I know this might seem self-serving because I will be on a panel with Nidhi, but her Super Boba Cafe is one of the most fun, hilarious graphic novel series to come out in the last few years. I dare you to read it and not have a good time (and crave boba).

Chanani and Hill will discuss their recent series on a panel titled Supernatural Sequels moderated by author Emily Chenoweth.

THE MOST fun you will have at the whole book festival. A lot of people who maybe don’t pay attention to youth publishing might not be aware of the events, but they’re live, improv drawing contests featuring cartoonists and illustrators in the festival. These are people who spend months or years working on books in solitude, who have spent decades honing their craft, and then they have to get on stage in front of an audience and draw complicated things in two minutes.

This book is hands down one of the best to come out this year. It’s Aron making comics at the top of his game and you can see in every line in every panel all the love and care he put into making that book. 

Alongside Brandon Hoàng (Minecraft: One Last Quest), Steinke will speak on a panel about books set in middle school moderated by Vera Brosgol (Return to Sender).

She’s been compared to Nora Ephron, need I say more?? Katie Yee’s wonderful book is funny, sharp, and unforgettably deep. I can’t wait to see her in conversation with Patricia Lockwood—such a dynamic duo!

Yee and Lockwood (Will There Ever Be Another You) will speak on a panel about tragicomic writing moderated by writer and editor Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya. 

Tara is not only a fascinating person (see: the first Black female explorer ever to be featured on the cover of Nat Geo), she’s also written a book about diving to discover lost slave ships and trace the global slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean.

Roberts will be in conversation with OPB’s Shayna Schlosberg.

Henry is a city planner who works for the Portland Bureau of Transportation. He has written one of the best guides to surviving a natural disaster in the Pacific Northwest.

As part of the pop-up series in the museum, which pairs authors with specific artworks on display, Miller will read in front of Howard Stoyell Sewall’s Green Landscape (Eastern Oregon Townscape). 

As a former resident of Spokane, Washington, it shocks me that Jess Walter Day has not yet been proclaimed a municipal holiday. Each time Walter drops a book, it’s all people talk about: Walter is a proud hometown hero and many of his best-selling novels—from his stunning work of historical fiction The Cold Millions, to the suspense-thriller Citizen Vince—are set in the snowy Eastern Washington city. His latest work, So Far Gone, is a brilliant page-turner about a laid-off Spokane newspaper reporter who sees the hellscape the world is becoming and decides to peace-out to an off-grid cabin. It’s a novel for our confusing times that will have you laughing and crying, and immediately after heading to Powell’s to buy your next Walter novel. 

Walter will speak on a panel about comedic fiction alongside Kristen Arnett (Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One) moderated by OPB’s Jess Hazel. 

Omar El Akkad is correct that “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”—which was both a tweet he wrote after October 7, 2023, and the title of his nonfiction masterpiece about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is a lament for the West, a plea for a better world, a piece of writing that looks you right in the eye and asks what kind of person you want to be. If you only read one book this year, this is the one. 

El Akkad will speak on a panel about American reckoning alongside Karen Russell (The Antidote) moderated by Rachel Saslow of Willamette Week. 

Keith Rosson has been writing books for years—where the hell have we all been? The Portland writer is having a long-overdue moment after the release of his North Portland–set vampire novel, Coffin Moon, which sells so fast stores can’t keep it in stock. Rosson has a back catalog of near-perfect novels—trust me, I read four this year—that showcase why even Stephen King calls himself a fan: He paints beautiful sentences, has a jaw-dropping ability to turn a plot on a dime, then absolutely firehose the reader in gore. 

As part of the pop-up readings at PAM, Rosson will read in front of Gustave Courbet’s The Violoncellist. 

Ó Tuama is the Irish poet behind On Being’s Poetry Unbound podcast series and the author most recently of Kitchen Hymns, which I expect to be as generous and spiritually intricate as his earlier work.

Ó Tuama will speak on a poetry panel with Patricia Smith (The Intentions of Thunder) moderated by the writer and musician Alicia Jo Rabins. 

The writer and filmmaker Julian Brave NoiseCat (with Emily Kassie, he codirected the Oscar-nominated documentary Sugarcane in 2024) has a new book, We Survived the Night, about the horrific legacy of Indian residential schools in his own family and across North America.

With Chyana Marie Sage (Soft as Bones), Julian Brave NoiseCat will speak on a panel about Indigenous communities and generational trauma moderated by Chris La Tray, a former poet laureate of Montana. 

Portland’s own Karleigh Frisbie Brogan writes about the fires of addiction and family in her debut memoir.

As part of the museum pop-up readings, Brogan will read beside Moses Soyer’s Girl with a Cigarette.

I’m looking forward to seeing the novelist Eliana Ramage, whose debut, To the Moon and Back, about a woman who wants to be the first Cherokee astronaut, is getting all kinds of buzz. 

With Anna North (Bog Queen), Ramage will speak on a panel moderated by Portland novelist Genevieve Hudson (Boys of Alabama).