Grass Roots Books & Music

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Virtual Panel with Tiffany Cates, Beth Alvarado, Irene Cooper, & Brigitte Lewis

Friday March 05 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM

JOIN US ON ZOOM
REGISTER HERE: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_EO4KixvxTky8a9xpW9V9xw

In M-Theory, Donovan James dissects the lives of his fellow commuters until the morning his attentions are caught by the lady in the blue coat and her smile. The moment is fleeting, but it upends everything he believes to be true about himself and those around him. Revolving around two deaths, M-theory is a noir fiction novel that provides all the thrills of a police procedural, while scrutinizing those procedures. An engrossing study in humanity among America’s societal, spiritual, and moral tensions, Cates writes a story that is as inventive and intelligent as it is entertaining.

TIFFANY CATES spent five years navigating Chicago’s transit and weather systems before moving to Oregon and earning her MFA in Creative Writing from Oregon State University. Influenced by her degrees in philosophy and psychology, Cates writes around themes of personhood, matters of freewill, and the distance between self and other.

Jillian in the Borderlands: A Cycle of Rather Dark Tales is BETH ALVARADO's fourth book. She has written extensively about her experiences as a Euro-American woman marrying into a Mexican-American family and spent most of her life in Arizona. Her essay collection, Anxious Attachments, won a 2020 Oregon Book Award.

IRENE COOPER is the author of Committal, poet-friendly spy-fy about family from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, & spare change, from Finishing Line Press. Writings appear in The Feminist Wire, Phoebe, Utterance, The Denver Quarterly, The Manifest-Station, The Rumpus, & elsewhere. Irene co-edits The Stay Project & teaches in community in Oregon.

BRIGITTE LEWIS is a writer born in Gold Country & destined for speculation. Her chapbook Origin Stories reimagines biblical tales from a modern perspective. Her writing has appeared in The Southampton Review, DIAGRAM, Foglifter, The Bellingham Review and elsewhere. You can find nuggets of her prospecting at brigitteelewis.com.

This event is free and open to the public. Please register to get the password for the event and purchase their books here!

Stephanie Plymale in Conversation with Tina Ontiveros

Thursday March 11 | 7:00PM - 8:00PM

JOIN US ON ZOOM
REGISTER HERE:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwvdOqqqjIiGdd962Fl796ptex-6KquJM9E

For 50 years, Stephanie Plymale kept her past a fiercely guarded secret. No one outside her immediate family would have guessed that her childhood was fraught with every imaginable hardship: a mentally ill mother who was in and out of jails and psych wards throughout Stephanie's formative years, neglect, hunger, poverty, homelessness, truancy, foster homes, a harrowing lack of medical care, and ongoing sexual abuse.Stephanie, in turn, knew very little about the past of her mother, from whom she remained estranged during most of her adult life. All this changed with a phone call that set a journey of discovery in motion, leading to a series of shocking revelations that forced Stephanie to revise the meaning of almost every aspect of her very compromised childhood.

American Daughter is at once the deeply moving memoir of a troubled mother-daughter relationship and a meditation on trauma, resilience, transcendence, and redemption. Stephanie's story is unique but its messages are universal, offering insight into what it means to survive, to rise above, to heal, and to forgive.

STEPHANIE THORNTON PLYMALE is the CEO of Heritage School of Interior Design and the founder of the Heritage Home Foundation, a nonprofit serving families transitioning from homelessness. She lives with her husband and three children in Portland, Oregon.

TINA ONTIVEROS is a writer and teacher based in the Columbia River Gorge. Raised below the federal poverty line, Tina is the first person in her family to go to college and she completed her education while raising her children. As a writer and a teacher, Tina’s work explores class, generational hardship, and the social constructs that marginalize the poor. Her essay, The Life We Pay For, was a top ten most read of 2019 Oregon Humanities Magazine feature. Her memoir, rough house, has spent 17 consecutive weeks on the PNBA Bestseller's list and was awarded a 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Award.

This event is free and open to the public. Please register to get the password for the event and purchase her book here!