Books

Author Alison Mariella Désir's shares her story of personal transformation and closer look at the history of sport of running.

Reflecting a national trend, communities in the Northwest are seeing a wave of proposed bans or limits on books in schools or local libraries. Two students in the region share their perspectives on the importance of literary access, libraries as community spaces for everyone, and more.

While on a book tour stop in Portland, the memoir author spoke about his complex upbringing.

Two new collections of short stories tell stories about people living on the edge of a society that is failing them. George Saunders’ “Liberation Day” is filled with wry humor, even as his characters are often trapped by their own foolishness. The characters in Jess Walter’s collection, “The Angel of Rome,” are often filled with humor and hope, even as they struggle against poverty and indifference. OPB’s Geoff Norcross talks to Saunders and Walter about the art of writing short stories about our time.

The Crook County Library Board of Trustees voted Thursday night not to label LGBTQ-friendly children’s books or segregate them into a separate section.

Kate Beaton’s newest book is a deeply personal graphic memoir called “Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands" about the time she spent working in the oil industry in Alberta, Canada in the mid-2000s. The book is a brutally honest exploration of class, migration, misogyny, and the culture of her homeland: the island of Cape Breton, in the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia.

Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, a performer, a filmmaker, a Torah scholar and a teacher. She’s also a mother. Her new book, “Even God had Bad Parenting Days,” connects the ancient stories with contemporary life.

Colin Meloy is perhaps best known as the songwriter and lead singer of The Decemberists, but he also writes books aimed at young readers. We talk with him about his latest book, set in a fictional town on the Oregon coast.

For Bobbie Scopa, firefighting was a 45-year career filled with danger and stress. But a major stressor for Scopa for part of that career was living life as a man …while privately identifying as a woman. That struggle is told in her new book, “Both Sides of the Fire Line: Memoir of a Transgender Firefighter.”

Set during the European colonization of East Africa, "Afterlives" is the 10th novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.