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It’s Portland Book Festival, but the headliners have that Hollywood sparkle.
Academy Award-winning actor Ke Huy Quan (The Goonies, Everything Everywhere All at Once) will be in town for Portland Book Festival promoting his new memoir, Never Say Die. Local creative duo Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis will also be there in support of their middle-grade book Wildwood, which is coming out in theaters as a Laika movie this fall.
Portland Book Festival, presented by Literary Arts, will expand from its typical one-day format into a weeklong event this year, running Nov. 2-8, with the main events on Saturday, Nov. 7, downtown. Tickets are on sale now, and sold out last year in advance of the event.
“Cities thrive when people come together to share stories, ideas and experiences. That’s what Portland Book Festival is all about,” Amanda Bullock, senior artistic director of Literary Arts, said in a press release. “This year, we’re celebrating an incredible lineup of authors who share not just their books, but their humanity, struggles, joys and the lives that shaped their work.”
Other notable authors on the schedule include Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Andrew Sean Greer (Villa Coco); Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Anand Gopal (Days of Love and Rage); local author and musician Willy Vlautin (The Left and the Lucky); Portland native and Newbery Medal winner Renée Watson (Everything New Again); and Elliott Smith biographer and journalist Jamie Fisher (Nobody Broke Your Heart). There will be a total of more than 100 authors across 10 stages at the festival.
Portland Book Festival is also expanding this fall to include culinary, music and art events. Highlights will be parties at restaurants L’Echelle, Han Oak and OK Chicken and performances by the bands Soccer Mommy, Black Belt Eagle Scout and the rapper Dessa, among others. The full lineup is available on Literary Arts’ website.
At last year’s festival, a group now called Literary Portland for Palestine protested the title sponsor Wells Fargo, asking Literary Arts to drop the bank due to its financial ties to companies that supply Israel, such as weapons manufacturers (“Take That to the Bank,” WW, Sept. 16). Portland Book Festival’s title sponsor this year is the Eberwein family.
GO: Portland Book Festival, multiple locations, literary-arts.org/about/programs/portland-book-festival/. Monday- Sunday, Nov. 2-8. $20+; youth 17 and under free.
