Fall Author Series

Wednesday, September 20^th - 6 PM

Elizabeth Fournier - The Green Burial Guidebook

Elizabeth Fournier has dedicated her career to helping individuals access sustainable, meaningful and affordable burials and funerals. She was called to this work at the tender age of 13 after many family deaths. Elizabeth owns and operates Cornerstone Funeral Service out of a repurposed goat barn in Boring, Oregon, where she uses traditional burial practices that are kinder to humans and the Earth. In addition to her steadfast work as a funeral director, Elizabeth wrote The Green Burial Guidebook, gave a TEDx talk called, "Going Green: The Last Act of Environmental Volunteerism,” and is the voice of the autopsy exhibit in the forensic wing at the United States National Museum of Medicine. She worked with Herland Forest in Washington to steward the first natural organic reduction human composting. Elizabeth lives on a farm with her husband, daughter and several rescue goats and sheep.

Wednesday, September 27^th - 6 PM

Emilly Prado - Funeral for Flaca

Emilly Prado is an award-winning writer, educator, and DJ living in Portland, Oregon with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her debut essay collection, Funeral for Flaca, has been called, “Utterly vulnerable, bold, and unique,” by Ms. Magazine and was a winner of the 2022 Pacific Northwest Book Award. In Funeral for Flaca, Prado retraces her experience coming of age as a prep-turned-chola-turned-punk in a collection that is one-part memoir-in-essays, and one-part playlist, zigzagging across genres and decades, much like the rapidly changing and varied tastes of her youth.

Thursday, October 12^{th -} 6 PM 

Brian Lowery - Selfless: The Social Creation of “You”

Brian Lowery is The Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior. He received his doctorate in social psychology from UCLA in 2001, and has been on faculty at Stanford since 2002. In Selfless, Brian Lowery argues for the radical idea that the "self" as we know it — that "voice in your head" — is a social construct, created in our relationships and social interactions. By recognizing that we are products of relationships — from fleeting transactions to deep associations — we shatter the myth of individualism and free ourselves to make our lives and the world accordingly.

Thursday, October 19th - 7 PM LGBTQ+ History Month

Elyssa Maxx Goodman - Glitter and Concrete

Elyssa Maxx Goodman is  a New York-based writer and photographer specializing in non-fiction writing and documentary photography. Her work has been published in Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Style Magazine, i-D, and many others. Glitter and Concrete, her first book, traces the Technicolor history of drag in New York City and the role it’s played in both queer culture and urban life – from its pre-World War I antecedents to Drag Race.

Wednesday, October 25^th  - 6 PM LGBTQ+ History Month

Casey Parks - Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and a Mystery

Casey Parks is a Portland-based Washington Post reporter who covers gender and family issues. She was previously a staff reporter at the Jackson (Miss.) Free Press and spent a decade at The Oregonian. Diary of a Misfit was named one of the best books of 2022 by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews and New York Public Library, and it won the 2023 Oregon Book Award. It is part memoir, part sweeping journalistic saga: As Casey follows the mystery of a stranger’s past, she is forced to reckon with her own sexuality, her fraught Southern identity, her relationship with her mother, and the complicated role of faith in her life.

This program is made possible by the generous support of the Friends of the Ledding Library. Thank you Friends!!!