WordFest will feature stories about love between concert pianists, World War II from a German soldier’s perspective, and murder with questions of  justice, next Tuesday, October 10, 6:00 pm, at the Cassava Coffeehouse, 1333 Broadway in Longview.

 

Laura Baird will be reading from her debut romance novel, Keyed Up:

As pianist with the Seattle Symphony, Penelope Dixon is unexpectedly reunited with Sebastian Mauer, her first love from ten years earlier. Sebastian, once a famed performer, had foolishly pushed aside his love for Penelope, thinking it for the best at the time. Now a reclusive composer, he’s wants to prove they deserve a second chance together, and Penelope is forced to face her buried desires and the impact of those desires on her career.

 

 

A dental hygienist for more than seventeen years, Laura has been writing steadily during that time, resulting in three of her stories recently being accepted by three different publishers.  Copies of Keyed Up will be available for purchase at WordFest. Second Time Love (Evernight Publishing) and Resort Virgins (Wild Rose Press) will be appearing in six to nine months.

 

 

 

 

 

Philip Brock will be reading from his novel, Silk Cocoon, set during World War II:  With a beautiful wife and child and a successful business, Hans Schultz is living an almost idyllic life in pre-war Germany. He believes the future is bright and promising under the new Nazi government with its vision of Germany becoming a world leader once again. But with the onset of war, his world spins out of his control. He’s called to military service in the infantry and, as the war progresses, begins to question the actions of his government. When he witnesses the slaughter of men, women and children at the Plunda Work Camp, Hans realizes the country is run by monsters. Eventually, he will have to answer for the part he was forced to play in these atrocities.

Philip, a 1972 graduate of Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington, worked for more than 30 years as a Certified Public Accountant. Now retired, he lives in Cathlamet, Washington, on the shores of the Columbia River. His interest in Nazi Germany began as a child living in Wurtzburg, Germany. He remembers lying in bed, watching the morning sunlight streaming through a bullet hole in the window shutter, playing in a back yard still pock-marked from exploding shells, and finding his landlord’s garden shed filled with Nazi uniforms, flags and other memorabilia.

 

 

Kevin Hunter is president of the Longview Downtowner’s business group and an international video broadcaster and podcaster. As host of The Business Forum Show, he produces content seen and heard in 220 countries and territories around the world. He will be reading from a book he wrote with his wife, Stephanie, titled Justice was Served.

Though fiction, the story is based on a true event about a young nurse who disappeared from a hospital parking ramp after finishing her shift. The investigation into her disappearance bogs down in the dead of winter, but in the following spring, her body is discovered with the melting snow. As the perpetrator is awaiting his trial, some people think that three meals a day, cable TV, and a warm jail cell isn’t really justice for snuffing out the life of young vibrant woman. The FBI say the case may be compromised. What if he is set free? How will they know that justice was served?

 

There will be an open mic period following the presentations.

 

The monthly gathering of readers and writers meets the second Tuesday of each month, 6:00-8:00 PM, at Cassava. The events are free and open to the public.

Cassava offers a dinner menu for those who wish to enjoy a meal with the readings, as well as local wines and brews.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Local judge and storyteller Ed Putka will kick off WordFest’s fall season next Tuesday, September 12, 6:00 pm, at the Cassava Coffeehouse.

A WordFest favorite, Ed has been compared to Garrison Keillor for his popular Cleveland stories, set in the Polish neighborhood of his youth. Once again combining memory and humor, Ed will share another tale of how the old gang helped the new kid with the all-time worst name get through school.

 

 

 

 

Steve Anderson will read excerpts from the third in his Book of Hours trilogy. The resplendent fifteenth century Book of Hours has been restored and presented to Pope Gregory XVII, but what will happen to the ancient shreds of parchment that Brother Alphaios and archivist Inaki Arriagi found within its covers?

 

 

 

 

The parchment holds a deep secret that undercuts one of the very pillars of Catholicism. Will Alphaios be able to continue a monastic life or be driven from it for his disobedience?

Steve lives and writes in Longview.

 

 

 

Alan Rose will read from his recently completed novel, As If Death Summoned, about the AIDS epidemic. Alan was involved in the epidemic, first in Australia in the 1980s, and then working at Cascade AIDS Project in Portland through the 1990s.

 

 

 

 

Alan has written two earlier novels, The Legacy of Emily Hargraves, a paranormal mystery, and Tales of Tokyo, a quest novel set in modern day Japan, as well as a novella, The Unforgiven, a psychological mystery published by Bold Strokes Books in 2012.

 

 

 

There will be an open mic period following the presentations.

 

The monthly gathering of readers and writers meets the second Tuesday of each month, 6:00-8:00 PM, at Cassava, 1333 Broadway in Longview. The events are free and open to the public.

Cassava offers a dinner menu for those who wish to enjoy a meal with the readings, as well as local wines and brews.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the next WordFest event on Tuesday, July 11, 6:00-8:00 p.m., British-born author Hannah Dennison will read from her latest mystery, Murderous Mayhem at Honeychurch Hall.

Hannah is the author of The Vicky Hill Mysteries (Constable Crime) as well as the Honeychurch Hall Mysteries (Minotaur), both series set in the wilds of the Devonshire countryside. Hannah originally moved to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting. She has been an obituary reporter, an antique dealer, and a Hollywood story analyst.

 

Now living in Portland, she teaches mystery writing workshops at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program in Los Angeles, and has served on numerous judging committees for Mystery Writers of America and currently serves on the MWA Board of Directors for 2016-2018.

In her most recent mystery, a missing manuscript, a dead postmistress and the gruesome remains of a woman thought to have vanished during the English Civil War in the seventeenth century, are uncannily connected in Murderous Mayhem at Honeychurch Hall, the fourth adventure in the mystery series featuring antique dealer Kat Stanford and her romance writer mother, Iris.

You can watch the Book Chat interview with Hannah here.

 

Cam Parvitee will be reading from the second book in her Black Dragons series. In Book One, a group of Tai Chi practitioners (most in their 60s and older) helped young teenagers in their community from being bullied by the Snakes, a street gang.

In Book Two the seniors who have now undertaken the care of the children, begin to wonder if they were crazy for accepting the challenge.

For much of her life, Cam has been involved with the activities of teenagers and young adults. She got the idea for this book series one evening during a Kung Fu class, when she, at 75, threw a teenaged “attacker” to the floor at her feet.

 

Alkaid Tsuki will be reading from Book Two of her Young Adult (YA) Liberation series entitled Hope Filled Moon.

The characters of the earlier book, Freedom’s New Moon, travel to the city of Lunaria, where they meet the fourth and final Sentry, a young man named Sol who conjures Angels. As their brotherhood continues to grow, difficult truths come to light and members have to choose whom to trust. The as yet unpublished series is currently a tetralogy.

Alkaid Tsuki is the pen name of Caleigh Maffett, a student at Lower Columbia College. Her short story, “Entanglement,” received an Honorable Mention in the Metamorphose Short Story Writing Contest, and will be published by Metamorphose in their fall issue.

There will be an open mic period following the presentations.

The monthly gathering of readers and writers meets the second Tuesday of each month, 6:00-8:00 PM, at Cassava, 1333 Broadway in Longview. The events are free and open to the public.

Cassava offers a dinner menu for those who wish to enjoy a meal with the readings, as well as local wines and brews.

For more information, contact Alan Rose at www. Alan-rose.com.

 

 

 

At the next WordFest event on Tuesday, June 13, 6:00-8:00 p.m., University of Oregon instructor Michael Copperman will read from his memoir, Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta, at Cassava Coffeeshop.

Michael left Stanford University for the Mississippi Delta in 2002, to join Teach for America, imagining that he would lift underprivileged children from the narrow horizons of their rural poverty. As an idealistic Asian American from the West Coast, he soon lost his bearings in a world sharply divided between black and white and found he had no idea what was required to help children navigate the considerable challenges they faced in their world. His desperate efforts to save child after child, he admits, were naïve, and he often found that he wasn’t able to give his students what they needed, sometimes with heartbreaking consequences.

Michael will be reading from his memoir of the experience and speak on what his students taught him about the meaning of teaching. His book has been featured on NPR’s “Think Out Loud,” and chapters have been anthologized in What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher (Norton), which will be used in teacher’s colleges across the country and as a text in all the composition classrooms of one of Mississippi’s largest public universities.

Michael teaches writing to low-income, first-generation students of diverse backgrounds at the University of Oregon.  His writing has appeared in The Sun, The Oxford-American, Boston Review, Creative Nonfiction, Gulf Coast, Guernica, Unsaid  and Southword, among others. He is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Munster Literature Center, the Oregon Arts Council, Literary Arts, and Breadloaf Writers Conference.

 

 

Kathleen Lane will be reading short stories and flash fiction pieces from her recently completed story collection, Deaths I’ve Imagined.

Living in Portland, Oregon, Kathleen writes short fiction and stories for middle-grade and young adult readers. Her middle grade novel, The Best Worst Thing, was an Oregon Book Award finalist. Her short stories have appeared in Berkeley Fiction Review, Swink Magazine, Forest Avenue Press and elsewhere, and will be appearing in Writer’s Digest and Los Angeles Review.

Through a grant from the Regional Arts & Culture Council, she teaches writing workshops to kids dealing with anxiety, and also teaches writing through Oregon Literary Arts Writers-in-the-Schools program. With writer Margaret Malone, Kathleen hosts the art and literary event series, SHARE, a bi-monthly event in Portland that brings artists together to create in a shared space from a one-word prompt.

 

There will be an open mic period following the presentations at 7:45 pm.

 

 

The monthly gathering of readers and writers meets the second Tuesday of each month, 6:00-8:00 PM, at Cassava, 1333 Broadway in Longview. The events are free and open to the public.

 

Cassava offers a dinner menu for those who wish to enjoy a meal with the readings, as well as local wines and brews.

 

For more information, contact Alan Rose at www. Alan-rose.com.

 

 

 

Two writers of YA (Young Adult) mysteries will be reading from their debut novels at the next WordFest event on Tuesday, May 9, 6:00-8:00 p.m. at Cassava Coffeeshop.

 

Kelly Garrett will read from her novel, The Last To Die, published by Poisoned Pen Press in April 2017.

Harper is no saint, but she doesn’t deserve to die. When her teen burglary ring goes terribly wrong and one of her friends dies, she faces a moral dilemma that will make or break her–and if she makes the wrong choice, it will get her killed.

 

 

 

 

 

Sheryl Scarborough, an award-winning writer for children’s television, holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. To Catch A Killer is her debut novel, published by Tor Teen.

As a toddler, Erin Blake survived three days alongside the corpse of her murdered mother. Fourteen years later, Erin has ramped up her forensic hobby into a full-blown cold-case investigation. Now a new murder makes her certain she’s close to the truth, but all the evidence is pointing the authorities to Erin.

 

 
Kelly and Sheryl will also discuss “When writing is murder,” exploring the intricacies of writing mysteries for young adults, including plotting out the story and developing realistic characters.

 

There will be an open mic period following the presentations at 7:30 pm. People are welcome to read their writing for ten minutes each.

The monthly gathering of readers and writers meets the second Tuesday of each month, 6:00-8:00 PM, at Cassava, 1333 Broadway in Longview. The events are free and open to the public.

 

 

Cassava offers a dinner menu for those who wish to enjoy a meal with the readings, as well as local wines and brews.

 

For more information, contact Alan Rose at www. Alan-rose.com.