Mark your calendars for Sunday, August 28, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and visit us at Sunday Parkways in South East. It’s part bike ride, part walk in the park, part music festival, part street fair, part friendly street take over, and part all fun. You can do a section or all of the six plus mile route that takes you through great neighborhoods, parks, and the Hawthorne Street Fair.

Wordstock will be there with prizes and information, including a chance to win a $50 Powell’s gift card. We’ll be talking about the festival on Oct 6-9, books, reading and having fun. We’ll update this post as soon as we know where we’ll be camped, so be sure and check back to find out.

eta: Our booth will be right next to Ivon Park (SE 47th Ave & Ivon St). Stop by and enter to win! We’ll see you there!

Guest post by: Ismet Prcic

Author of Shards, Ismet Prcic appears at the Wordstock Festival on Saturday, October 8 at 1pm on the McMenamins Stage.

What are you reading now?

Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman and Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley.

Who is your favorite new author?

I have two. Nami Mun and Ramona Ausubel. For Ramona’s book you’ll have to wait until January.

What is your favorite book of the year?

Widow by Michelle Latiolais.

Favorite book of all time?

Complete Plays by Sarah Kane. But if you’re asking for fiction it’s Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson.

Which writers have most influenced you?

Samuel Beckett, Sarah Kane, Charles Bukowski, Aleksandar Hemon, Kate Millett.

What are you working on now?

I’m some sixty pages into my new novel about a woman whose twins go missing. She never finds out what happened to them. But, as she waits for some news of them, which she knows/intuits will never come, she re-imagines her life as a Hollywood movie and herself played by a famous actress.

Another focus at the festival this year is children’s literature.  What was your favorite book as a child?  Who is your favorite children’s book author now?

I read a lot of children’s books when I was a kid. My mother tells me so. I even have a book of poetry dedicated to me by my elementary school librarian as a pupil who read the most books in a school year. Yet, I can’t, for the life of me, remember the titles. Even if I could these would be ex-Yugoslavian writers writing in ex-Yugoslavian tongues and it wouldn’t do anybody any good.

What is your favorite website for writing/literature/etc.?

I like Bomb Magazine. I like Identity Theory.

What is your favorite food?

Braised mutton with okra and homemade bread. It’s a childhood (Bosnian) thing.

Any connection you have with Portland or to the Pacific Northwest.  Have you been to Portland before and, if so, what is your favorite thing about it?

My wife and I both wanted out of SoCal so bad, her because she’s a redhead and the sun down there is merciless, and me because I was sick of driving and squinting and having to explain where Bosnia was. We went online, independently of each other, to www.findyourspot.com and answered a long questionnaire about our habits, wants, what-have-yous and, lo and behold, gotten the same exact results:

1.) Portland, OR
2.) Providence, RI
3.) Eugene, OR.

We came to Portland to check it out and here we are still.

NEA did a feature on Ismet that you can see at http://www.nea.gov/features/writers/writersCMS/writer.php?id=10_23

Guest post by: Johnny Shaw

Author of Dove Season, Johnny Shaw appears at the Wordstock Festival on Sunday, October 9 at noon on the Oregon Cultural Trust Stage and is leading the workshop The Big Picture: Essential Story Structure on Sunday, October 9 at 3pm.

What are you reading now? Who is your favorite new author? What is your favorite book of the year? Favorite book of all time?

I just started Donald Ray Pollock’s THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME. There’s a wonderful resurgence in rural crime fiction happening right now. Some of my current favorite writers are Pollock, Daniel Woodrell, Tom Franklin, and Frank Bill, to name a few. So far, my favorite book this year is THE LOCK ARTIST by Steve Hamilton. I couldn’t name one book as my all-time favorite. There are so many different books that are good for very different reasons. How do you compare the incomparable?

Which writers have most influenced you?

James Crumley, Charles Willeford, Chester Himes, Jonathan Latimer, Dashiell Hammett, Fredric Brown, Charles Williams, Horace McCoy, Patricia Highsmith, and Cornell Woolrich. Those are just the authors off the top of my head. There are hundreds more.

What are you working on now?

I am finishing up BIG MARIA, a raucous adventure novel set in the Chocolate Mountains of California and Arizona. I have also started the follow-up to DOVE SEASON, tentatively titled PLASTER CITY. I still regularly take screenwriting work, so I’m usually working on a screenplay as I write the novels.

Another focus at the festival this year is children’s literature. What was your favorite book as a child? Who is your favorite children’s book author now?

My favorite book as a kid was WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS. I don’t think you can beat Shel Silverstein for sheer originality and absurdity. I can probably still recite most of “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout” from memory.

What is your favorite website for writing/literature/etc.?

No question. Chuck Wendig’s Terribleminds. Foul-mouthed, hilarious, and insightful. No one does it like Chuck. If you’re not faint of heart: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/

What is your favorite food?

I’m a carnivore. It’s definitely going to be some kind of meat, but it’s hard to pin down just one. Tell you what, you put some really nice BBQ pork in front of me and you’ll get a smile. Scratch that. Beef Jerky.

Any connection you have with Portland or to the Pacific Northwest? Have you been to Portland before and, if so, what is your favorite thing about it?

Even though my novels are set in the California desert, I’ve lived in Portland for the last six years and love it. It might sound like I’m pandering, but it’s the people that make Portland great. My wife is an oil painter and I’m a writer, so meeting so many creative people that are really interested in making good work for the sake of good work has been incredible. It really feels like a community, supportive rather than competitive.

For more information on Johnny Shaw and his book, visit http://johnnyshaw.net/

Guest post by: Johnny Shaw

Author of Dove Season, Johnny Shaw appears at the Wordstock Festival on Sunday, October 9 at noon on the Oregon Cultural Trust Stage and is leading the workshop The Big Picture: Essential Story Structure on Sunday, October 9 at 3pm.

After leaving my hometown at 17, I moved around quite a bit. My home was wherever I was, changing often on a whim. Yet no matter where I was, I had a constant in my life. The place you call home may change, but your hometown is for life.

I’ve been writing for twenty years, but it took me until a couple years ago to start writing stories set in the Imperial Valley where I grew up. I’m not sure why it took that long, but I think part of it has to do with how we perceive those things closest to us. The uniqueness of the familiar often hides in plain sight. It takes conscious objectivity to look at the seemingly routine or mundane and see it as potentially exotic to another person.

Which brings us to Dippy Duck. Of course, you know who Dippy Duck is, right? Just another Public Service Announcement cartoon character. Like McGruff, Woodsy, or Smokey. For the unfamiliar, Dippy Duck is the cartoon duck that the Imperial Irrigation District uses to teach children not to swim in the canals. I don’t think it occurred to me until college that other people didn’t grow up surrounded by canals and ditches. Or Dippy Duck.

Using Dippy as a jumping off point, I started to look back at my life in the Imperial Valley. The normal world around me wasn’t as normal as I thought. There were a lot of things that other people didn’t have in their past. Nobody knew who Dippy Duck was. There weren’t canals or ditches in anyone else’s childhoods. Hell, nobody grew up on a farm across the street from a field worker bar. Or had been to a cockfight or a bullfight. As I dug deeper into my memory and experience in the Imperial Valley, a unique setting came to life.

With the benefit of hindsight, I could see that the location of my upbringing was unique. Not only was it unique, but few other writers were exploring similar environments in their stories. If the rural experience is rarely expressed, the rural border experience is almost nonexistent in fiction. Writing about my hometown was an opportunity that few other writers had.

But not everyone grew up in such a unique setting as the Mexicali border, you may argue. Unique is where you find it. It’s in the details and one’s ability to see the exotic of the normal. It’s in one’s personal experience and relationship to that place. It’s about its secrets and its personality. From the city to the suburbs to the most remote countryside, every place can bring something special. At its best, the setting can become a character in the story.

And from a personal level, writing about my hometown has allowed me to return to a place that I only visit now. It allowed me to return to my past and through my writing rediscover a connection that will always be in my life. I am forever connected to the desert, the border, and the farms, so why shouldn’t I share that connection in my work and to my readers.

For more information on Johnny Shaw and his book, visit http://johnnyshaw.net/

Guest post by: D.F. Walker

Author of Darius Logan: Super Justice Force, D.F. Walker appears at the Wordstock Festival on Saturday, October 8 at 3pm on the Wieden+Kennedy Stage and is leading the workshop Kicking Butt & Chewing Bubble Gum: Writing for Teenage Boys on Saturday, October 8 at 10:30am.

I’m sure it’s something of a cliché to quote Toni Morrison when discussing why I wrote my book, Darius Logan: Super Justice Force, but cliché or not, it is totally appropriate within this context. You see, Morrison once famously said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,” which is a philosophy I’ve subscribed to with an almost militant fervor. Of course, I should mention that I hadn’t even read Morrison’s quote until after I had written my book, had it rejected by every major publisher in North America, and finally decided to publish it myself. To that end, Morrison was more of a validator (or perhaps enabler), who let me know that I had made the correct decisions.

The decision to write my first novel—a Young Adult action adventure story—started innocently enough. I was looking for a present for the child of a friend, and had a very specific book in mind. This book had to have a lead character who was both male and African American, and it could not have anything to do with sports, Civil Rights, slavery, or urban dysfunction. For lack of a better description, I wanted Harry Potter, only Harry had to be black.

As a black kid who loved to read, I was always troubled by the fact that there were so few books with characters I could relate to. Sure, there were books like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, but those weren’t the books I wanted to read. I wanted action and adventure, supernatural forces threatening to destroy the human race, and heroes that inspired me. And while I read books with heroes who fought supernatural forces, none of them ever had black lead characters. Instead, I got books like A Hero Ain’t Nothing But a Sandwich or Call Me Charley, which kept me trapped inside the reality I was trying to escape. It never seemed fair that the Three Investigators got to go on exciting adventures, while black kids had to become junkies or deal with the sort of racism that was a day-to-day part of my life. A book can serve many purposes, and sometimes the greatest role a book can play is an escape from the everyday world, where outside forces threaten to either bore us to death or break our spirit.

More than thirty years have passed since I became an avid reader, and the literary landscape has changed significantly. When I was a kid, YA didn’t exist as it does today. The Harry Potter books changed everything, as have the many popular series that have come in its wake. But one thing has changed very little—there are still very few books with black lead characters that are not caught in the same conventions as those when I was a kid. And that was why I decided to write Darius Logan: Super Justice Force. This is the book I wanted to read when I was 13 years-old. Darius is the hero that I couldn’t find in the Chronicles of Narnia or any of the other books I scoured through, hoping to find someone who spoke directly to me.

When I sat down to start writing I had one rule for Darius and all the other characters—no matter what race or ethnicity they were, they had to be compelling people. Diversity for the sake of diversity often leads to tired stereotypes and one-dimensional characters who fail to resonate with readers. To put it in more simple terms, I didn’t want Darius Logan to be a black kid who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances. I wanted him to merely be a kid who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances (and just happens to be black). To borrow from Martin Luther King, the ultimate success or failure of Darius as a hero is not tied to the color of his skin, but the content of his character.

Someone recently asked me how much of Darius was me. I explained that all of him was me, because I created him, but at the same time none of him was me, because I had created him to be his own person. I see in Darius some of my best and worst traits, and I hope that other readers do so as well, because if they do, then it means he is a character that speaks to the universal humanity we all share. And all I ever wanted as a child was to read a book set in the world of the fantastic and the supernatural, where black people were presented as fully realized humans, capable of the same heroism as any white character. I never found that book, so I decided to write if myself.

D. F. Walker is a writer, filmmaker, and crime fighter. More information about him, his thoughts and his projects can be found at www.SuperJusticeForce.com

Guest post by: Nancy Tillman

Author of The Crown On Your Head, Nancy Tillman appears at the Wordstock Festival on Saturday, October 8 at noon on the Knowledge Universe Stage, Sunday, October 9 at 2pm on the Knowledge Universe Stage and Sunday, October 9 at 5pm on the Knowledge Universe Stage.

What are you reading now?

Tender is the Night. Again.

Who was/is your favorite children’s book author?

After all these years, I’d still have to say Dr. Seuss!

Who is your favorite new author?

Edward P. Jones

What is your favorite book of the year?

Of what I’ve read thus far, The Tragedy of Arthur.

Favorite book of all time?

The Prince of Tides.

Which writers have most influenced you?

Adult literature… oh so many. To name a few: Charles Dickens. The Bronte sisters. Thomas Hardy. Victor Hugo. Pat Conroy. Terry Kay. F. Scott Fitzgerald. Mark Twain.

Children’s literature… again, so many. Ted Geisel. Hans Christian Andersen. Joel Chandler Harris. C.S. Lewis. J.K. Rowling. Rudyard Kipling.

What are you working on now?

I am finishing my second Tumford the Terrible book (Tumford’s Rude Noises)

What is your favorite website for writing/literature/etc.?

Grammar Girl!

What is your favorite food?

Osso Buco, with a good hamburger and fries coming in a close second!

Any connection you have with Portland or to the Pacific Northwest. Have you been to Portland before and, if so, what is your favorite thing about it?

My husband and I moved our family to Portland in the early 1990s. We cherish it as home now. What do I love about it? Endless beauty, friendly people, an endearing quirkiness, and the best micro-brews anywhere!

More information about Nancy Tillman and her writing can be found at www.nancytillman.com and you can follow her on twitter.

Guest post by: David Marin

Author of This is US: The New ALL-AMERICAN Family, David Marin appears at the Wordstock Festival on Sunday, October 9 at 3pm on the Wieden+Kennedy Stage and Sunday, October 9 at 5pm on the National Endowments for the Arts Stage.

In 2005 I adopted three witness-protection-program children abandoned by fieldworkers and felons in Santa Barbara County. With smiles and dimples they pulled me into their world, so I brought them into mine. Our story, This is US – The New All-American Family, is about four strangers turned family, my parenting follies, and the illegal immigration buzzsaw we unwittingly strolled into – and survived holding hands.

If I got it right, This Is US will help a few of America’s 500,000 foster children find real homes and prompt people to revisit issues like dads being good parents, how our country grows, and the difference between our current immigration policies and what they could be.

To prepare for my October Wordstock road trip from central California to Portland, I used Mapquest to find a coastal route that will take me along the last piece of the Pacific I haven’t seen. Taking a new road feels right because this will also be my first chance in person to share my book with readers. I can’t wait to find out where the discussion takes us. My biggest fear is that I’ll get distracted from my responsibilities by my first true love – books. But isn’t that the same for all of us?

I look forward to meeting new people in Portland. In the meantime, if you’d like to read a sample chapter, early reviews, and see some of the beautiful places in This is US, please visit www.thisisus-davidmarin.com

More information about David Marin and his book can be found at www.thisisus-davidmarin.com

Guest post by: Jessica O’Dwyer

Author of Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir, Jessica O’Dwyer appears at the Wordstock Festival on Sunday, October 9 at 3pm on the Wieden+Kennedy Stage.

Eight years ago, I was living in Antigua, Guatemala with my then-fifteen-month old daughter, Olivia, whom my husband and I were trying to adopt. We had been enmeshed in the process for more than a year, ever since I first saw a photo of Olivia on an adoption website and had fallen in love.

I wasn’t the only American would-be mother living in Guatemala who was trying to sort out a stalled adoption. We were a group of eight, with nothing in common except our overwhelming desire to become mothers and the belief that our bureaucratic nightmares should not be allowed to happen to anyone else. That year, more than 3,000 Americans adopted children from Guatemala. Each one of those families had a story, no two the same.

Soon after I returned home with Olivia in January 2004, international adoption became headline news, none of it good. The private adoption system in Guatemala was singled out as particularly corrupt. Front-page stories described payments made to birth mothers, coercion of women to become pregnant, and the trawling of countrysides by “finders” to trick young girls into relinquishing their newborns. Adoptive parents like me were depicted as privileged Americans who swooped in to snatch kidnapped infants. Even UNICEF pronounced that it was better for a child to remain in his country of origin than it was to be adopted by foreign parents. The news got so bad it was impossible not to feel under attack.

But that was only a part of the story. The story I experienced was that of adoptive parents who felt great love for their children, pushing back against a system that seemed designed to manipulate emotions at every turn.

When I lived in Antigua, the others mothers used to say, “Somebody needs to write a book about this.” My entire life I’d been searching for the one story I had to tell. Even as I was living the experience, I knew Olivia’s adoption saga was it.

My agent, Jenni Ferrari-Adler, sold the manuscript to Brooke Warner at Seal Press in 2009. Mamalita: An Adoption Memoir was published in November 2010.

Book trailer on YouTube:

More information about Jessica O’Dwyer and her book can be found at http://www.mamalitathebook.com/

Guest post by: Carolyn Conahan

Author of The Big Wish, Carolyn Conahan appears at the Wordstock Festival on Saturday, October 8 at 11am on the Knowledge Universe Stage and is leading the workshop Hit me again, I can take it! (Making the Most of Constructive Criticism) on Saturday, October 8 at 9am. She will also be appearing at the Children’s Literature Reading Showcase at the Central Library on Wednesday, October 5 at 5pm.

People sometimes ask where ideas come from.
I found the idea for my new picture book, (The Big Wish, published by Chronicle Books) in a weedy yard around the corner from my house. This yard (not mine, I swear!) was covered all over with dandelions, their fluffy heads gone to seed, stretching to catch the breeze. I have a soft spot for dandelions. Why? Because: No matter how you smack them, or whack them, or hack them, they will grow back. Go ahead! Poison them, grind them underfoot, cut them in pieces. It won’t stop them. Turn your head for a second and they’ll spring back to stand tall an offer wishes to any dreamer who happens by. Or the wind. I admire that. I might even aspire to that. (This kind of persistence is useful working in a creative field.)

So when I saw that yard full of dandelions, I did not recoil, I smiled. So many, many dandelions—it looked like a farm. A weed farm? No, a wish farm. The idea made me laugh. They must have one big wish. A world record wish…
A World Record Wish!

There are all kinds of ideas in the world. I think that, unless you set your mind so they bounce off, ideas will come at you from all directions, all day long, and poke impatient fingers at you while you sleep. All kinds of ideas, good, bad, and silly. Some flit away, some turn in circles and go nowhere, some ideas catch hold. I wouldn’t say this was a great big important idea, but it was fun to think about and one thing led to another. Doesn’t everyone have a wish or two or three? How would YOU pick a World Record Wish? Would it be a wish for one person, or a wish for the world? Different people would have different ideas. What if the whole town got involved? Would there be antics? Possibly. Conflicts? Probably… (Ha!)

Sometimes I wish I could take up a practical idea for a change; solve a chronic social problem, find a cure for something. A blockbuster action-adventure zombie apocalypse idea, or something full of sexy vampires might be nice. (OK, not nice, but you know what I mean.) Maybe someday. In the meantime, fun is fun.

Carolyn Conahan is the writer/illustrator of The Big Wish (Chronicle Books, Spring 2011 ) among others, and the staff artist for Cricket Magazine.

Guest post by: Isaac Marion

Author of Warm Bodies, Isaac Marion appears at the Wordstock Festival on Saturday, October 8 at 2pm on the McMenamins Stage and Sunday, October 9 at noon on the McMenemins Stage.

What are you reading now? Who is your favorite new author? What is your
favorite book of the year? Favorite book of all time?

Right now I’m reading Stranger Things Happen, a short story collection by Kelly Link. It’s…strange. My favorite new author would have to be Ron Currie Jr, who wrote Everything Matters, which is the best book I’ve read in at least a year or two. Brought me to tears even though I was on a sunny beach surrounded by laughing children. Favorite book of all time? I can’t even attempt to answer that.

What is your favorite food?

I don’t have a particular favorite dish, and I’m not sure I can even pick a favorite nationality. Somewhere between Italian and French. Not sure what that says about me as a writer, but there you have it.

Which writers have most influenced you?

If you mean which ones have influenced my writing style, probably some combination of Kurt Vonnegut, Dave Eggers, and Stephen King.

What are you working on now?

I’m finishing up a book of short stories covering a ridiculously wide spectrum of writing styles, voices, and formats. It’s all very, very different stuff from Warm Bodies, but about a third of its length is a novella that’s a sort of prequel to Warm Bodies, about the early lives and deaths of some of the major characters. I’m going to be self-publishing it on my website www.burningbuilding.com some time in the next couple of months. Beyond that…a whole long queue of story ideas waiting to be novelized.

What is your favorite website for writing/literature/etc.

I don’t really know any. I hate reading things on the internet. Anything over 2 pages, I need glue and paper, or at LEAST digital ink. For me, reading on a computer vs. reading a book is like downloading porn vs. having sex.

Warm Bodies is Isaac’s first novel, which is being adapted by Summit Entertainment into a film with a lot of buzz. More information can be found at http://www.isaacmarion.com/