Consider February covered
The Oregon Legacy from Lincoln City’s Driftwood Public Library is the longest-running literary series on the Central Oregon Coast. Over the years, it has garnered a reputation for attracting both new and established authors with a wide variety of styles but consistent appeal.
This year the author readings will take place every Sunday in February at the Lincoln City Cultural Center.
The series opens on Feb. 6 with a visit from Aiden Thomas, a trans, Latinx, New York Times bestselling author with an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Originally from Oakland, California, Thomas now lives in Portland. Their first book, “Cemetery Boys,” was released in 2020 to huge acclaim, was nominated for a Bram Stoker award for best Young Adult Novel and made the long list for the National Book Award. It was included on numerous “best of” lists for that year, including the American Library Association, Publisher’s Weekly and NPR. Their second book, “Lost in the Never Woods” is a reworking of “Peter Pan” and was released last year. They will be publishing a third book, “The Sunbearer Trials” in September.
Next up, on Feb. 13, is environmental activist and author Allison Cobb, whose books include “Plastic: An Autobiography,” “Green-Wood,” “After We All Died” and “Born2.” Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review and many other journals. She was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and National Poetry Series, has been a resident artist at Djerassi and Playa and received fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission, the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She works for the Environmental Defense Fund and lives in Portland.
Cobb’s obsession with a large plastic car part led her to explore the violence of our consume-and-dispose culture, including her own life as a child of Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were made. The journey exposed her to interconnections among plastic waste, climate change, nuclear technologies and racism. Using a series of interwoven narratives, from ancient Phoenicia to Alabama, “Plastic: An Autobiography” bears witness to our deepest entanglements and asks how humans continue on this planet.
Oregon Legacy continues on Feb. 20 with a visit from writer Eileen Garvin. Born and raised in eastern Washington, Garvin now lives in Hood River. As a freelance writer she has written about travel, recreation, conservation and small businesses. Her essays have appeared in Medium, The Oregonian and Creative Non-Fiction magazine. A few years ago, she purchased a package of Carniolan honeybees and entered the world of backyard beekeeping. Her interest in these fascinating pollinators led her to her first attempt at fiction. Her debut novel, “The Music of Bees,” was published last year and was named a Good Morning America “Buzz Pick,” a Good Housekeeping book club pick, a People magazine “Best New Book” among other accolades. She is also the author of a memoir, “How to Be a Sister: A Love Story with a Twist of Autism.”
Alexandra Mason will bring the series to a close on Feb. 27. Mason is a true daughter of Oregon and, as a cap to her career as a Shakespeare scholar, has turned to Oregon history and landscapes to inspire both novels and poems. She will tell about this ongoing love affair grounded in place and read a few excerpts from her work in iconic publications like Oregon Stories, Groundwaters and The Oregonian. She is the author of two collections of poems, “Lost and Found” and “Poems Along the Way.” Her novel, “The Lighthouse Ghost of Yaquina Bay” breathes new life into Lischen M. Miller’s 1899 tale of ghost Muriel Trevenard, trapped in a lightkeeper’s house. Mason presided over the reading series “Writers on the Edge” and was founder of the Northwest Poets’ Concord, a premier gathering of poets from Oregon and beyond. Mason continues to be intrigued by the Bard of Avon: her “Shakespeare’s Money Talks” was released in December and her novel “Shakespeare’s Pipe” is coming soon.
Each presentation begins at 4 pm at the Lincoln City Cultural Center, located at 540 NE Hwy 101. For more information, go to driftwoodlib.org or call 541-996-1242.