Entries Tagged 'reading' ↓

Laura and I were invited to read at Read to Rebuild, a reading benefit for Haiti put on by Reading Local and Mercy Corps, and hosted by my friend Mel Favara.

Reading Local’s astute interviewer Karen Munro interviewed both Laura Moulton and myself here. They were great questions.

Tom Spanbauer, Ariel Gore, Kevin Sampsell and Margaret Malone will also be reading. Sponsors include Dark Horse Comics and Hawthorne books and it will be held at the Writer’s Dojo (March 16th @ 6:30pm). Needless to say,  it’s going to be a rad night.

Get all the  details at Reading Local’s page on Read to Rebuild: A Haiti Benefit Reading

One of the lovely people responsible for selecting, editing, publishing, and sending Couch on its way into the world is going to be in town this Thursday.

Jedediah Berry is an editor at the prodigiously talented Small Beer Press where there they don’t even let you answer the telephone unless you have several books to your name.

His first novel, The Manual of Detection, is a fantastically good read and it’s freshly out in paperback. I love the new cover and after reading it it was hard not to imagine it set in Portland, what with our bicycle obsessions and drenched climate.

He’ll be at Powell’s Books on  Hawthorne at 7:30 this Thursday (3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd.) and it’s sure to be a great reading. Ask him about bicycles, umbrellas, first novels and getting your book considered at Small Beer Press. We’ll be there — hope to see you. Yes, you.

Just look at this beautiful cover:

For some reason in this posting at the Portland Mercury I am talked about first, but I assure you I just happen to be a sidecar at the Portland Fiction Project’s reading at The Maiden.

The reading is themed:

Love is Not Punny, It’s Surrealist

So maybe I’ll read something along those lines that somehow is contained within this new mss I’m working on? It’ll be at The Maiden, Monday February 1st at 7pm. The Maiden is a great venue for reading and I hope to see you there.

Here are some links to the Portland Fiction Project:

Portland Fiction Project on Facebook

portlandfiction.net

I’ll be reading a new piece at the Hugo House on November 20th under the theme of ‘visiting hours’.
The poet Elizabeth Austen, actor Matt Smith, and musician Molly Rose will also be performing.

The Hugo House has an interview with me here.
I’m taking some fun risks and building some software specifically for the reading, just to really push the ‘how many things can fail at once’ potential as high as it can go. I’m enormously enthusiastic about the project at the moment.

The next day I’ll be teaching a class at the Hugo House, and then immediately after that I will be doing this:

Where I’ll be for several months. First to go to the wedding of my brother-in-law (yay Mark & Tati!) and then to work on a book (yay!).

If you have any Brazil advice, stories, places to see, people to meet — I’d love to hear it.

Here are a few pics from the book tour journey, all taken with the shoddy camera on my phone.

I’m here at the Liquid Planet cafe in Missoula, Montana – across the street from Fact & Fiction where I read tonight.

The ugly house I lived in while I went to Evergreen

Two cyclops

I heart The Stranger

Secret Garden books!

Embedded scissors near Third Place Books

I rented a Prius - and spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about gas and bickering with the passive-aggressive, know-it-all (but generally fun) car. One example: I have a habit of leaning my arm on the passenger seat, which Prius would then interpret as a passenger there and would sound its PASSENGER SEATBELT! alarm. It was spooky, as if I'd picked up a ghost rider along the way.

A propellor plane! I was too shy to talk to my seat-mate who was cute and reading articles on astro-physics. Instead I went deep into reading The Manual of Detection and laughed into my sleeve half the ride over.

Fact & Fiction - so nice. They made their own posters! I want one.

Today is launch day for a book I’ve been quite excited to read — written by friend (and editor!) Jedediah Berry (seen looking entirely the wrong direction in this photo):

There are a number of reasons why this promises to be a most excellent book, not the least of which is: the lead character is a bicyclist who rides with his umbrella! While Jed lives in Northampton, this book was obviously written for bikey, rainy Portland.

Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief said:

“Jedediah Berry knows magic. The Manual of Detection combines the intricacy and thoughtfulness of Borges and Kafka with the page-turning excitement of a detective thriller. . . . It made me laugh, thrill, think, and wonder.”

This book might be extremely important reading in case you accidentally find yourself a detective in a complex mystery. (no affiliation!)

There is a great website for the book (www.manualofdetection.com) built by the same guy who does a ton of great websites for books -  Jefferson Rabb.

A publisher who did not publish the book,  the curiously named ‘Small Beer Press‘ – is hosting a mystery contest to win signed copies of the book. I’ll be picking mine up tonight at Powell’s Books (I’m going to see TC Boyle read – see you there?). Here’s The Manual of Detection at Powell’s.

Best of luck, Jed!