Author Author is an occasional feature of interviews with authors in Portland, either on tour or local writers. Ed Goldberg has been conducting these interviews for almost 20 years. Each interview discusses the author’s current work, thoughts and process for writing.
April 5, 2019
Greg Iles was born in 1960 in Stuttgart,Germany, where his physician father ran the U.S. Embassy Medical Clinic. He was raised in Natchez, MS, the setting of many of his novels. He graduated from the University of Mississippi in 1983. He has been a prolific writer of fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. I have read his… More
March 20, 2019
Benjamin Dreyer is vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief, of Random House. He began his publishing career as a freelance proofreader and copy editor. In 1993, he became a production editor at Random House, overseeing books by writers including Michael Chabon, Edmund Morris, Suzan-Lori Parks, Michael Pollan, Peter Straub and Calvin Trillin. He has… More
March 14, 2019
Helen Zia is a Chinese-American journalist and activist for Asian American and LGBTQ rights. Zia was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1952 to first generation immigrants from Shanghai. At five years old, she began working in her parent’s floral novelty business. She entered Princeton University in the early 1970s as a student in the… More
February 21, 2019
Lydia Kiesling’s debut novel, The Golden State, wherein Daphne, a young woman in a stressed life, flees the Bay Area with her toddler for rural California and a mobile home left to her by her grandparents. But, the bucolic life is not to be. She finds small comfort with two women she meets but is swept up in… More
February 20, 2019
This is the first book of a projected trilogy by Charlaine Harris, whose Southern vampire stories have become very popular, especially in TV adaptations. The newest book is An Easy Death, an alternative-history tale of a young woman in a re-imagined America whose job is to safeguard travelers on dangerous journeys. Lizbeth is a “gunnie,” adept at the use of… More
November 15, 2018
Rhonda Rizzo is a classical pianist and a writer. A specialist in the music of living composers, she has released four CDs and appears regularly as a soloist and a collaborative artist. Her numerous articles have been published in national and international music magazines. She has published a novel entitled The Waco Variations, about a… More
October 18, 2018
Signe Pike was born in born in Ithaca, NY, and graduated from Cornell University with her Bachelor of Science in Communication. She worked as an acquisitions editor at Random House and then Penguin, before leaving to write her first book, Faery Tale: One Woman’s Search for Enchantment in a Modern World. Pike has spent the… More
October 9, 2018
Paula Friedman’s honors include Pushcart Prize nominations and New Millenium Writings, OSPA, and other awards and honors, as well as Centrum and Soapstone residencies and fellowships. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online literary magazines and anthologies. Ursula K. Le Guin called Friedman’s debut novel, The Rescuer’s Path (2012, 2018)… More
September 21, 2018
International award-winning architect Donald MacDonald is the designer of the Tilikum Crossing Bridge. He also designed the east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and was the first architect to work on the Golden Gate Bridge since its original construction. With Ira Nadel, he is the co-author of Golden Gate Bridge: History and Design of… More
August 21, 2018
Kenneth Friedenreich has been drinking, and writing about, wine for a very long time. He is especially keen on Oregon wine and the Oregon wine industry. He is impatient with wine rating systems and the snobbishness that often accompanies wine writing and tasting. I spoke with him at our studios at All Classical Portland.