Bend-based Kim Cooper Findling is an award-winning travel writer and editor who recently came out with her third book, “Bend, Oregon Daycations: Day Trips for Curious Families.” The Source Weekly sat down with the author to talk shop. Source Weekly: What’s the inspiration for this book? Who’s it for? Kim Cooper Findling: I’ve been traveling […]
Book Talk
Posted inCulture
Book Review
“Legendary Locals of Bend”
“Legendary Locals of Bend” is filled to the brim with some amazing history. Every page focuses on a different person that shaped the community of Bend in ways subtle or massive. Many of these stories come as a complete surprise. The book was compiled by Les Joslin, past president of the Board of Directors of […]
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To Kill a Classic
Marja Mills talks Go Set A Watchman & growing up with Harper Lee
Since its release in July, Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman has taken the literary world by storm. Fifty-years after the release of the iconic To Kill a Mockingbird, Watchman sold 1.1 million copies its first week (making it the fastest selling book in HarperCollins publishing history) and rocketed to the top of the New […]
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Burning Books
Forest fire adventures sizzle in Smokejumpers
In Julian Smith’s first book, Crossing The Heart of Africa, published in 2009, he (literally) followed the footsteps of Ewart Grogan, a distinguished Englishman and late 19th century adventurer who bushwacked 4,500 miles from Sudan to South Africa. And, in his most recent book, Smokejumper, released in mid-July, Smith shadows another, more contemporary adventurer, Jason […]
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Serving Time, Serving Truth
“Orange is the New Black” author Piper Kerman speaks in Bend
After graduating with a theater degree from an elite women’s college in the early 1990s, Piper Kerman was looking for excitement. She found it in a girlfriend who took her to exotic locales across the globe—and just happened to smuggle drugs. When Kerman’s relatively minor role in those illicit transactions caught up with her a […]
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A Girl and a Gun
Phillip Margolin’s latest thriller muses on a six-shooter
Portland author Phillip Margolin has made a name for himself in the world of noir fiction, with a particular emphasis on the legal aspects of the genre. His historical drama Worthy Brown’s Daughter is a heartbreaking story of slavery and murder set in 19th-century Oregon. “Writing Worthy Brown’s Daughter,” he explained, “was a huge challenge […]
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From Athens to Paris to, of course, Bend
Greek-American-Bend Poet Stephanos Papadopoulos kicks off poetry month
For Greek-American and Bend-based writer Stephanos Papadopoulos, the poems collected in his recent book The Black Sea embody the “inherited memories” of his ancestors. His grandfather, a tobacco merchant who was born in Samsounda, recounted to his grandchildren the trials of the Pontic Greeks of The Black Sea, and the Asia Minor Catastrophe of the […]
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Keeping Books Alive
Ann Patchett writes—and sells—books
In 2011, the last bookstore in Nashville closed its doors. The book was dead, they said. Who needs bookstores when you can download the most popular titles straight to your preferred device—or better yet, wait for the film adaptation to hit theaters? But Ann Patchett, a lifelong Nashvillian and bestselling author, was having none of […]
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Modern Day Ghosts
Best seller Garth Stein talks about his Pacific Northwest book
Imagine you’re walking through a pristine old growth forest, dense with splayed ferns and greened by waves of coastal mist. The air is cool beneath the thick canopy; you can smell muddy bark where it meets emerald moss and the tang of pine. In A Sudden Light, Garth Stein‘s new novel about a timber baron’s […]
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Smithy and the Hendersons
A wintertime review of “Fourth of July Creek”
In this stunning debut novel from Portland author Smith Henderson, “Fourth of July Creek” takes readers into the shadow of the Rockies, where social worker Pete Snow tries desperately to help a family who has lost itself in the wilds of rural Montana. The epigraph, a quote from Henry David Thoreau, reads, “If I knew […]
