, embracing every gray hair, shopping the Eileen Fisher racks with glee, and yet I’m obsessed with high school. My new novel, Closer, takes place in and around a public high school in fictional Horace, …
Literary Arts announced the finalists for the 2025 Oregon Book Awards. Congratulations! The winners of each category will be announced live at the 2025 Oregon Book Awards Ceremony, hosted by Omar El Akkad, at Portland Center Stage at The Armory on Monday, April 28, 2025. Tickets are available here. SPECIAL AWARDS In addition to recognizing …
By: David Mura for JSTOR April 17, 2024 I Hear America Singing Japanese American poet Garrett Hongo is a guiding spirit to a glorious cacophony, an exuberant collective thrum made of different tongues and peoples. I’ve admired Garrett Hongo, the great Japanese American poet since I first read “Yellow Light” in The New Yorker in 1980. One arm …
Pedro Hoffmeister’s disaster thriller American Afterlife and Meredith Hambrock’s dark humored crime novel Other People’s Secrets were both released by Crooked Lane Books in recent months. The publishing house mates connected to talk about writing, process, and what’s next. PH: First, let’s each answer a few of the same rapid-fire questions. Then we’ll go deeper. …
From Amy Wang of The Oregonian/OregonLive, June 3, 2022: For Nanea Woods, books and community have always gone together, and now she’s launching her biggest effort yet to combine the two. Portland’s first Black literary festival, the Freadom Festival, is a tribute to freedom and reading that’s taking place in Portland’s Peninsula Park on Saturday, June …
From Literary Arts: Literary Arts is thrilled to announce this year’s Oregon Book Awards finalists. Thirty-five Oregonians across seven genre categories were chosen as finalists by panels of out-of-state judges, from a total of 202 submitted titles. Winners will be announced live at the 2022 Oregon Book Awards Ceremony at Portland Center Stage at The Armory on Monday, …
