Words with Friends

The Open Mic That Counts Amateurs and Award-Winning Authors as Regulars

One-Page Wednesdays, hosted by Portland novelist Emme Lund, feels like a public writers’ group.

01/22/2026 By Matthew Trueherz Illustrations by Stephan Dybus

Bookshelf

Portland Monthly’s Best Books of 2025

Our favorite fiction and nonfiction, children’s books, cartoons, and comics of the year by Oregon authors.

12/08/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

Bookshelf

A Novel of an Anarchist Nursing Home Run by 1970s Punks

Leni Zumas’s Wolf Bells is a spirited, hilarious, and tender study of intergenerational living.

09/15/2025 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

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

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

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

Interview

‘Unlikable’ Narrators and the Impossible Expectations of Motherhood

Portland author Kimberly King Parsons unpacks her hotly anticipated debut novel, We Were the Universe.

05/10/2024 By Michelle Kicherer

As Told To

In ‘skin & bones,’ Renée Watson Writes for Her Devout Readers’ Parents

"I’m always writing for that little girl who needed to see herself and her ancestors represented in stories."

05/03/2024 By Matthew Trueherz Photography by Michael Raines

Awards Season

Erica Berry and Patrick deWitt Are among the 2024 Oregon Book Awards Winners

Kwame Alexander presented seven Oregon authors with new badges to add to their book covers at Monday’s ceremony.

04/10/2024 By Matthew Trueherz

Theater

Review: ‘Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson–Apt. 2B’ at Portland Center Stage

Playwright Kate Hamill’s witty, relevant, gender-flipped, pandemic-set adaptation of Sherlock Holmes runs through February 12.

02/01/2023 By Isabel Lemus Kristensen

Oregon Book Awards

Literary Arts Announces 2023 Oregon Book Award Finalists

The winners will be announced April 3 in a ceremony at the Armory.

01/24/2023 By Matthew Trueherz

Book Review

Katherine Dunn’s Posthumously Published ‘Toad’ Cuts Deep

The author of Geek Love has a new Portland-set novel out, six years after her death.

11/22/2022 By Matthew Trueherz

Transit

Frog Ferry: Dead in the Water

The recurrent fantasy of a Willamette River commuter ferry is back to being just a pipe dream, after local boosters give up on its latest iteration.

09/06/2022 By Margaret Seiler

Summer Reads

‘City Beautiful,’ a Short Story by Portland Writer Callum Angus

Looking for an offbeat beach read? We asked an Oregon Book Award–nominated author to tell us a story set in Portland in the summer of 2022.

07/01/2022 By Callum Angus Illustrations by Katie Leimbach

Summer Reads

Three Sisters: A Short Story by Guadalupe García McCall

"Maria tossed her hair out of her face and sat up with a jerk. She leaned forward, distorting her image on the screen. Her lips became pale, and her left eye was suddenly sanguine, swollen."

07/14/2021 By Guadalupe García McCall

Summer Reads

Niyi and the Tan Stucco House: A Short Story by Olufunke Grace Bankole

"Stomping-boot-by-stomping-boot, Niyi cracked down the sidewalk. At the pink house with blue trim, he bent forward to smell the pine tree smell, as his baba had taught him. But it was his mama who’d told him to 'notice everything, especially the air.'"

07/14/2021 By Olufunke Grace Bankole

Footnotes

LISTEN: What The Plague Can Teach Us About the Pandemic

We talk with OSU professor Courtney Campbell about Albert Camus's 1947 novel, philosophy, and human nature.

12/18/2020 By Gabriel Granillo

Q&A

An OSU Professor on What Star Trek Can Teach Us About the Pandemic and Philosophy

“Dealing with epidemics, pandemics, and disease in this kind of way, this really is a component of the human experience at least since we've been ‘civilized.’”

12/11/2020 By Gabriel Granillo