I grew up in a house where creativity lived in the walls. Cartoons taped along cabinets, carved rocks on display, a small unicorn painting near the coffee cups, and a 4-foot plaster cast of illustrated ducks hung on our dining room wall. As a child, I didn’t realize how these surroundings shaped my memories. They …
I am an unrepentant regional chauvinist. I believe in my heart that those of us lucky enough to call the Pacific Northwest home live in one of the best places on the planet. Perhaps because I was raised in the region—at the base of the foothills of təqʷubəʔ (aka Mount Rainier)—I have always had a …
Like most writers and cartoonists I spend an excessive amount of time in my head. I’m sensitive and self-critical. I love people, but people also make me anxious. In conversation I have to choose my words very carefully, and therefore, I rarely feel like I have anything clever to say in the moment. My voice …
The first time I saw the ocean, I was 19, at a distant family member’s wedding on the California coast. The first time I saw the Atlantic, I was 30. The friend who picked me up at the Boston airport at midnight exited the freeway and pulled up to an empty beach so I could …
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) is a non-profit association of independent bookstores from five Northwest states, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and British Columbia. The Association produces educational and promotional events and materials for its members and offers literacy, free speech, and author promotional vehicles through its member stores. Since 1965, the PNBA Awards …
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) is a non-profit association of independent bookstores from five Northwest states, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and British Columbia. The Association produces educational and promotional events and materials for its members and offers literacy, free speech, and author promotional vehicles through its member stores. PNBA’s Awards Committee is comprised …
Tupac Shakur’s poetry collection, The Rose that Grew from Concrete, and the safety of a diary were my entries into becoming a writer. For the entirety of middle school and the first half of high school, I was the kid who came into class late while cracking jokes or quips and sat in the back …
Join in the celebration of the award-winning books and their creators! Register for the online Zoom event now, then follow the link you’ll get in your email on Tuesday, February 8, 2022 at 6:00 pm PST. We look forward to celebrating with you!
Iron Widow is a book born from female rage. I often pitch it as “Pacific Rim” meets The Handmaid’s Tale because those are two properties familiar to Western audiences, but in truth, I was more inspired by Japanese mecha anime and Chinese harem dramas. The gilded palaces of Imperial China, where thousands of women must …
By the time he was twenty-nine, Charles Darwin had puzzled his way toward two-thirds of his theory of natural selection. He understood that plants and animals passed traits (hair color, say, or beak shape, or flower scent) down to their offspring. And he understood that those traits were not passed down perfectly. We resemble our …
