RCCC

4 Can’t-Miss Events at Rose City Comic Con 2025

On the docket: cast reunions for Battlestar Galactica, The Goonies, and Doctor Who.

08/20/2025 By Alex Frane

Book Club

The Bike Library Connecting Portland’s Housed and Unhoused Residents

Street Books has made a lot of friends in its 15 years—and divined a uniquely effective form of mutual aid.

08/12/2025 By Jaydra Johnson Photography by Michael Novak

Bookshelf

Sex, Books, and New Age Spiritualism

Portland novelist and screenwriter Jon Raymond’s funky Ashland twist on a classic, God and Sex, pushes faith and reality to climax.

07/21/2025 By Matthew Trueherz Illustrations by Derek Abella

reading ahead

Book Launches and Author Events in Portland This Summer

A fresh crop of summer reads from Portlanders Jon Raymond, Leni Zumas, and more.

07/17/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

Bookshelf

A Heady Ode to Freewheeling Hippie Food Fit for 2025

Portlander Andrew Barton’s memoir-slash-cookbook, Free Food, revisits the Back to the Land ethos.

05/07/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

reading ahead

Portland’s Spring Book Calendar Is Wonderfully Overbooked

With readings from Maggie Nelson and Viet Thanh Nguyen, and local authors Jonathan Hill, Ling Ling Huang, and Cathy Whims.

04/03/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

Bookshelf

Karen Russell on Her Witchy Dust Bowl Epic, The Antidote

The Portland author and Pulitzer finalist follows Swamplandia! with a magical realist test of wills.

03/11/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

Book Review

Omar El Akkad Returns to Nonfiction to Undress American Mythology

Spurred by the war in Gaza, the celebrated American War novelist tests propaganda against the sanctity of human life.

02/19/2025 By Diana Abu-Jaber

Long Story Short

Lidia Yuknavitch, Kristen Stewart, and an Ocean Outside of Time

As The Chronology of Water becomes a movie, its author revisits her past in a new memoir, Reading the Waves.

02/04/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

reading ahead

The Most Anticipated Book Events in Portland This Winter

The season promises new books from local stars Karen Russell and Lidia Yuknavitch and visits from Masha Gessen and Neko Case, among many others.

01/06/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

Books

A Guide to Loving Trash

A new memoir collects trash—as a class, artistic medium, and societal nuisance—into a manual for empathy.

11/08/2024 By Matthew Trueherz

Reading Ahead

The Most Anticipated Book Events in Portland Fall 2024

Ta-Nehisi Coates is coming, the Portland Book Festival is almost here, and the city’s small presses are printing the next generation’s debuts.

10/15/2024 By Matthew Trueherz

Photobook

Protest City Photographer Rian Dundon’s Next Project Is a Quieter Ride

Post-divorce and post-COVID, the intimate photos in Dundon’s Passenger distill Portland’s normalized strife.

09/25/2024 By Matthew Trueherz Photography by Rian Dundon

Q&A

Mostly True Stories: Chelsea Bieker on Her Novel ‘Madwoman’

“I wanted to write this zany book about motherhood and wellness powders,” she says. “And then it turned into this much deeper thing.”

09/17/2024 By Matthew Trueherz

Author Events

Portland Book Festival Announces 2024 Lineup

Richard Powers, Renée Watson, Ani DiFranco, and Danez Smith are among this year’s 80+ authors.

09/12/2024 By Matthew Trueherz

Retreat Yourself

You Deserve a DIY Creative Retreat

Regardless of whether you call yourself an artist, a quick getaway offers both respite and play.

08/06/2024 By Erica Berry Illustrations by Mark Wang

Memoir

Breaking Bread and Capitalism with Lola Milholland

The Umi Organic founder’s memoir challenges the nuclear family model with food.

08/01/2024 Photography by Jason Hill By Matthew Trueherz

Book Review

You’re Safe Here, A Sci-Fi Novel Set In 2060, Reads Eerily Current

Author of the popular Substack newsletter Morning Person, Leslie Stephens takes aim at the wellness industrial complex in her debut novel.

06/27/2024 By Matthew Trueherz

Reading Ahead

3 Upcoming Books by Portland Authors

Does your nightstand need a genre-bending food memoir, a wellness-obsessed sci-fi novel, and a first-person report of an adult autism diagnosis? Of course it does.

05/22/2024 By Matthew Trueherz

Life’s Fictions

Miranda July in Conversation with Portland Novelist Chelsea Bieker

“A feeling of recklessness is what made me write it down,” July says of her latest novel, All Fours. “I’m pointing at a thing and calling it out.”

05/15/2024 By Chelsea Bieker Illustrations by Becki Gill