Skip to main content
Well, there's no Tom Hanks, but it's looking like another strong year for the book festival formerly known as Wordstock.
Literary Arts has announced the lineup for the 2019 edition of the Portland Book Festival. After a more-celeb-heavy-than-usual lineup in 2018—headliners included Hanks, who was pushing a short-story collection, and Broad City's Abbi Jacobson—the festival is getting back to its roots somewhat, where the stars are actually known for their words and you probably wouldn't recognize half of them if they bumped into you on the MAX.
Related: Our Favorite Moments from the Portland Book Festival.
But that's not to say there aren't some big names.
Among the 100-plus authors and poets, Malcolm Gladwell might be the most widely known, though your tolerance may vary. Other notables include Oregon Coast native Karl Marlantes, whose new book, Deep River, is a sprawling epic about Finnish immigrants in the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century; Daniel Jose Older, who shifted from sci-fi to family dramas with this year's The Book of Lost Saints; Portland's own Karen Russell, who followed up her Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel Swamplandia with Orange World, a collection of bizarre short stories; and Susan Rice, United Nations ambassador and Barack Obama's National Security Advisor, who's written a memoir, called Tough Love. There's also Chuck Klosterman, but Portlanders can see him at the gym these days.
Related: Chuck Klosterman's New Short-Story Collection Is the Sound of One Man Arguing with Himself.
The Portland Book Festival takes place Saturday, Nov. 9, at multiple venues in downtown Portland. Go here for the full lineup and complete info on everything that's going on, and here for passes.
