The Literary Duck hosts literary, artistic and musical events at the Duck Store and in the campus community. For times, dates, locations, authors and event summaries, make sure to check back with us regularly. To contact our Author Events coordinator, please email Laura Carroll White or call (541) 346-4331.

AUTHOR Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant & Jesse Springer
TITLE Laugh Track & Field: A Short, Funny, and Partly Made-Up Look at Track Town USA and the Wacky World of Track & Field
TIME/PLACE 7:00 p.m., Literary Duck, The Duck Store Leigh Anne is the reigning SLUG Queen of Eugene. She formerly hosted her own radio program, Women Under the Influence of Laughter, on KOPT in Eugene, Oregon. She is the director of The Comedy Workout, Eugene's Own Stand-up Comedy Troupe and organizes both the Annual Eugene Laff Off and the Annual Oregon Women's Comedy Festival. She teaches comedy writing and stand-up for Lane Community College and keynotes at over 50 conferences a year. Since 1994, Jesse Springer's editorial cartoons have been appearing in the Eugene Register-Guard and papers around the state of Oregon. He has published two collections of his political cartoons: Only in Eugene and Nobody Messes with My Right to Dye. He lives in Eugene with his wife, two children, three cats, and four spatulas. His graphic design business, Springer Design & Illustration, is reported to be a laundering operation that supports his cartoon habit. To see more cartoons than you can shake a stick at, visit www.springercreative.com.

CONTRIBUTORS Charles Goodrich, Kathleen Dean Moore & Fred Swanson
TITLE In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens
TIME/PLACE 7:00 p.m., Knight Library Browsing Room, UO Campus As it erupted in 1980, Mount St. Helens captured the attention of the region, nation, and the world, and it continues to fascinate us today a constant reminder that we live in a volcanic landscape. In lucid prose and poetry by some of Americas leading writers and ecologists, In the Blast Zone explores this story of destruction and renewal in all its human, geological, and ecological dimensions. Most popular accounts of the momentous eruption have focused on the devastation it caused. More recent scientific work on Mount St. Helens tells a story of unexpectedly rapid and varied ecological and geological change. In the Blast Zone is the first book to present a cross-pollination of literary and scientific perspectives on the mountains history of cataclysm and renewal. Most of the contributors to this volume camped together on Mount St. Helens for four days in 2005the 25th anniversary of the eruption hiking, learning the ecology, and sharing ideas. They asked the question: What can this radically altered landscape tell us about nature and how to live our lives? In the Blast Zone collects some of their answers. While introducing fascinating ecological and geological insights, it also tells compelling stories about how science informs our lives and our relationship to nature. These writings will startle readers with new recognition of the matchless gift Mount St. Helens makes to our region and the world: the gifts of beauty, of scientific illumination, of hope. Contributor Bio: Charles Goodrich
Charles Goodrich is Program Director of the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word at Oregon State University and the author of The Practice of Home: Biography of a House. Contributor Bio: Kathleen Dean Moore
Kathleen Dean Moore is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University. She is also the author of A Field Guide to Inductive Arguments. Contributor Bio: Frederick J Swanson
Frederick J. Swanson is a Research Geologist with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, in Corvallis, Oregon. He is co-editor of Ecological Responses to the 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens and has spent his career working on interactions of geological and ecological forces in mountain lands. Contributor Bio: Ann Zwinger
Ann Zwinger writes extensively about the natural history of the Southwest. She has authored over 10 books, including Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through Grand Canyon and The Nearsighted Naturalist.

AUTHOR Richard Wirick
TITLE One Hundred Siberian Postcards
TIME/PLACE 7:00 p.m., Knight Library Browsing Room, UO Campus "Entrancing... Each snow-bright postcard 'catches a facet of Siberian myth, history or wildlife, from mutant fish to marauding bears. From the land of mines,' he digs up gem after glittering gem." —The Independent "A magical book." —The Times Richard Wirick and his wife go to Siberia to adopt a baby girl. Rather than produce a straightforward account of this journey, Wirick has chosen instead to produce one hundred interlocking vignettes in order to evoke for his new daughter the grandeur of her birthplace. Richard Wirick's fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in Fiction, Quarterly West, Playboy, Another Chicago Magazine and The Northwest Review. He is co-founder and editor of the journal Transformation.

EVENT Conference on Gender, Families, and Latino Immigration in Oregon
CO-SPONSOR Center for the Study of Women in Society
PLACE 175 Knight Law Center, UO Campus
MORE INFO Program & Schedule or call (541) 346-5015
This conference is noteworthy in that the organizers have used its planning as a means of reaching out to Latino communities throughout the state, a process that resulted in community leaders and advocates committed to playing an active role in this event. The key issues to be discussed were identified during a process of community consultation coordinated by a community advisory board. Over the past eighteen months, the organizers have conducted a series of public events that have drawn a diverse public including Latino immigrant families and students, immigrant rights advocates and community leaders, health care providers, human service providers, educators, participants in the justice system, academics, students, and others who work with immigrant populations. We expect some of these same people to also attend the conference.

AUTHOR John Pomfret
TITLE Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China
LECTURE Notes from a Gambling Nation: Why China Is Not Going to Be the World’s Next Superpower
CO-SPONSOR Charles H. Lundquist College of Business & Center for Asian and Pacific Studies
TIME/PLACE 5:00 p.m., 282 Lillis, UO Campus
John Pomfret is a reporter for The Washington Post. Formerly the Post's Beijing bureau chief, he is now the Los Angeles bureau chief. In 2003, Pomfret was awarded the Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Asian Journalism by the Asia Society, an annual award for best coverage of Asia. He lives with his wife and family in Los Angeles.

EVENT Oregon Quarterly Essay Contest Winners Reading
JUDGE/OPENING SPEAKER Kathleen Dean Moore, The Pine Island Paradox
CO-SPONSOR Oregon Quarterly
TIME/PLACE 7:30 p.m., Gerlinger Alumni Lounge, UO Campus
2009 Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest The Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest, sponsored by Oregon Quarterly and The Duck Store is open to previously unpublished writing about ideas affecting the Northwest. Non-fiction writers can compete in open and student categories. The winner in the open category will receive $750 and publication in the Summer 2008 issue of Oregon Quarterly, which is distributed to nearly 100,000 readers. The student winner will receive $500 and publication in the Autumn 2008 issue. The second- and third-place writers in both categories will also receive cash prizes. Kathleen Dean Moore, an Oregon Book Award-winning essayist, will judge this year's contest. Moore is the author of three award-winning books of essays about natural places: The Pine Island Paradox (2004), winner of the 2005 Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction, Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World (1999), winner of the 2000 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, and Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water (1996), which was a finalist for an Oregon Book Award. Moore is University Writer Laureate and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University. Her essays have been published in such magazines as Orion, Discover, Audubon, Wild Earth, Hope, and Field and Stream. The 15 finalists will be announced in the Summer 2008 issue of Oregon Quarterly and invited to attend a workshop with Moore. Six top essays, from both the student and open categories, will be featured in a public reading.

EVENT UO Documentary Film Screening
FILM A History of the University of Oregon 1857-1989
TIME/PLACE 5:00—7:00 p.m., 41 Media Services, Knight Library, UO Campus
The Oregon Humanities Center presents a video premiere of parts II and III of its documentary, "A History of the University of Oregon, 1857-1989" written and produced by Rebecca Force. For information, call 346-3934. The DVD will be available at all Duck Store locations.

AUTHOR Seth Kantner
TITLE Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska
CO-SPONSOR Eugene Public Library
TIME/PLACE 6:00 p.m., Eugene Public Library, Downtown
His story begins with the arrival of his father, Howard Kantner, to the remote Arctic of the 1950s and ends with him as a grown man settled in the same landscape. Through a series of moving essays and vivid photographs, ranging in subject from family histories to hunting stories, celebrations of people and places to a lament over a majestic wilderness rapidly disappearing, Shopping for Porcupine provides a compelling, intimate view of America's last frontier — the same place that captivated so many readers of Ordinary Wolves. "Fascinating essays, marvelous photographs. As he did with his remarkable novel, "Ordinary Wolves," Seth Kantner illuminates an Alaska most of us will never know." —Andrea Barrett "This book is full of stunning images, and only some of them are in the photos. Others are in the narrative accounts of traditions colliding, subsistences overlapping, dilemmas mounting. It's all quite unforgettable." —Bill McKibben "One of the most beautiful books you'll ever read—truthful, raw, and lovely. The photographs make the sparse arctic Alaskan landscape monumentally visible and profound, while Kantner's writing imparts heroic dignity to the lives around him. From a childhood spent in a time when 'Frostbite was a way of life' to an adulthood fiercely lived, the tale of this man's life is original and funny, vivid and touching. As tough as caribou hide, Kantner enthralls the reader from beginning to end. This book is bound to become a classic alongside the works of Loren Eiseley, Edward Abbey, and John McPhee." —Jonis Agee "With Ordinary Wolves, Seth Kantner came streaking up out of the Arctic tundra like a blazing meteor in reverse. If it isn't the best novel to come out of Alaska so far, I don't know what is. Now, with his new collection of autobiographical vignettes and photographs, we get a closer look at the unique upbringing that informs that fine work. He brings us into the wildest scenes as only someone of this place can do. For all the popularity of the recent best sellers and hit movies about Alaska, Shopping for Porcupine comes from a place you haven't seen yet and can hardly imagine." —Dan O'Neill "Shopping For Porcupine brings the searing honesty, lyric style, and raw emotional power we've come to anticipate from this home-grown Alaska prodigy. In Ordinary Wolves, you glimpsed Seth Kantner's life between the words. Here, you meet it head-on." —Nick Jans

AUTHOR Lauren Kessler
TITLE Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's: One Daughter's Hopeful Story
TIME/PLACE 7:00 p.m., Knight Library Browsing Room, UO Campus
Join us for a reading and book signing with Lauren Kessler. Kessler’s latest book, Dancing with Rose, is just out in paperback with it's new title Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's: One Daughter's Hopeful Story. "Profound... Kessler learns that rather than stripping humanity away, dementia lays it bare." —Chicago Tribune "This is the true brilliance of Dancing With Rose. It upends our assumptions and forces us to ask: What do I have to hold on to? Who would I be if my memories were stripped away? What is my essence?" —Los Angeles Times "Lauren Kessler has confronted the horror of Alzheimer's in the most direct and courageous way possible: After losing a mother to the disease, she went to work as a low-wage aide in an Alzheimer's facility. The resulting book is itself a kind of miracle of caring: She manages to humanize the victims and shine a clear, compassionate, light on those who struggle to care for them. Anyone affected by the disease—and that's almost everyone—has to read this book!" —Barbara Ehrenreich Lauren Kessler is the author of five works of narrative nonfiction, including Dancing with Rose, Washington Post bestseller Clever Girl, Los Angeles Times bestseller The Happy Bottom Riding Club, Full Court Press and Oregon Book Award winner Stubborn Twig. Stubborn Twig was chosen as the book for all Oregon to read in honor of the state's 2009 sesquicentennial. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, O magazine, salon and The Nation. She is founder and editor of Etude, the online magazine of narrative nonfiction, and directs the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon. Publisher's Weekly—The growing number of readers who have relatives with Alzheimer's will warm to Kessler's excellent account of the months she worked as an unskilled resident assistant in an Alzheimer's facility on the West Coast. This facility, which she calls Maplewood, is a state-of-the-art institution, divided into small "neighborhoods" of 14 rooms with private baths, a common space and enclosed patios. The author of several nonfiction books, Kessler (Full Court Press) was attempting to resolve her feelings after her own mother, with whom she had a troubled relationship, died of Alzheimer's; bittersweet memories of her are scattered through the narrative. At Maplewood, Kessler feeds, toilets and converses with residents in varying stages of the illness. Marianne, for instance, an alert and well-dressed woman, appears not to belong at Maplewood. She still regards herself as a successful working woman, and the author treats her as such. Kessler becomes strongly attached to some of the other men and women in her neighborhood, feeling bereaved when several die during her tenure. She comes to regard Alzheimer's sufferers as individuals who can still enjoy life, given the care and recreational opportunities extended at this facility powerful lesson in the humanity of those we often see as tragically bereft of that quality.

AUTHOR Beth Lisick
TITLE Helping Me Help Myself
TIME/PLACE TBA, Eugene Public Library Downtown Beth Lisick, author of the New York Times bestselling book Everybody into the Pool, is also a performer and odd-jobs enthusiast. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies including Best American Poetry, the Christian Science Monitor, and Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Movement. She has contributed to public radio's This American Life and is the co-founder of the monthly Porchlight storytelling series in San Francisco.