By the time this lands Friday afternoon, I should be barefoot in a ballroom at Portland Book Festival, unpacking several hundred books and arguing with myself about where they should go. I will have counted them before loading the car. I will count them again at the table. The numbers may disagree. At this point, who gives a fuck.
Our authors are coming. There are books to sign, readers to meet, and four readings to get through before Sunday night. And maybe a lil birding. There will also be roll-on fragrance at the table because I looked at the festival preparation list and decided it needed a small manufacturing operation.
I fucking love this part. For all the work it takes to get there, I want to be behind that table when someone opens a book, reads a page, and calls their friend over to look.
That’s what we’re bringing to Portland Book Festival: fourteen years of books we believe in, writers we want you to hear, and strong opinions about what you should take home.
And when the festival floor closes, we’re taking those writers into coffee shops and breweries. We’ve got the weekend. Let’s use it.
Come meet the writers
We’ll be at the Friday Night Book Market on November 6 and the exhibitor fair on Saturday, November 7, with books from across the Unsolicited catalog.
At Unsolicited Press, we spend our working lives making the case for writers whose work deserves more readers. We publish women writing about bodies and power, queer writers writing about desire, poets confronting grief, and fiction that gets into the ugliness of being human. We want books with something at stake and we want to feel the writer thinking on the page, taking a chance, going somewhere they might have been told to avoid.
A festival gives us the chance to put that work in front of someone who might never encounter it otherwise. You can ask the author about the book while holding it in your hands. You can tell us what you love to read and let us find you something.
Here’s who will be signing at our table.
You can find the full weekend details on our Portland Book Festival page.
We’re taking this into the breweries
I wanted time with people beyond the transaction at the table. Time to hear a whole reading, ask a question, meet another publisher, and talk about the work we’re all trying to put into the world. That’s what Unsolicited After Hours is for.
The Body Has Teeth: A Reading & Conversation with Amy Baskin, Anthony DiPietro, David Loring Nash, and Summer Stewart
Saturday, November 7 · 6:30 p.m. · BOLD Coffee & Books, 1755 SW Jefferson Street, Portland
Four writers enter the dark from different doors. Anthony DiPietro’s poems move through gay love, sex, and the strange repetitions of desire. Amy Baskin gives Lilith—the first woman, cast as demon—her fierce voice. Summer Stewart’s poems and essays expose the scripts written onto women’s bodies and lives. In David Loring Nash’s Northwoods, witchcraft, revenge, and human folly wait just beyond the treeline. Join them for a reading and conversation. It’s bound to get sharp.
The Night Shift at Leikam Brewing featuring LeeAnn Pickrell, Nicola Ranson, Jill McCabe Johnson, and Aileen Keown Vaux
Saturday, November 7 · 7PM · EAST BURNSIDE
The festival floor closes; the reading goes on. Continue the crawl at Leikam Brewing with short readings from Unsolicited Press authors, a good pour, and the kind of talk that keeps going after the last page. Drop in for this stop, or make it the first round of a full weekend of books and breweries.
The Big Pour: An Independent Press Gathering at Breakside featuring a multitude of authors and presses
Sunday, November 8 · 2:00 p.m. start · Breakside, Milwaukie
The biggest brewery gathering of the weekend: Unsolicited Press authors and publisher still in town, independent presses from around Portland, and readers, writers, editors, booksellers, and anyone else who loves books. Join us for readings, local beer, and a Sunday afternoon with the people making the literary scene.
Some authors coming are: Amy Baskin, Mari Matthias, Nicola Ranson, Andy Smart, Morgan Waites, LeAnn Pickrell, Marianne Villanueva, Douglas Cole, Anthony DiPietro, Summer Stewart, David Loring Nash, and Aileen Keown Vaux.
Last Call for Books at Migration Brewing featuring Andy Smart, Jennie Bricker, David Loring Nash, Anthony DiPietro, Morgan Waites, and Elisa Carlsen
Sunday, November 8 · 7:00–8:30 p.m. · Migration Brewing · SE GLISAN
One last round before the weekend slips away. Close the crawl at Migration Brewing with readings from Unsolicited Press authors, a pint, and one more chance to get into the books and the conversation. Come for the final stop—or make this your only stop.
Buy the book. Give a damn.
There is a lot of money behind what gets your attention. An independent press has to find another way in. For us, a lot of that work happens through readers: someone buys a book, talks about it, lends it, requests it at the library, or brings a friend to a reading. You have a say in which writers find an audience. That matters to us, and it matters to the authors who will be standing at our table this weekend. The Portland Book Festival gives us a place to meet. What we do with that opportunity is up to all of us.
So come find us. Read a few pages. Ask us what we love about a book. Tell us what you’re looking for. Visit the other presses, too. Spend some time with the books that haven’t already followed you around the internet. Then meet us at a reading and hear what these writers came to say.
Portland, see you soon.
