I first read Brian Doyle’s The Grail (Oregon State University Press, $18.95) while serving on the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awards Committee years ago. I fell in love with his abundant affection for people and place and his exquisite prose. Over the years, I had the pleasure of meeting him several times. I was just discovering his poetry/poetic essays and …
In 2008 I quit an all-consuming sales position in Missoula and tried to move with my husband to Lake Pend Oreille in the slim Idaho panhandle, where we hoped to rededicate ourselves to our writing. Mother nature had other plans for us, blanketing the Inland Northwest with record-breaking snowfall and rendering our little cabin in …
The winners for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association 2020 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. The Association produces educational and promotional events and materials for its members and offers literacy, free …
The shortlist for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association 2020 Pacific Northwest Book Awards has 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. The Association produces educational and promotional events and materials for its members and offers literacy, free …
Two Pacific Northwest booksellers recently joined the American Booksellers Association Board of Directors. Jenny Cohen of Waucoma Books in Hood River, OR and Tegan Tigani of Queen Anne Book Company in Seattle, WA started on the board this spring. They were the point people on a bookstore bus tour for booksellers at a recent national …
The Pacific Northwest Book Award Committee recognized late author Brian Doyle with an Indie Spirit Honor for his body of work and vigorous support of independent booksellers in the Northwest and beyond. Doyle passed away in May 2017. We republish this essay that he wrote upon winning a 2016 PNBA Award in memory of his …
I’m so pleased that Tides will receive a 2018 Pacific Northwest Book Award. I’m honored to be among such a wonderful list of writers living on this craggy coast. When I think of the west I think of the Pacific, that “small gulf” Ferdinand Magellan named long ago for its pacificity. We now know it’s …
As a reader, I find recommendations difficult to ignore. Even when the pile beside my evening chair is in danger of toppling, something new, received at the insistence of a friend, simply must be cracked open. The same goes for gifts. While I have no trouble composting an unwanted fruitcake, or exchanging a shirt with …
Sometimes a unicorn shows up in your life and makes everything better. I wasn’t really expecting one. A few years ago, I had nearly realized an ambition I’ve had since age 12: I had scored a contract to develop a comic strip for newspaper syndication. I won that contract, in the Comic Strip Superstar contest, …
What did I think of when I learned that my peculiar collection of essays had won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award? Weirdly, not the barrels of cash and fine wines and excellent cheeses that would surely come my way, or the hordes of somber graduate students that would soon be studying my semicolons, or the …
