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Sunday, April 23, 2006

 

Wordstock 2006

The massive (by Portland standards) "festival of the book" filled the Oregon Convention Center this weekend: Wordstock 2006. Details from Sunday are not forthcoming, as spending two days in a convention center wandering around while temperatures near 70 degrees outdoors seems a little silly (Gore Vidal be damned: today, 4p.m.).

The main change between version 1.0 and 2.0 was the dearth of ticketed events this year. Last year you had to pay to hear big names like John Updike (although whether that was one of the actual big names I can't remember), but the convention hall was free. This year the convention hall was $3 but you got all the authors for free. Not a bad trade-off.

The authors who drew the 10 a.m. slot were treated to empty seats before them...Patrick Carman, author of the Land of Elyon children's books, talked to about 25 folks, 10 of whom were technically his target demographic. It was his sixth appearance in Portland since Monday, and he conceded that "everyone who wants to hear me talk already has." For some reason, Carman doesn't actually read from his books.

As the day wore on, crowds picked up, so that by 3 p.m. there were 30-40 folks in line for tickets. Several hundred filled every seat and the aisles for Joyce Carol Oates (who grumbled about the music from an adjacent booth) and Dave Eggers.

I skipped Oates, but sat in on graphic novelist Jessica Abel's conversation at the Powell's stage while waiting for Eggers. Abel was interesting.

Eggers pulls in a crowd. He read one of his pieces done for The Guardian from a couple years back about Dick Cheney. If you want to win over a Portland crowd, go political. Practically every reading I've been to recently has had a strong political subcurrent...and I haven't been looking for it.

Eggers then read from a forthcoming novel co-authored with a Sudanese "lost boy" (I think).

Most interesting, on small press publishing: "There has never been a better time in the history of the world to start a small press," or something to that effect. What was interesting, however was his point that to be successful is to do it on "the right scale" and to be realistic. Most of all, to appreciate the readers you do have (3,000 is a lot of people).

Other readings that I caught pieces of and enjoyed:
Sassy stories by Vendela Vida, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Thisbe Nissen
Short stories by Geronimo Tagatac and Gina Ochsner
Tacoma Confidential by Paul LaRosa
Colson Whitehead

Monday, April 17, 2006

 

Urban Scrawl

Here is a link to the piece that I did for The Oregonian on Portland-as-book-reading town:
http://tinyurl.com/g5o3z

Here are some of the places that were left out:

I know.

The good news is that a new feature in the Monday Oregonian's Living section, Talk of the Book Town, is a spot to write about some of the great things happening in Portland related to books. Mostly working on chronicling readings right now, but I'm not above adding in some other book/publishing/magazine news if you've got it.

I've noticed that the O! section of The Oregonian has not yet developed a readily recognized moniker.
"What section is it in?"
"O!"
"What?"
"Arts!"
"Oh."

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