Authors On Display Dinner
Sunday, September 29 - 7:30 – 9:15 pm
Washington/Clark/Clackamas Ballroom
Sponsored by Tickets required
|
Jonathan Evison | The Heart of Winter | Dutton
The Heart of Winter (Dutton/PRH, due 1/25), by two-time PNBA Award winner Jonathan Evison, chronicles the ups and downs of a decades-long marriage. What starts as a disastrous blind date evolves into a seventy-year marriage for Abe and Ruth Winters, who, like most couples, share a relationship that ebbs and flows, building up both secrets and resilience as the years go by. When Ruth begins to fail and Abe takes on the challenge of caregiving, the marriage once again faces a reconfiguration, their dependable partnership eroding at the edges. Endlessly heartwarming and moving, The Heart of Winter is a reminder that true love lives in small, everyday moments. Jonathan Evison’s novels include Lawn Boy, This is Your Life, Harriet Chance, and Small World.
|
|
Eowyn Ivey | Black Woods, Blue Sky | Random House
Bestselling Alaska writer Eowyn Ivey returns to her fictional landscape of Alaska’s Wolverine River in Black Woods, Blue Sky (Random House/PRH, due 2/25), an unforgettable reimagining of the Beauty and the Beast story. Single mother Birdie is just getting by, waiting tables in a roadside lodge, and remembering better days. When Birdie’s daughter Emaleen goes missing, she is found in the woods by scarred, soft-spoken Arthur, whose cabin on the far side of the Wolverine offers Birdie the escape she longs for. Birdie falls in love, but love alone may not be enough, as Arthur harbors a dark secret. Eowyn Ivey, author of the PNBA Award-winning novel Snow Child, worked for nearly a decade as a bookseller at independent Fireside Books in Palmer, Alaska.
|
|
Nnedi Okorafor | Death of the Author | HarperCollins/Morrow
In Death of the Author (William Morrow/HarperCollins, due 1/25), the exhilarating new tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative. This surprisingly funny, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human is a story unlike anything you’ve read before. Nnedi Okorafor, author of multiple award-winning and bestselling novels and series for adults and young adults, including She Who Knows and the Akata Witch series, has won every major prize in speculative fiction, including the World Fantasy, Nebula, Eisner, and multiple Hugo awards, as well as general honors such as the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature.
|
|
Karen Russell | The Antidote | Knopf
The Antidote (Knopf/PRH, due 3/25) is a story from the America Dust Bowl as only bestselling author Karen Russell can tell it. Even before Black Sunday, the day that the dust raged across the Plains, the town of Uz, Nebraska was collapsing. Not just from the Depression, or even from the dust storms, but from its own violent histories. Following unique and disparate characters, from a Polish wheat farmer, to a “Prairie Witch, to a New Deal photographer with a time-traveling camera, The Antidote looks to the past to sound urgent warnings about our own climate emergency, and the dangers of our national amnesia. Karen Russell is the author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She currently lives in Portland.
|
|
Lidia Yuknavitch | Reading the Waves | Riverhead Books
Portland writer Lidia Yuknavitch returns to the show with her new volume of memoir, Reading the Waves (Riverhead/PRH, due 2/25), a frank and revealing look at the scars of her past and her ultimate realization that healing can come through creativity and literature. By turns candid and lyrical, stoic and forgiving, blunt and evocative, Reading the Waves reframes memory to show how crucial this process can be in gaining a deeper understanding of ourselves. Lidia Yuknavitch is the bestselling author of several novels, including Thrust and The Book of Joan. Her TED Talk “The Beauty of Being a Misfit” as garnered over 4 million views. Yuknavitch’s previous memoir, The Chronology of Water, won both a PNBA Award and the Oregon Book Award’ Reader’s Choice Award.
|