from Andrea Dunlop’s newsletter August 15, 2018 One of the biggest challenges of being a working novelist is balancing the deep, focused work of actually writing your books with the promoting of those books, the part that requires you to be in the world both online and off. Both are necessary and I generally enjoy …
Seattle7Writers, the nonprofit collective of Pacific Northwest authors, partners with independent bookstores this summer to introduce readers to favorite authors and raise money for literacy nonprofits. In July, Island Books hosted the Seattle7Writers cookout to benefit Team Read, a nonprofit organization that pairs struggling young readers with trained teen reading coaches for one-on-one tutoring after school and …
This is a book framed by grief—Broks’s wife died of cancer in middle age—but it is not the usual memoir of loss. Broks has long been a scientist of consciousness, and he sees death, as well as the miracle of waking life, through a bracingly unsentimental lens of neural activity. Which might make for a …
For those of us who love Harry Potter (and there are a LOT of us), the magic never truly ends. We re-read the books. We watch the movies for maybe the hundredth time (and I might not be exaggerating). We find camaraderie and instant connections with fellow Potterheads who also believe in love, magic, and forever friendship. …
Non-fiction for the cold, hard facts, fiction for flights of fancy. One grounds you while the other sets you spinning. Most of the time, maybe, but my experience this week perfectly inverts that paradigm. I’ve been reading a brand-new book from Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris, who is best known as the filmmaker behind such projects …
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, the regional trade association for independent bookstores, just concluded its annual fall trade show this week. This means that the PNBA Board of Directors gathered, and when that happens, there’s a tradition of going around the room to introduce ourselves and something we’ve read lately. Below are the books that …
At the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Fall Trade Show, the PNBA Awards Committee presented an overview of some nominated titles by northwest authors and illustrators that have captured their hearts this year. Committee chair Kim Hooyboer of Third Place Books (Seward Park, Seattle, WA) explained that this year a record-breaking 421 titles were nominated. She …
While bedridden by an illness, a friend brought Bailey a gift of wild violets and a tiny forest snail. Bailey gave her new companion a bedside terrarium, then observed its daily behaviors and educated herself on the life of gastropods. Her memoir is a gift to the scientifically curious, to nature lovers, to anyone who …
University of Oregon professor Michael Copperman recalls his experiences serving with Teach For America in the Mississippi Delta. Copperman’s descriptive prose walks the reader through two years teaching the fourth grade in one of the poorest and most educationally disadvantaged regions in the United States. His language allows the harsh realities of educational inequality, institutional …
This book is such an empowering tale of what is possible when you don’t give up. Jahren beautifully weaves the story of her success with the story of who she is as a person, resulting in an all-at-once heartbreaking and inspiring tale. Not only did she break through the barrier of being a female in …
