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Browse: Home / Powell’s City of Books

Powell’s City of Books

Jan

20

2023

An Original Essay by 2023 PNBA Book Award Winner Putsata Reang

My mother sat in the very last row of chairs in the author event space at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon, the day my memoir, Ma and Me, was officially released. She smiled with pride as her gaze skipped across the room, surely taking in the improbability of the moment: her daughter, a …

Apr

20

2017

Mikhail and Margarita

Mikhail and Margarita
by Julie Lekstrom Himes

Focusing on three strong figures– writer Mikhail Bulgakov; the beautiful, outspoken Margarita; and Ilya, a member of Stalin’s secret police– Mikhail and Margarita is a love triangle, a biographical literary thriller, and a paean to literature, a needful thing in times of tyranny and chaos. –Gigi, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR This novel was a March …

Apr

11

2017

Portland Bookstore Bookseller Tours

Last week, booksellers from all around the country converged on Portland, OR for a conference on children’s books and bookselling, hosted by the American Booksellers Association. Some lucky participants registered for half-day and full-day bus tours of Portland area independent bookstores, hopping from neighborhood to neighborhood for 20-30 minute drop-ins (Woefully short!). Here are some …

Mar

17

2016

The Remnants by Robert Hill

Hill’s characters are so precisely written, they feel as real as you and me, despite the generations of inbreeding, which have left them somewhere off the “normal” scale. Yet, these folks love and hope and yearn like the rest of us, and their stories are magical. Hill has the silver tongue of a master wordsmith. …

Feb

7

2014

Economy of Being:
Peter Mountford and
“The Dismal Science”

Peter Mountford gives human form to the volatile science of Economics in his second novel, The Dismal Science, which follows Vincenzo d’Orsi’s purgative transformation as he learns to cope with loss and living. Mountford is embarking on a whirlwind tour, including his Seattle book launch party at Richard Hugo House, February 13 at 7 pm, …

Nov

21

2013

This is Between Us by Kevin Sampsell

“Portlander Kevin Sampsell’s hometown serves as the backdrop for his new novel about two recently split 30-somethings and parents trying to build a new life together. This is Between Us is five chapters, each encapsulating a year in the life of the relationship and developing family. The story is presented in a journal style somewhere …

Sep

5

2013

1

remark

Brave on the Page: Oregon Writers
on Craft and the Creative Life
Edited by Laura Stanfill

“I’m really, really not just picking this because I have an essay in the collection. Really. This sweet, little book is wonderfully indie and stuffed full of Oregon authors. A collection of essays and interviews with such local lit figures as Scott Sparling, Lauren Kessler, and Yuvi Zalkow, Brave on the Page is not only about craft …

Sep

3

2012

Make Art, Love Dora

When public figures make headlines saying inane things about women’s bodies, it’s clear we’re too penned in by ignorance. This is why Lidia Yukanavitch’s novel Dora: A Headcase (Hawthorne Books) is timely and valuable. The novel is a feminist reclamation of Freud’s infamous case study. Yukanavitch’s Dora has refused diagnosis and the hysteria of her …

Feb

28

2012

Bart King: Bookstore Lover, NOT a Nerd

Portland author Bart King, known for his playful pocket guides to all things whimsical, waxes warmly about the magic of the bookstore experience in the Oregonian piece “More Than a Store: A Place to Bask in Books.” King conjures the endless aisles of Powell’s and the mazes of Annie Bloom’s in convincing readers that the …

Feb

15

2012

When a Bookstore Was Hell on Earth, an Essay by 2012 PNBA Award Winner Patrick deWitt

A familiar scenario from my childhood: My father and I are driving in his truck. I’m six years old, it’s summer break in Southern California, a sunny Saturday morning, and we’re heading to the beach. I’ve eaten two bowls of sugar cereal and I’m spun out, frantic to get in the water. The ocean comes …

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