Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Wildwood is the first book in the New York Times best-selling fantasy series full of magic, wonder, and danger from Colin Meloy, lead singer of the highly celebrated band the Decemberists, and Carson Ellis, the award-winning illustrator of Du Iz Tak and Home. Soon to be a major motion picture from LAIKA, the studio behind Coraline. Look for it on October 23, 2026! Moderated by Andrew Proctor.

Prue McKeel’s life is ordinary. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where it rains a lot. She has a mother and a father and a baby brother. Ordinary. At least until her brother is abducted by a flock of crows. And then things get really weird.

You see, on every map of Portland there is a big splotch of green in the center of the city labeled “I.W.” This stands for “Impassable Wilderness.” No one’s ever gone in — or at least returned to tell of it.

And this is where the crows take her brother.

So begins an adventure that will take Prue and her friend Curtis deep into the Impassable Wilderness. There they uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval, a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much bigger as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness.

A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.

WILDWOOD is a spellbinding tale full of wonder, danger, and magic that juxtaposes the thrill of a secret world and modern city life. Original and fresh yet steeped in classic fantasy, this is a novel that could have only come from the imagination of Colin Meloy, celebrated for his inventive and fantastic storytelling as the lead singer of the Decemberists. With dozens of intricate and beautiful illustrations by award-winning artist Carson Ellis, WILDWOOD is truly a new classic for the twenty-first century.

Isabel Wilkerson is the author of The New York Times bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. She was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism and was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama. Her work blends history, sociology and reportage to explore race in America, how unspoken histories and hierarchies inform our present moment.

Eugene Robinson is an award-winning journalist, political analyst on MSNBC, and the author of four books, most recently Freedom Lost, Freedom Won: A Personal History of America. Through his own family’s well-documented history, the book demonstrates how African American history is inseparable from the larger American story, tracing generations from his great-great-grandfather’s emancipation through Robinson’s own coming of age during the civil rights movement and beyond.

Robinson was a twice-weekly columnist for The Washington Post, where he won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his columns on the 2008 presidential election. During his 45-year career at The Washington Post, he served in a variety of leadership roles, including city editor, foreign editor, assistant managing editor of the Style section, and columnist, before departing the newspaper in 2025.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Robinson was the first Black student to serve as co-editor-in-chief of the award-winning student newspaper, The Michigan Daily. Before joining The Washington Post in 1980, he was a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle.

Robinson is also the author of Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America (2010), Last Dance in Havana (2004), and Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race (1999). He was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, served as a member and chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, and was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. Robinson was married for 45 years to the artist Avis Collins Robinson, who passed away in October 2023.

Ben Rhodes is a writer, political commentator, and national security analyst. He is the author of The New York Times bestsellers After the Fall and The World as It Is. From 2009 to 2017, Ben served as a speechwriter and deputy national security advisor to President Obama. He is currently co-host of Pod Save the World, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, a contributor for MS NOW, a senior advisor to former President Obama, and chair of National Security Action, which he co-founded with Jake Sullivan in 2018.

David Hume Kennerly has spent nearly six decades photographing history as it unfolded. At age 25, he became one of the youngest recipients of the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for his coverage of the Vietnam and Cambodia wars, refugees fleeing East Pakistan into India, and the Ali–Frazier “Fight of the Century.” Two years later, he was appointed personal White House photographer to President Gerald R. Ford.

Kennerly has photographed 11 U.S. presidents, covered 12 presidential campaigns, documented history in more than 100 countries, and appeared on more than 50 major magazine covers. He served as a contributing editor for Newsweek and a contributing photographer for Time and Life. American Photo named him one of the “100 Most Important People in Photography,” and The Washingtonian recognized him as one of Washington, D.C.’s 50 most influential journalists.

His newest book, In the Room: Sixty Years on the Front Lines of History (releasing October 6, 2026), offers a remarkable visual chronicle of the people and events that shaped the modern era through the lens of one of America’s most celebrated photojournalists. Kennerly is also the author of six previous books, including Extraordinary Circumstances: The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford.

In 2016, the Oregon Historical Society honored Kennerly with its Oregon History Makers Award. His archive of nearly one million photographs and historical materials is housed at the University of Arizona Center for Creative Photography, where he also serves as the university’s first Presidential Scholar. He is a Senior Fellow at the USC Center on Communication Leadership and Policy and a trustee of the Ansel Adams Publishing Trust.

Literary Arts is pleased to present New York Times bestselling author Louise Erdrich at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on March 18, 2027.

Her appearance will conclude months of engaging programs and events through Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads program, a community-wide project that promotes shared reading and discussion around a single book.

Erdrich’s 2025 novel, The Mighty Red, is the library’s 2027 reading selection and the focal point of this year’s Everybody Reads. From January through March, library-led discussions and activities will center on the book’s themes around love, family, time, and the complexities of being human.

About the book:

In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people’s lives.

In the Red River Valley of North Dakota, several lives revolve around a wedding fraught with desire, jealousy, and uncertainty. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed goth who can’t read her own future but will settle for fulfilling his. Her best friend, Hugo, a gentle, red-haired, homeschooled giant, also loves Kismet and is determined to steal her away and build a life together. Kismet’s mother, Crystal, drives a truck for Gary’s family, and on her nightly runs, tunes in to the darkness of late-night radio, experiences visions of guardian angels, and worries about what’s to come, for her daughter and herself.

The Mighty Red is Louise Erdrich at her consummate best. A novel of tender humor, disquietude, yearning, community, and family, it is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. Human time, deep time, Red River time, and geological time are explored alongside the impact of crises in our own time—climate change, the depletion of natural resources, the economic meltdown of 2008. It is a story about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.

Craig Fehrman is a journalist, historian, and the author of This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark, which offers a fresh account of one of the defining expeditions in American history and incorporates the stories of those long left out of the historical narrative.

Since 1998, the Oregon Historical Society has presented the Mark O. Hatfield Lecture Series, bringing together the nation’s top historians and award-winning authors for thought-provoking evenings of history. The series began at the suggestion of Senator Hatfield and continues as a tribute to his legacy of public service and as an opportunity to share stories of the people and events that have shaped history. Past speakers include notable historians and authors Heather Cox Richardson, David McCullough, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Jon Meacham, Cokie Roberts, and Isabel Wilkerson.

Thank you for purchasing tickets to Mark O. Hatfield Lecture Series, which supports the Oregon Historical Society's work to preserve our state's history and make it accessible to everyone!

Kiran Desai was born in New Delhi, India, educated in India, England, and the United States, and now lives in New York. She is the author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, which was published to unanimous acclaim in over 22 countries, and The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Booker Prize in 2006, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker. In 2015, The Economic Times listed her as one of the 20 most influential global Indian women.

Beverly Gage is a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian at Yale University and author of This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History, an exploration of the people, places, and stories that have shaped America as the nation marks its 250th anniversary.

Since 1998, the Oregon Historical Society has presented the Mark O. Hatfield Lecture Series, bringing together the nation’s top historians and award-winning authors for thought-provoking evenings of history. The series began at the suggestion of Senator Hatfield and continues as a tribute to his legacy of public service and as an opportunity to share stories of the people and events that have shaped history. Past speakers include notable historians and authors Heather Cox Richardson, David McCullough, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Jon Meacham, Cokie Roberts, and Isabel Wilkerson.

Thank you for purchasing tickets to Mark O. Hatfield Lecture Series, which supports the Oregon Historical Society's work to preserve our state's history and make it accessible to everyone!