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Despite what the fast-moving zeitgeist of our contemporary culture might insist, book culture isn’t some vapid realm for shut-ins and introverts. Many Portlanders understand better than denizens of other cities that books are about as important as oxygen. It’s with that certainty in mind that the second annual Portland Book Week is set to place the city’s diverse and teeming armada of independent bookshops center stage.
Portland Book Week launched in 2024 through a partnership with Powell’s Books and the Cascade Booksellers Association—a nonprofit trade organization that represents more than 80 members. The CBA has been an umbrella resource for the Portland area’s independent bookshop owners for around 20 years, primarily offering support, resources and education for the collective’s day-to-day business needs. The goal of Portland Book Week is to shine a spotlight on Portland’s expanding network of unique bookshops, and to separate it from the national Independent Bookstore Day—just celebrated April 26—by lengthening the time frame to shower more love on the city’s robust book community.
More than 60 independent bookshops in the metro area participate in Portland Book Week, which runs June 6–15, culminating in the 19th annual Rose City Book and Paper Fair, also organized by CBA. The fair, held at the DoubleTree Hotel in Northeast Portland on June 14–15, will feature a wide swath of booksellers tabling their wares: anything from new and used books to printed ephemera from bygone eras, graphic art and more.
“The beautiful thing about the fair is that there’s something for every price budget,” says Julie Wallace, owner of Wallace Books in Westmoreland and a longtime CBA member. “I’ve gone to book fairs before where you can’t buy anything because you can’t afford it. This is not that.”
Wallace Books sells both new and rare antiquarian used books—a requirement for being part of CBA. But Portland Book Week has an open-door policy for all booksellers, so exceptional shops like Annie Bloom’s Books in Multnomah Village, Broadway Books, and Two Rivers Bookstore in St. Johns—sellers of strictly new books—are also part of the action. The proliferation of niche bookstores like the sci-fi/fantasy-centric Parallel Worlds Bookshop, or even mobile shops like Street Books, has all but willed an event like Portland Book Week into existence, creating an opportunity for exposure under the PBW banner and beyond.
“Portland is very unusual in that there’s not a division between ‘they’re just a new bookstore’ or ‘they’re a used bookstore,’” Wallace says. “We have a lot of bookstores that do both. When we’re planning something like this, it’s a big tent. We want everybody to participate.”
One interactive vehicle that participating bookshops conjured is a bingo card that can be picked up at any of the participating bookstores, or printed at home from the event’s website. A glance at the Bookstore Bingo card reveals the breadth that defines Portland’s bookshop landscape. Squares for “A BIPOC-owned bookstore,” “An LGBTQIA-owned bookstore,” or “A bookstore with a cat” are just some examples of the kind of informative details you can learn while celebrating books over the course of a weeklong exploration.
As Wallace explains, many of the participating bookshops might fit multiple categories on the bingo card, and the dialogue with business owners is all part of making an effort to familiarize yourself with the bookshops, in their various incarnations and foci, around you. At over 60 shops slated for representation, most of which are featuring fundraisers and events during Portland Book Week, you’re bound to find a new favorite.
“I own a bookstore, and before I started doing this, I thought I’d been in most of them,” Wallace says. “If you’ve lived in Portland for a long time, you think, I’ve been in business for so many years, or this store has been around for so many years, how can people not know about it? You have to remember that despite what the national media wants to say, people are moving to Portland still! People come and go constantly—sometimes they just change neighborhoods and they’re finding out what’s going on in their new neighborhood. So Portland Book Week is just a great way for people to celebrate and explore and find new bookstores.”