Thursday, August 4th, 7 pm: The Timberline Review

We are thrilled to host a group of contributors to the third edition of The Timberline Review. Joining us to read are authors Brittney Corrigan, Mark Cunningham, Andrea Hollander, Annie Lighthart, David Melville, Paulann Petersen, and Christy Stevens.  

The Timberline Review is a literary journal produced by Willamette Writers. The review is intended to be a collage of voices speaking through the written word, in short fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and poetry, with the power to inspire a conversation with the times we live in. Editors Peter R. Field and Pam Wells head up a dedicated editorial staff of volunteers to produce this beautiful publication.

We welcome writer Floyd McKay, reading from his new book Reporting the Oregon Story, published by Oregon State University Press.

As a political reporter, McKay had a front row seat to the transformative two decades for Oregon that began when Tom McCall was elected secretary of state and Bob Straub as state treasurer.  McKay covered the policies and politics of 1964-1986, when our state became a national leader in environmental and land-use policies, protecting our beaches, rivers, and the Columbia River Gorge. Touted by everyone from Barbara Roberts to Jeff Mapes, Reporting the Oregon Story outlines the action, the players, and the consequences, in a compelling and personal account.

Floyd McKay was a prominent political reporter for the Oregon Statesman in Salem and news analyst for KGW-TV in Portland.  Known for asking tough questions and pulling no punches, McKay won the DuPont-Columbia Broadcast Award, the "Pulitzer Prize of Broadcasting."

Diana Block joins us to read from and discuss her new political novel Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History.  The book presents the story of activist Luba Gold, as told by five different women who cross paths with Luba over four decades. Clandestine Occupations explores the difficult decisions that activists confront about the boundaries of legality and speculates about the scope of subversive action in the future.

Block was a founding member of San Francisco Women Against Rape and the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee.  She spent thirteen years living underground with a political collective committed to supporting the Puerto Rican independence and Black liberation movements.  Since 1994, Diana has committed herself to anti-prison work.  Her previous writings include her memoir Arm the Spirit and she is a member of the editorial collective of The Fire Inside newsletter.  She lives in San Francisco with her life partner, former political prisoner Claude Marks.

Portland author and historian Alan Wieder will read from his new book Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, but Mostly Conversation.

Studs Terkel was an American icon and a leftist who valued human beings over political dogma.  In scores of books and thousands of radio and television broadcasts, Studs paid due attention to "ordinary" human beings of all classes and colors, talking to them about their lives as workers, dreamers, and survivors. Drawing from more than one hundred interviews of people who knew and worked with Studs,  Wieder's biography is the first comprehensive book about this man.

Alan Wieder is an oral historian who lives in Portland. He is distinguished professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina and has taught at the University of the Western Cape and Stellenbosch University in South Africa. In the past fifteen years, he has published three books and numerous articles on South Africans who fought against the apartheid regime. His previous book, Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid, was published in 2013 by Monthly Review Press.