By The Time We Got To Wordstock, We Were Half A Million Strong

OK maybe not half a million, but this weekend Portland held the Wordstock Festival, a three day "Festival of the Book" with readings, workshops, and a book fair all to benefit Community of Writers, a non-profit that supports writing in the schools.

Last year I went and saw Caprial and John Pence on the cooking stage, Linda Sawaya, who wrote a Lebanese cookbook I bought years ago not knowing she lived in Portland (my great-grandfather is from Lebanon), a screenwriters' panel with Mike Rich and Whitney Otto, and Sarah Vowell and her quirky voice reading from her newest book.

This year I saw Eric Blehm, who wrote about Randy Morgenson, a 28 year veteran park ranger who disappeared, Paul LaRosa, a true crime author, Joyce Carol Oates, and Dave Eggers.

It amazes me that Portland can pull something like this together. It's not like they have one headliner...They had so many authors I wanted to see that it was almost impossible to choose only one each hour.

One of my favorite things this year were the images from the promotional material.






P.S. Dad, I just liked the image, I really like you more than Atticus Finch.

P.P.S. Ellen DeGeneres just mentioned Cash Cab on her show!