Acclaimed new novel is a reckoning, unearthing horrors and shimmering possibilities interview by Cathy Carroll Karen Russell’s latest novel, The Antidote, is her first since Swamplandia!, one of The New York Times’ ten best books of the year and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has received many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list (she is now 43). Russell, who lives in Portland, also serves on the board of Street Books, a mobile library and community space for people living outside or at the margins in Portland. What drove you to incorporate magical elements with brutal historical realities? I’m sure my early reading history has a lot to do with it, as does growing up in Miami, where long before I knew how to read I learned how many streaming realities can coexist on a single city block. As…

Portland author’s new book harnesses fresh energy and ethics around rockhounding interview by Cathy Carroll Alison Jean Cole is at the forefront of a new interest in the Northwest that’s no longer your granduncle’s pastime—rockhounding. Her second book on the topic, A Rockhound’s Guide to Oregon & Washington, has just been released amid a growing, youthful enthusiasm for the hobby that promises another way to connect with nature. The book covers rockhounding basics, sustainable collecting, Leave No Trace principles and, for sixty sites, the geologic history along with what types of rocks and fossils you may find. The region is a treasure trove for rockhounds who can explore ancient seafloors, epic lava flows, glacier-carved landscapes and evidence of 200 million years of tectonic action. This guide helps beginners find agates and jaspers in the volcanic Cascade Range, marine fossils along the Coast, petrified wood in the Owyhee Uplands and more….