Regional Literary Events: Feb. 21 to March 18, 2005

General Announcements:

For Students, Please Note: Kate Herzog 2005 Writing Scholarships: Willamette Writers and Barnes & Noble are accepting entries for writing scholarships for high school seniors, college freshmen and sophomores. Details: 503-452-1592 or www.willamettewriters.com. Deadline: Feb. 28.

February

Monday, 21st

Kevin Canty, Monday the 21st, 7:30PM Powell's City of Books on Burnside. The award-winning author of Into the Great Wide Open and Honeymoon and Other Stories returns with a stunning new novel. Winslow in Love breathtakingly captures both the beauty and the complexity of a relationship between a creatively stagnant, overweight, alcoholic poet and a damaged young woman half his age bent on her own brand of self-destruction. The piercing prose of Winslow in Love reaffirms Kevin Canty's status as one of America's finest writers.

Lewton Jones: The Portland poet and readers Graham Conroy and Dianne Austin read selections from Jones’ book 100 Poems/4 Poets, 7:00 p.m., Monday, Broadway Books, 1714 Broadway.

OPEN MIC READINGS: Xenos House of Culture, Host: Phread, Mondays @ 8-9:30pm, poetry open-mics every Monday. Poetry Slams follow open-mics on the 2nd and 4th Mondays each month. 8527 Lombard St., St. Johns, 503-735-9125, 503-283-8860.

Tuesday, 22nd

Emily Raboteau, Tuesday the 22nd, 7:30PM Powell's City of Books on Burnside. A daughter's future and her father's past converge in Emily Raboteau's The Professor's Daughter, an explosive first novel exploring identity, assimilation, and the legacy of race. When Emma Boudreaux's older brother, Bernie, winds up in a coma after a freak accident, it's as if she loses a part of herself. The key to Emma's self-discovery lies in her father's tortured history. In exhilarating, magical prose, The Professor's Daughter traces the borderlands of race and family, the contested territory that gives birth to rage, confusion, madness, and invisibility. This striking debut marks the arrival of an astonishingly original voice that surges with energy and purpose.

OPEN MIC READINGS. Cyberccino Café, The Meander Readings Open Mic Poetry Tuesdays @ 7:30PM, 2130 NE Broadway, Portland, Oregon, 503-281-6584.

Wednesday, 23rd

Write Time Writing Group, Wednesday the 23rd, 7:00PM Powell's Books in Beaverton. Character development, narrative flow, and finding an agent are amongst the topics we discuss. Bring a few copies of your current project to exchange and critique with other members of this group. New members are always welcome to join.

Robert Crais Reading. Wednesday, February 23, 7:30 PM, Twenty-Third Avenue Books. In his major New York Times bestseller The Last Detective, Crais returned to his signature characters, private investigator Elvis Cole and partner Joe Pike. Now, in The Forgotten Man, after scratching the surface of Cole's troubled past, Crais returns with a stunning suspense novel that leads to the dark secrets of Cole's own life.

Fred Newman discusses his book MouthSounds, 6:00 p.m., Wednesday, Barnes & Noble Jantzen Beach, 1720 N. Jantzen Beach.

Classics Book Group, Wednesday the 23rd, 7:00PM Powell's Books in Beaverton. This month we discuss Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh as well as A Long Day’s Journey into Night. New members are always welcome to join.

Authors’ Night, with Tracy Daugherty, Marjorie Sandor, and Scott Nadelson. Clackamas Community College Literary Arts Center, RR 220, 7 p.m., Wednesday evening. Daugherty’s recent novel, Axeman’s Jazz (Southern Methodist University Press), received the Oregon Book Award for the Novel this past year, the same year Sandor’s Portrait of My Mother, Who Posed Nude in Wartime (Sarabande Books) was an Oregon Book Award finalist for short fiction. And this same year, Nadelson’s Saving Stanley (Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts) received the Oregon Book Award for Short Fiction. Come hear the three of them share their work and answer questions. 7 p.m., Literary Arts Center at Clackamas Community College, Wednesday, February 23. $2. contribution to Friends of the Library suggested.

Thursday, 24th

Dennis Britten presents his book Made in Oregon. Local poet Dennis Britten will be reading from his new and selected poetry. In lyrical verse, Britten evokes the natural beauty of Oregon and his experience of it. These pieces were written over a period of more than 40 years and are reflections of the poet's heritage as an Oregonian, Thursday, February 24, 2005, 7:30 PM, Annie Bloom's Books.

Visiting Writers at Reed College--Poet Tim Seibles reads selections from his work, 8:00 p.m., Thursday, Reed College, Vollum Lounge, 3203 S.E. Woodstock Blvd.

Karsten Heuer, Thursday the 24th, 7:30PM Powell's City of Books on Burnside. Accompanied by a remarkable Border collie named Webster, Karsten Heuer set off on a grand adventure: to move through the land as a bear or wolf might, 2,100 miles along the spine of the Rocky Mountains. Walking the Big Wild: From Yellowstone to the Yukon on the Grizzly Bear's Trail is the riveting account of his journey. He faced ferocious storms, avalanches, and raging rivers; lost one girlfriend, found another; and kept hiking despite the suspicions of hunters, ranchers, and miners. And then there were the grizzlies.... Tonight's event includes a slideshow.

OPEN MIC READINGS: Mojo Coffee Den, Thursdays: 8:30 pm, Writer's Right; Host: Emily Riley, Thursdays @ 9:30 PM, 2816 SE Stark St., Portland, OR 97214, 503-236-2084.

Friday, 25th

Clackamas Literary Review Reading. Join us as we celebrate the publication of the new 2005 issue of the CLR. Readers whose work has been published in this issue are Diane Williams Stepp, Verlena Orr, Mir Emanpoor, and Yuvi Zalkow. Noon-1:00, Literary Arts Center (RR 220), Clackamas Community College, 19600 S. Molalla Ave., Oregon City, OR. Free.

The Story of Canada Lee, Friday the 25th, 7:30PM Powell's City of Books on Burnside. In Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee, award-winning playwright and journalist Mona Z. Smith brings us the first-ever biography of the great black actor, activist, athlete — and victim of the blacklist. Once revered, now largely forgotten, Canada Lee was as familiar to audiences as Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman are today. Among the most respected black actors of the '40s and a tireless civil rights advocate, Lee was unjustly dishonored, his name reduced to a footnote in the history of the McCarthy era, his death one of a handful directly attributable to the blacklist. After nearly a decade of research, Mona Z. Smith revives the legacy of a man who was perhaps the blacklist's most tragic victim.

Monday, 28th

Oregon Writers Colony Presents Monday the 28th, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. Writers and their manuscripts need an edge says Elaura Niles, author of Some Writers Deserve to Starve: Thirty-one Brutal Truths about the Publishing Industry. Bringing the advice of publishing pros as well as that from her own experience, Elaura will share insight on who's who in publishing as well as how writers can break into the industry.

OPEN MIC READINGS: Xenos House of Culture, Host: Phread, Mondays @ 8-9:30pm, poetry open-mics every Monday. Poetry Slams follow open-mics on the 2nd and 4th Mondays each month. 8527 Lombard St., St. Johns, 503-735-9125, 503-283-8860.

Legs McNeil Monday the 28th, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. The adult film industry is a $10 billion-per-year business that has infiltrated the American mainstream, with its stars showing up as TV hosts and making guest appearances in Hollywood feature films. The Other Hollywood reveals how the porn industry got started — with a $22,000 Mafia investment in a film called Deep Throat — and how it mushroomed over the next quarter-century despite efforts by politicians, the FBI, and others to bring it down. In this uncensored history of the porn film industry, acclaimed underworld chronicler Legs McNeil, and co-author Jennifer Osborne, pull back the grimy satin sheets on one of the most astounding success stories in the history of American business.

This Life She's Chosen Monday the 28th, 7:30PM, Powell's Books on Hawthorne. Each finely tuned story in This Life She's Chosen, Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum's remarkable debut collection, captures a pivotal moment in the life of a woman trying to reconcile past expectations with present, usually unplanned, developments. In the title story, a woman who decided she really should be French visits her married daughter, who once again becomes tangled in a web of lies and disapprovals. In "Picnic," a new spin on family politics emerges during an outing with mysterious Aunt Vivian. Bringing to mind the work of Elizabeth Bishop and Alice Munro, the stories in This Life She's Chosen form a sophisticated and graceful collection.

March

Tuesday, 1st

Peter Robinson Tuesday the 1st, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. There turns out to be a connection between the mysteriously empty London mansion of Inspector Alan Banks's long-distant brother and a murder on Banks's home turf in Peter Robinson's latest suspense Strange Affair. Robinson's award-winning novels have been named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, a Notable Book by the New York Times, and a Page Turner of the Week by People magazine.

The Mystery of the Nile Tuesday the 1st, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it seemed incredible that no one had ever made a complete descent of the Nile. In April 2004, renowned adventurer Pasquale Scaturro made history by completing his epic journey down the Nile in 114 days, traveling 3,250 miles by kayak, from its source in Ethiopia to the shores of Alexandria, where it flows into the Mediterranean Sea. In The Mystery of the Nile, Scaturro details his historical quest in a fast paced adventure story of a risky, high-profile expedition that many said was impossible.

Robert Hill Long at Portland State University, Tuesday, March 1st, Room 333, Smith Memorial Center, 6:30 PM. Robert Hill Long was raised and educated in North Carolina. He was the founding director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network in 1984. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1988), the North Carolina Arts Council (1986), and the Oregon Arts Commission (1997). Before coming to the University of Oregon in 1991, he taught at Clark University, Smith College, and the University of Hartford. His first book, The Power to Die, was published by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 1987. The Work of the Bow received the 1995 Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize and was published in 1997. A book of flash fictions/prose poems, The Effigies, was issued by Plinth Books in 1998 and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in poetry. His poems, prose poems, and flash fictions have appeared in anthologies—Best American Poetry 1995 (Touchstone), Flash Fiction (W. W. Norton), The Best of the Prose Poem (White Pine), Drive, They Said and Outsiders (Milkweed Editions)—and in numerous journals across America, including CutBank, Denver Quarterly, Diagram, DoubleTake, High Plains Literary Review, Hudson Review, Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Manoa, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, North Carolina Literary Review, Poetry, Poetry East, STAND (UK), Taos Review, Turnrow, Virginia Quarterly Review, Willow Springs, and Zyzzyva. This event is free and open to the public.

OPEN MIC READINGS. Cyberccino Café, The Meander Readings Open Mic Poetry Tuesdays @ 7:30PM, 2130 NE Broadway, Portland, Oregon, 503-281-6584.

Wednesday, 2nd

Write Time Writing Group Wednesday the 2nd, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. Character development, narrative flow, and finding an agent are amongst the topics we discuss. Bring a few copies of your current project to exchange and critique with other members of this group. New members are always welcome to join.

Phillip Margolin presents Lost Lake, Wednesday, March 2, 2005 7:30 PM, Annie Bloom's Books. It's a beautiful summer night in Portland, Oregon. Ami Vergano, a young attorney and single mother, arrives at her son Ryan's Little League game with their tenant and new friend, Dan Morelli. When the assistant coach calls in sick, Morelli seems happy to help out. But then one player roughly blocks another, and a fight erupts. Before the game ends, Ami witnesses violence that shocks and horrifies her and makes her question everything she thought she knew about Morelli. On the other side of the continent, in a cheap motel room in Washington, D.C., ex-mental patient Vanessa Kohler, a reporter for Exposed, a tabloid that specializes in alien-abduction stories, watches a piece on television about the Little League massacre and quickly places a call to the FBI. For years she's been telling anyone who will listen about a vast government conspiracy to conceal a secret military unit headed by Gen. Morris Wingate, a presidential candidate, and for years every-one has dismissed her stories. But when Vanessa sees Dan Morelli fighting, she believes she's found the key to proving that her theories are true. Vanessa hires Ami Vergano to represent Morelli, who is charged with attempted murder, and Ami is drawn into Vanessa's paranoid world. Are Vanessa, a former mental patient, and Morelli, a confessed mass murderer, telling the truth about one of the nation's most respected soldiers and politicians? Or are their charges a product of two sick minds? Ami has to decide who -- and what -- to believe, in Phillip Margolin's most exciting and surprising thriller since his breakout bestseller Gone, But Not Forgotten.

Cherry Muhanji, reading and book signing of Her, Wednesday, March 2 at 7:30pm, In Other Words Bookstore, 3734 SE Hawthorne, 503-232-6003. Come join us as our special guest, Northwest author and Portland State University professor, Cherry Muhanji reads from her book entitled Her and shares some new material. Her is an amazing story about the black men and women of Detroit in the late fifties. The story weaves the lives of the people living in the Harlem of Detroit, and the ways they spent their nights at the Frolic and Flame bars, trying to forget their days at the Ford Motor plant. With raw honesty, Her explores relationships between Black women and how they hold each other up and then let each other down in their constant struggles to teach each other how to survive. This is a free event made possible by the community partnership between Portland State University's Wendy Cutler's Lesbian Literature class and In Other Words Bookstore.

Daniel Silva Wednesday the 2nd, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. Few recent thriller writers have excited the kind of critical praise that Daniel Silva has, with his novels featuring art restorer and sometime spy Gabriel Allon. Now, in Prince of Fire, Allon is back in Venice, when a terrible explosion in Rome leads to a disturbing personal revelation: the existence of a dossier in the hands of terrorists that lays bare his history. A knife-edged thriller, this is Daniel Silva at the top of his form.

Ian O'Conner on Sebastian Telfair Wednesday the 2nd, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. "No journalist in America gets to the heart and soul of sports culture stories like Ian O'Connor," says the Los Angeles Times. Now, in The Jump, O'Connor follows Trail Blazer point guard phenomenon Sebastian Telfair on his quest from high school to NBA stardom — and exposes all that big-time sports in America has become, the good and the bad. Under O'Connor's penetrating scrutiny, Telfair becomes the prism through which the circus of modern basketball is explored.

Thursday, 3rd

First Thursday with Butch Anthony Thursday the 3rd, 6:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. The Basil Hallward Gallery welcomes artist Butch Anthony. A resident of rural Alabama, home to his Museum of Wonder, Butch has invented his own brand of Alabama folk art he calls "Intertwangleism." His paintings and sculptures are comprised of collected junk he finds on the side of the road, in dumpsters, or in piles of scrap. Butch has exhibited worldwide and recently completed a project for Samuel Mockbee's Rural Studio in Ciudad Obregón, Mexico.

Elizabeth Flock presents Me & Emma, Thursday, March 3, 2005 7:30 PM, Annie Bloom's Books. Carrie Parker, the precocious 8-year-old narrator of Elizabeth Flock’s ME & EMMA keeps her greatest treasure, an exotic stamp collection, secreted in her hot attic bedroom. She tries not to sass her mother, she plays make-believe in the woods of her impoverished North Carolina home, and she longs to be popular in school. She is also fiercely protective of her five-year old sister Emma. But her daydreams and her hiding places can’t veil the violent reality of her life, and keeping Emma by her side won’t shield her sister for very long. Me & Emma is a disarmingly tender and startling novel about the determination and resilience of childhood. Carrie has good reason to worry about Emma – Richard, their abusive, alcoholic stepfather, delights in tormenting the girls, and he’s begun to show a special interest in Emma. And their mother can’t defend them any better than she can defend herself, especially after the girls’ plan to run away fails, with devastating consequences. After the family moves for Richard’s job, life seems even more difficult, until the girls find an unlikely friend. He teaches Carrie to be strong and helps ground her to her past, then leads her to a shocking moment of truth, one that will leave everyone—including the reader—reeling. Flock expertly captures the inner workings of Carrie’s mind. With a distinctive style that blends the appeal of such rich classics as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird with the contemporary draw of The Secret Life of Bees, she seamlessly slips the reader into this child’s fractured world and her impressive fight to piece it back together. Carrie Parker’s voice will linger long after the last page of Me & Emma is turned.

OPEN MIC READINGS: Mojo Coffee Den, Thursdays: 8:30 pm, Writer's Right; Host: Emily Riley, Thursdays @ 9:30 PM, 2816 SE Stark St., Portland, OR 97214, 503-236-2084.

The Cruelest Miles Thursday the 3rd, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. In the winter of 1925 in Nome, Alaska, an outbreak of diphtheria threatened the city's icebound residents. Many would die without a badly needed shipment of fresh serum. Planes couldn't reach Nome due to blizzard conditions. The only one way to transport the serum was by dogsled, a 700-mile, five-day trip across frozen rivers, mountains, and treacherous ice. In The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race against an Epidemic, Gay and Laney Salisbury chronicle the saga of the men and dog teams that made the dangerous journey. Tonight's event includes a slideshow.

Friday, 4th

Lisa Steinman, Maxine Scates & Vern Rutsala. Three of Oregon’s finest prize-winning poets are teaming up for a special evening of poetry at the Mountain Writers Center.Lisa Steinman, Maxines Scates, and Vern Rutsala will read Saturday, March 4, at 7:00 P.M. A book-signing reception will follow. Join us for an evening of poetry with this remarkable trio, and see why Portland is one of the writing capitals of America. Friday, March 4, 7:00 p.m. Reading, Mountain Writers Center, 3624 SE Milwaukie Ave., Portland, OR. $8/$5 MWS Members.

Sunday, 6th

Further Adventures in Words and Music: Jazz Stories. Lynn Darroch, with John Stowell on guitar and Rob Davis on saxophones, with special guests. Sunday, March 6, 3:00 p.m. O'Connor's Annex, 7840 S.W. Capitol Hwy., in Multnomah Village, $5.00, food and beverage available for purchase. All ages welcome.

Monday, 7th

The Talking Earth, KBOO, March 7, 10-11 PM: Write Around Portland writers read from WRAP's latest anthology, Everyday Revolutions. WRAP offers free creative writing workshops to low-income people and other marginalized groups, with the aim of transforming lives. Barbara LaMorticella hosts.

Tuesday, 8th

Science Fiction Book Group Tuesday the 8th, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. This month authors Andy Mangels and Michael Martin lead our Science Fiction discussion group in a talk about their book Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Volume II: Trill and Bajor. New members are always welcome to join.

OPEN MIC READINGS. Cyberccino Café, The Meander Readings Open Mic Poetry Tuesdays @ 7:30PM, 2130 NE Broadway, Portland, Oregon, 503-281-6584.

Stiquito Controlled! Tuesday the 8th, 7:00PM, Powell's Technical Books. James Conrad presents a unique opportunity to learn about robotics in Stiquito Controlled!: Making a Truly Autonomous Robot. The book includes accessible instructions for buildling Stiquito, a small multi-legged robot that resembles a "walking-stick" insect. Best of all, the book comes complete with the kit to build Stiquito, as well as a microcontroller board that allows Stiquito to walk on its own.

Nature Noir Tuesday the 8th, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. Nature Noir: A Park Ranger's Patrol in the Sierra is the story — part Edward Abbey, part James Ellroy — of Jordan Fisher Smith's fourteen years as a park ranger on forty-eight miles of Sierra Nevada river canyons, government-owned land condemned to be inundated by a huge dam. Ranger work, in this place where wildness tends toward the human kind, includes encounters with armed miners who scour canyons for gold, drug-addled squatters, and extreme recreators who enjoy combining motorcycles, parachutes, and high bridges. Nature Noir reveals some startling truths about park rangering on America's public lands.

Wednesday, 9th

Geraldine Brooks Wednesday the 9th, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. From the author of the international bestseller Year of Wonders comes March, a powerful novel set against the catastrophe of the Civil War. From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Geraldine Brooks has taken the character of the absent father, March, and adds adult resonance to portray the moral complexity of war and a marriage tested by the demands of extreme idealism. In her telling, March emerges as an idealistic chaplain in the little known backwaters of a war that will test his faith in himself and in the Union cause as he learns that his side, too, is capable of acts of barbarism and racism.

Carlos Reyes presents At the Edge of the Western Wave, Wednesday, March 9, 2005 7:30 PM, Annie Bloom's Books. Portland poet Carlos Reyes will be reading from his latest collection of poetry. At the Edge of the Western Wave captures the spirit of rural Ireland, evoking both its landscape and its people.

Thursday, 10th

Deadly Diversions Book Group Thursday the 10th, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. This month we meet to discuss both The English Assassin by Daniel Silva and A Dedicated Man by Peter Robinson. New members are always welcome to join.

OPEN MIC READINGS: Mojo Coffee Den, Thursdays: 8:30 pm, Writer's Right; Host: Emily Riley, Thursdays @ 9:30 PM, 2816 SE Stark St., Portland, OR 97214, 503-236-2084.

Novelist Percival Everett at Reed College, Thursday, March 10, 8 p.m.,Psychology Building Auditorium, Room 105. The work of Percival Everett demonstrates his prodigious talent, energy and daring. His most recent novel, American Desert, and a book of short fiction, Damned if I Do, came out in 2004, as did an experimental novel co-authored with James Kincaid titled A History of the African American People (proposed) by Strom Thurmond as Told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid. His other books include For Her Dark Skin, Zulus, The Weather and The Women Treat Me Fair, Cutting Lisa, Walk Me to the Distance, Suder, The One That Got Away, Watershed, God's Country, Glyph, Erasure and Big Picture. Everett grew up in South Carolina and attended the University of Miami as well as the University of Oregon, where he did graduate work in philosophy; he also holds an MFA in writing from Brown University. He has taught at Bennington College, the University of Wyoming and the University of California at Riverside and is currently a professor in the English Department at the University of Southern California. He lives on a ranch in California and also on Vancouver Island.

The Far Out Story of Vortex I Thursday the 10th, 7:30PM, Powell's Books on Hawthorne. Summer 1970. Portland, Oregon. President Nixon was about to speak at the American Legion convention. The FBI told Governor Tom McCall he should expect 25,000 Legionnaires and 50,000 anti-war freaks to clash in the Rose City and make Chicago '68 look like a "tea party." A few hippies proposed a rock festival to give peace a chance. They asked McCall, a Republican battling for re-election, for a place to hold it. He gave them a state park and told the cops to lay off. Did they ever. Matt Love's The Far Out Story of Vortex I documents for the first time what a short strange trip it was for the 100,000 who attended Vortex I: A Biodegradable Festival of Life.

Friday, 11th

Joy Harjo Friday the 11th, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. Alive with compassion, Joy Harjo's collection How We Became Human gathers poems from throughout Harjo's twenty-eight-year career, beginning in 1973 in the age marked by the takeover at Wounded Knee and the rejuvenation of indigenous cultures in the world through poetry and music. How We Became Human explores its title question in poems of sustaining grace. Harjo, a member of the Muscogee Nation, is one of our foremost Native American voices.

Anosh Irani Reading, Wednesday, May 11, 7:30 PM, Twenty-Third Avenue Books. Anosh Irani’s The Cripple and His Talismans is a funny, absurd, violent and tender journey through Bombay--and the 21st century.

Sunday, 13th

John Dunning Sunday the 13th, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. From the bestselling author who has charmed America with his passion for collectible first editions comes a riveting new Cliff Janeway crime novel that reveals some of book collecting's shocking secrets. In John Dunning's The Sign of the Book, rare books dealer Janeway agrees to help a friend of a friend, who's accused of murdering her husband. Coincidentally, the victim had an amazing book collection.

Monday, 14th

Confessions of a Chianti Tour Guide Monday the 14th, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. Over the past several years, "the American in Tuscany" has become a literary subgenre. Launched by the phenomenal success of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, bookstores now burgeon with witty accounts of this clash in cultures. Before this subgenre exhausts itself, it's only fair that we hear the other side of the story — that of a native Tuscan and of dozens of Americans who have stormed through his life and homeland. Written with affection and humor, Dario Castagno's Too Much Tuscan Sun: Confessions of a Chianti Tour Guide is a Tuscan tour guide's account of some of his more remarkable customers, from the obsessive and the oblivious to the downright lunatic.

OPEN MIC READINGS: Xenos House of Culture, Host: Phread, Mondays @ 8-9:30pm, poetry open-mics every Monday. Poetry Slams follow open-mics on the 2nd and 4th Mondays each month. 8527 Lombard St., St. Johns, 503-735-9125, 503-283-8860.

Bob Flaherty Monday the 14th, 7:30PM, Powell's Books on Hawthorne. Set in an Irish working-class suburb of Boston in the 1960s and 1970s, Bob Flaherty's debut novel, Puff, centers on the quest of two twenty-something brothers. Posing as rescue personnel, they attempt to steer their dilapidated van through the most ferocious blizzard anyone can remember, all to score a bag of pot. Trapped in their own ruse and forced to act the part of the saviors they are pretending to be, the brothers run into an endless stream of foes and obstacles that stand in the way of their elusive high. A raucous caper with the wonderful lunacy of John Irving's The World According to Garp, Puff is as hilarious as it is heartfelt.

Tuesday, 15th

The Flaming Luau of Death, Tuesday the 15th, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. Author Jerrilyn Farmer's irrepressible creation, Mad Bean, is back in The Flaming Luau of Death. Madeline has planned phenomenal parties for Hollywood heavyweights of every ego size, but now she's cooking up something very special for one of her own — a bachelorette weekend in Hawaii for cherished employee Holly Nichols. This hysterical riff on a luau will have everything. Tiki lamps. Hula lessons. A dead body washing in on the warm island tides. Okay, that wasn't in the original plan, and the uninvited corpse isn't the only shocker throwing a monkey wrench in the proceedings.

OPEN MIC READINGS. Cyberccino Café, The Meander Readings Open Mic Poetry Tuesdays @ 7:30PM, 2130 NE Broadway, Portland, Oregon, 503-281-6584.

Christopher Rice, Tuesday the 15th, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. In Light before Day, Christopher Rice pens a riveting and complex story of an elusive serial killer and a labyrinth of revenge and sexual obsession. Two men join forces to determine whether a serial predator is preying upon young gay men in West Hollywood. But the truth is being guarded by a diabolical force that neither man could have imagined, and they explore paths of vengeance, murder, and sexual perversion that will lead them from the mansion-strung Hollywood Hills to the drug-ravaged plains of California's Central Valley.

Jane Smiley: Portland Arts & Lectures is pleased to present an evening with Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and short story writer. Smiley will speak at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (SW Broadway and Main) at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 15, 2005. General Admission $25; Senior/College students $18; Upper Balcony seating $15; High School students $5. Tickets are available by calling Literary Arts at 503.227.2583, online at www.literary-arts.org, at the Portland Center for Performing Arts Box Office, all Ticket Master locations or at the door. About Jane Smiley: From her first novel, Barn Blind (1980), to her most recent novel, Good Faith (2003), Jane Smiley has created a body of work of prodigious scope. In 1991, she won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for A Thousand Acres, a riveting family drama set in the American heartland during the 1980s, inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear. In Moo (1995), she presents a wry and intricately woven satire on modern academia. A master of historical fiction, Smiley canvassed fourteenth-century life in The Greenlanders (1988) and lent a feminist eye to 1850s Kansas in The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (1998). She captured the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of Thoroughbred racing in Horse Heaven (2000), which novelist and critic Jane Houston described as "a narrative act of balancing so ambitious and so precisely executed that it becomes necessary to see Smiley as half acrobat, half writer: the novel is as athletic as the animals it describes." Her new book, a work of personal nonfiction, is A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck (2004).

Wednesday, 16th

Write Time Writing Group Wednesday the 16th, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. Character development, narrative flow, and finding an agent are amongst the topics we discuss. Bring a few copies of your current project to exchange and critique with other members of this group. New members are always welcome to join.

Tim Guest presents My Life in Orange: Growing up with the Guru, Wednesday, March 16, 2005 7:30 PM, Annie Bloom's Books. At the age of six, Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune modeled on the teachings of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The Bhagwan preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, chaotic therapy, and sexual freedom, and enjoyed inhaling laughing gas, preaching from a dentist's chair, and collecting Rolls Royces. Tim and his mother were given Sanskrit names, dressed entirely in orange, and encouraged to surrender themselves into their new family. While his mother worked tirelessly for the cause, Tim-or Yogesh, as he was now called-lived a life of well-meaning but woefully misguided neglect in various communes in England, Oregon, India, and Germany. In 1985 the movement collapsed amid allegations of mass poisonings, attempted murder, and tax evasion, and Yogesh was once again Tim. In this extraordinary memoir, Tim Guest chronicles the heartbreaking experience of being left alone on earth while his mother hunted heaven.

Tim Dorsey, Wednesday the 16th, 7:00PM, Powell's Books in Beaverton. Serge A. Storm returns for another hilarious tour of the wacky underside of the Sunshine State in Tim Dorsey's Torpedo Juice. And this time the lovable but maniacal hero is on a mission: Stay off police radar and reinvent himself. Naturally Serge makes a beeline to the Reinvention Capital of the United States, the Florida Keys, where nobody is who they seem to be and the freaks are the least of his worries. Unfortunately for Serge, some other less likable lunatics have latched on to the same idea.

Swimming to Antarctica, Wednesday the 16th, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. Lynne Cox, the famous long-distance swimmer, known for her ability to withstand cold temperatures that might kill others, tells the fascinating story of how she braved the frigid waters of Antarctica. Now in paperback, with photos and maps added especially for this new edition, Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer is the acclaimed life story of a woman whose drive and determination inspire everyone she touches.

Thursday, 17th

TED KOOSER : March 17, 2005, Literary Arts, Inc. Recently appointed the U.S. poet laureate by the Library of Congress, Nebraskan poet Ted Kooser is the first poet from the Great Plains to hold the position. He is the author of ten collections of poetry, including most recently Delights & Shadows (2004) and Winter Morning Walks: One Hundred Postcards to Jim Harrison (2000). Wieden & Kennedy Atrium, 224 N.W. 13th Avenue, Portland. Series Tickets: $65 General, $48 Seniors and College, Individual Tickets: $18 General, $12 Seniors/College. $5 high school, to order, call 503.227.2583. Tickets are available online.

OPEN MIC READINGS: Mojo Coffee Den, Thursdays: 8:30 pm, Writer's Right; Host: Emily Riley, Thursdays @ 9:30 PM, 2816 SE Stark St., Portland, OR 97214, 503-236-2084.

Lily Tuck, Thursday the 17th, 7:30PM, Powell's Books on Hawthorne. A historical epic that tells an usual love story, Lily Tuck's National Book Award-winning novel, The News from Paraguay, offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of 19th-century Paraguay, a largely untouched wilderness where Europeans and North Americans intermingle with both the old Spanish aristocracy and native Guarani Indians. With the urgency of the narrative, rich and intimate detail, and a wealth of skillfully layered characters, Tuck's writing recalls the epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Anne Lamott, Thursday the 17th, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. With the trademark wisdom, humor, and honesty that made Anne Lamott's book on faith, Traveling Mercies, a runaway bestseller, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith is a spiritual antidote to anxiety and despair in increasingly fraught times. The world is a more dangerous place than it was when Lamott's Traveling Mercies was published five years ago. Fortunately for those of us who are anxious about the state of the world, whose parents are aging and dying, whose children are growing harder to recognize as they become teenagers, Plan B offers hope in the midst of despair. It shares with us Lamott's ability to comfort and to make us laugh despite the grim realities.

Friday, 18th

Robert Thurman, Friday the 18th, 7:30PM, Powell's City of Books on Burnside. Few teachers in the West possess both the spiritual training and the scholarship to lead us along the path to enlightenment. Robert Thurman is one such teacher. Now, Thurman — the first Westerner ordained by the Dalai Lama himself — shares the centuries-old wisdom of a highly valued method used by the great Tibetan masters. The Jewel Tree of Tibet immerses readers in the mysteries of Tibetan spiritual wisdom, offering a practical system of understanding yourself and the world, of developing your learning and thought processes, and of gaining deep, transforming insight.