50 Oregon authors will debut new works, present old favorites at Oregon State Fair
After a two-year pandemic pause, book signings are returning to the Oregon State Fair, with 50 Oregon authors scheduled to discuss and autograph their works Friday to Sept. 5. This year, the fair in Salem has made an effort to attract a variety of authors, many of them debuting new books.
The Oregon Authors Table will once again be in Columbia Hall, between the fair’s quilts and cakes. The authors will now take turns, with no more than a dozen on hand at a time.
Some authors will attend the fair every day, but each day, a different author will be featured as the headliner. Here are the day-by-day headliners and their books.
Oregon State Fair returns:
Friday, Aug. 26: Joe R. Blakely
Best known for his Oregon history books about come-from-behind sports teams, this 82-year-old Eugene author has turned his attention to the pioneer photographer who saved Oregon’s wildlife refuges. The resulting biography, “William Lovell Finley: Champion of Oregon's Wildlife Refuges,” is an illustrated account of the man who lugged a giant box camera with glass negatives to treetops, swamps and ocean islands in the early 1900s in order to document the plight of Oregon’s birds.
Saturday, Aug. 27: Kurt Cyrus
Featured by the New York Times, Kurt Cyrus of McMinnville has illustrated two dozen popular children’s picture books. His current bestseller is “Be A Good Dragon," but “Fix That Clock” won the Oregon Spirit Award, and his counting books are library legends. The latest is “Trillions of Trees,” preceded by “Billions of Bricks” and the classic “20 Big Trucks in the Middle of the Street.”
Sunday, Aug. 28: Mark Fearing
This Portland author claims that he might have been raised by geese or gophers. More likely, he grew up in Minnesota and helped to animate TV shows in Los Angeles before coming to Oregon to write and illustrate children’s books. In his latest, “Castle Gesundheit,” the Baron Von Sneeze's sniffling is keeping the village of Handkerchief awake — perhaps because of his many cats?
Monday, Aug. 29: Melanie Campbell
After earning a degree from the University of Oregon while she was struggling as a single mother, Campbell learned enough about life to write women’s fiction with inspiring themes. Her debut novel, “One Woman Falling,” won the 2020 Oregon Christian Writers Cascade Award. In “One Way Home,” a recovering alcoholic battles to escape her family’s past.
Tuesday, Aug. 30: David Espinoza
Uplifting sports stories are the subjects of this Salem author’s books. His memoir, “Half Blind with Full Vision,” describes his own success at overcoming childhood trauma by using sports as counseling. His new book, “Oregon Latino Basketball Tournament,” recounts how a Woodburn event wound up uniting the Latino community with pride.
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Wednesday, Aug. 31: Elizabeth Rusch
This Portland author and editor has written dozens of children’s books about everything from volcanoes to pianos. “A Day With No Crayons” won the Oregon Book Award. In her newest, “Zee Grows a Tree,” a girl is born on the same day that a Douglas fir seedling sprouts on her parents’ Christmas tree farm. As the two grow up together, readers learn a lot about trees and little girls.
Thursday, Sept. 1: Stephen Holgate
The spy novels of this Portland author ring true because he really did serve with the State Department in Morocco and Sri Lanka. His latest book, “To Live and Die in the Floating World,” is a thriller with another setting he knows, having once worked on the canal boats of Burgundy, France. Gifted with a craggy face and oratorical baritone, Holgate sometimes serves as an Abraham Lincoln impersonator.
Friday, Sept. 2: William Burt
An Aurora teacher of American Sign Language for the deaf, Burt has become an Oregon State Fair favorite for his “The King of the Trees” fantasy books. The seven-part young adult series, set in a happy place somewhere between “The Hobbit” and “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe,” opens when Rolin, son of Gannon, shimmies down an unusual tree to a land of grumpy griffins, evil sorcerers and dangerous batwolves.
Saturday, Sept. 3: Jennifer Chambers
Host of the Hodgepodge podcast, this Lane County author’s first book was about surviving traumatic brain injury from a high school car crash. Since then she’s written biographies of other courageous Oregon women, including her latest, “Abigail Scott Duniway and Susan B. Anthony in Oregon: Hesitate No Longer."
Sunday, Sept. 4: Jason Kilgore
A scientist at a Eugene biotech company, Kilgore has written sci-fi, poetry and fantasy novels. In his new book, “Dragons of the Federation,” an Iron Dragon joins with a young female mage to stop an elvish conspiracy that might end the world’s magic.
Monday, Sept. 5: Marina Richie
Kingfishers are those plucky top-knotted birds that dive into Oregon rivers to spear fish. Did you know they nest underground? In her nature book, “Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher,” Bend author Richie tracks this unusual bird clan from Montana to three continents and back.
Five of the authors will be at the fair every day: Joe Brown (fantasy mystery), Espinoza (sports), Gary Hartman (woodworking), Julie Kooch (Wallowa memoirs), and William Sullivan (hiking, novels).
To meet the other authors, check the daily schedule at oregonstatefair.org/attractions/authors/
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Oregon authors return to Oregon State Fair's Columbia Hall
