Blog

We at the OSU Press had a great time at the Portland Book Festival this year! Formerly known as Wordstock, the Portland Book Festival is a major regional literary event organized by Literary Arts that has brought together writers, publishers, and book lovers from the Pacific Northwest and beyond since 2005. This year the festival took place on November 10 in downtown Portland and featured over 100 authors who shared their work at readings, panels, and lectures. Read on to hear about our team at the 2018 Portland Book Festival.

"The worst storm I have ever seen is approaching Portland and the Willamette Valley right now," meteorologist John C. "Jack" Capell warned listeners via radio on the evening of the 1962 Columbus Day Storm.

So opens A Deadly Wind, in which author John Dodge uses research and interviews with survivors of the storm to paint a picture of the event, sharing how the storm shaped the lives of Oregonians.

Today we’re inviting you to join Peter Nathaniel Malae as he travels to bookstores and literary centers reading passages from his new novel, Son of Amity.Peter has been a featured reader at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne and Third Street Books in Salem among other bookstores.

In this new novel by Peter, a family is caught in the crossroads of violence and loss in the small town of Amity, Oregon. Sissy, Michael, and Pika share a run-down house in Amity and must contend with their individual demons in a region plagued by poverty and addiction. Peter deals with dark subjects in Son of Amitywith a steady gaze that also admits the moments of light and redemption.

 In 2016, armed militants took over the Malheur National Wildlife refuge in Harney County, Oregon. For forty-one days, they seized the headquarters of the refuge and for three months, they occupied the community led by Ammon Bundy and Ryan Bundy. This month, Oregon State Press published Peter Walker’s Sagebrush Collaboration, the first book-length study of this militant take over. In Sagebrush Collaboration, Peter Walker contextualizes and researches the take over as well as considers the future of America’s public lands. Today on the blog, Walker provides an update about the Bundy's anti-federal revival tour, political ambitions and Harney County efforts to rebuild community.

Hello! Carolyn and Zoë here, writing to you from the OSU Press office!

As yearlong Griffis Publishing Interns, we contribute blogs weekly but before we take that blog wheel and drive, we’d like share a bit about ourselves and share what OSU Press books that interest us.

Zoë I’m in my second and final year at OSU’s MFA program and currently writing my thesis, which is a collection of short stories. In terms of reading, I enjoy strange and surreal stories, and hybrid forms. I also enjoy reading cultural criticism, literary criticism, and academic texts that focus on race, feminisms, disability and illness, gender and sexuality, and trauma. I’ve lived in Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and Oakland, and am new to the Pacific Northwest. During my internship, I’m interested in learning how a small academic press functions, specifically in terms of marketing and editing. On my to-be-read pile are two OSU Press titles: R. Gregory Nokes’s Massacred for Gold and John Dodge’s A Deadly Wind. I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss. 

Indigenous People’s Day is a day to honor native communities: a day to honor indigenous history, survival, and culture, and to acknowledge the history of the United States as one formed through colonization and genocide.

In honor of Indigenous People’s Day, OSU Press Griffis publishing interns Zoë Ruiz and Carolyn Supinka share two recent press books on indigenous culture.

Zoë’s Pick: Native Space by Natchee Blu Barnd

Today we are joined by guest blogger Matthew Svoboda, Director of Choral Activities at Lane Community College. As part of a project called "The Room Upstairs," Matthew has been scoring original music inspired by the poetry of Hazel Hall. Together with photographer Laura Glazer, he recently visited the Northwest Portland home of Hazel Hall, where she spent much of her life confined to a wheelchair. Tag along, and peek inside...

Today's guest blogger, author R. Gregory Nokes, muses on the legacy of Peter Burnett, an influential early Oregon pioneer and the first elected governor of California.

____________________________

I’ve been wondering how Peter Burnett, dead these 123 years, would have reacted to my new book, The Troubled Life of Peter Burnett: Oregon Pioneer and First Governor of California. Would he hail it as a validation of a life of struggle, or denounce it as grossly unfair?

As Pride Month comes to a close, author Michael Helquist reports on some hometown pride that was a long time coming.

__________________