Wordstock is Huge. Here Are Two Curated Schedules to Our Favorite Authors, Panels and Pop-Ups This Saturday

You can do Wordstock local—or you can chase the big names

(courtesy of Literary Arts)

The massive 100-some-author Wordstock festival offers a unique opportunity. Among its readings sprawled out across nearly every big-ass cultural institution across downtown this Saturday, November 11, the fest is nearly evenly split between our own excellent crop of local authors and big-name touring luminaries like Claire Messud, Tom Perrotta and Ta Nehisi-Coates.

This gives you the chance to visit two very different festivals at the same festival. (Technically, there's a third version of festival devoted to watching children's and YA authors, but you're on your own there, breeders.)

Anyway, here are our two dream schedules—one local, one starfucky.

LOCAL WRITERS
9:45-10:45 am: Rene Denfeld at the "Families in Crisis" panel
Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway
Rene Denfeld is uniquely qualified to talk about delicate and deeply personal crises. The Oregon author has worked as an investigator who helps to exonerate prisoners on death row. Her new novel draws from the darkest corners of her work as an investigator. The Child Finder is a sublimely empathetic book about an 8-year-old girl who goes missing in the snowy Oregon wilderness.

11 am: Grab a quick burger at the Higgins bar one block away, to fill your gut. Hell, also maybe get a beer from their terrific local collection.

11:30 am-12:30 pm: Literary Dinner Party
Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway
Pretty much everyone you want in a room to talk about Northwest food and booze is here— Russian spot Kachka's chef and owner Bonnie Frumkin Morales, the authors of the legendary Myrtlewood Cookbook devoted to Northwest ingredients, and the Toro Bravo and Tasty n Sons cookbook writer Liz Crain.

12:45-1:45 pm: American Absurdity: Jon Raymond, Deb Olin Unferth, Dennie Wendt
Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Ave.
Who could possibly better understand the absurdity that accretes to well-meaning people than writers in Portland? Writer Jon Raymond is not only Portland's finest Todd-Haynes-movie screenwriter and one of our best art critics, he's also one of its finest fiction writers. His new book Freebird is about activism and war gone horribly wrong. Meanwhile, former Nike exec Dennie Wendt's book is about a Portland soccer team at the heart of a communist plot. Rounding out the panel is Texas writer Deb Olin Unferth, who once tried to join a Central American revolution.

2-3 pm: Pop-Ups in the Museum!
Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave
At 2:30 pm, catch local memoirist Kate Carroll de Gutes reading from her new book devoted to authenticity, in the intimate environs of Gallery 113 in the first-floor Modern & Contemporary collection. If you get to that gallery room early enough—at 2:15—you can see Kachka's Bonnie Frumkin Morales talk about something maybe entirely different. Why not?

3-4 pm: State of Wonder: Katie Kitamura, Chuck Klosterman, Hannah Tinti
Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave.
Hey, did you know Chuck Klosterman lives here now? He totally does. The great ginger one and internal hall-of-mirrors-and-nerdlore has brought himself to the natural home of such things. Anyway, he'll be hanging out with two serious literary powerhouses: One Story lit-mag founder Hannah Tinti and Katie Kitamura, whose new novel A Separation should be on every awards shortlist you can think of.

4-5 pm: Grab a perfect cocktail at nearby bar Shift Drinks, then wander the small-press tables at the museum book fair to find a book to take home.

5-6 pm: Dystopian Fiction: Omar El Akkad, Benjamin Percy, Lidia
Yuknavitch
First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Ave.
Portland transplant Omar El Akkad's American War is the story of the U.S. after it implodes—which pretty much makes it current events. Oregon-Book-Award winner and longtime Portlander Lidia Yuknavitch's Book of Joan features a propagandizing clown presiding over a ruined world. Which pretty much makes it current events.
THE TOURING BIG NAMES

10-11 am: Tom Perrotta
First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Ave.
When Tom Perrotta sneezes, they make a movie. When he wipes his sleeve, it's an HBO miniseries. The Election, Little Children and Leftovers author will be hangin' out in support of new book Mrs. Fletcher, about the sex lives of mothers. It's probably already a Netflix series somehow.

11 am: Grab a quick sandwich to go at the Bunk Sandwiches cart: When you're watching touring authors, eat what every tourist will eat! Then go stand in line at the Schnitz for a half-hour to secure your spot.

Noon-1 pm: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway
Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most insightful, moving, empathetic and intelligent voices on race and politics in America. His new book, We Were Eight Years in Power, tackles one of the most profound mysteries and tragedies in this country—that we could go from our first black president to one who provides safe haven to white nationalists. Pretty much everybody at Wordstock will be standing in line to see him at the Schnitz. Good thing you brought a sandwich.

1:30-2:30 pm: Desperate Characters: Jeffrey Eugenides and Danzy Senna
First Congregational Church, 1126 SW Park Ave.
Weirdly puckish literary phenomenon Jeffrey Eugenides—he of Middlesex and Virgin Suicides—will talk with novelist Danzy Senna, who more than perhaps any writer other than Zadie Smith has probed the lacunae, wounds and deep discomfort of being biracial in a world that keeps choosing sides. Her newest deals with the Jim Jones mass poisonings—because, as she's said in interviews, she's always looking to write books that will trigger herself.

3-4 pm: New Black Poetry: Dawn Lundy Martin, Morgan Parker, Danez Smith
Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway
In her new collection of poems There Are Things More Beautiful Than Beyoncé, Morgan Parker writes about the nuances of identity with astonishing lucidity. Parker manages to be both vulnerable and unflinching, whether she's writing about microwaving multiple Lean Cuisines instead of going to parties or titling poems "All They Want Is My Money My Pussy My Blood."

4:30-5:30 pm: New Fiction: Julie Buntin, Rachel Khong, Edan Lepucki
Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave.
Here are three debut novelists from all over the country sharing a stage—it's been a whole day of big and famous people, exciting people, people about whom you maybe already had expectations. Maybe it's time you made a discovery of your own on this stage.

Wordstock is centered at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 503-227-2583. Saturday, Nov. 11. 9 am-6 pm. $15-$18. Tickets and details here.

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