William L. Sullivan
Winter is the time to curl up with a book, and Oregon authors have again stepped forward to help. A total of 48 local authors will be signing their books at the Authors & Artists Fair in Eugene this Saturday. Most have freshly published works this year.
Admission is free from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Lane Events Center next door to Holiday Market. A portion of the book sales benefits the Lane Library League, a nonprofit group that supports rural volunteer libraries. The event will also feature the works of seven local artists.
Among the local authors debuting new books, Melissa Hart may be best known for her books about owls. Her latest has a different focus. “Daisy Woodworm Changes the World” is a charming, uplifting young adult novel about a 13-year-old girl who overcomes everything, despite Down syndrome.
Also from Eugene, Michael Sheehan has just published a history of the ice-skating rink at the Lane County Fairgrounds. In “Rink: Stories from an Oregon Ice Arena,” we learn of a Red Army escapee who becomes the rink’s speed-skating coach, the early performances of Olympic schemer Tanya Harding, and a terminally ill ice hockey star who played his last game in Eugene attached to an oxygen tank.
Since “The Far Corner” won John Daniel’s third Oregon Book Award in 2011, he has published “Gifted,” a novel set in the Coast Range foothills, and now “Lighted Distances: Four Seasons on Goodlow Rim,” a sequence of haiku and prose written on a retreat in south-central Oregon.
Eugene thriller author L.J. Sellers is seldom silent for long. In the past decade she has published more than a dozen novels set in or near Eugene, including many in the Detective Jackson series. Her latest is “AfterStrike,” about a woman who loses her memory after being hit by lightning, and gradually learns that her past was full of even greater scares.
Eugene cartoonist Jesse Springer returns with a humorous blast from the past. “Emerald City: The Compleat Collection” brings back all 234 of the quirky cartoon strips he published in Eugene Weekly from 1996 to 2000, following the adventures of two clueless Eugene guys, Barry and Will, and a feisty niece named Katie.
Donna McFarland has become an expert at formatting and publishing books on the internet. She’s written books about how to do that, but her new children’s book is more fun. In “I Lost My Elephant” a boy searches for a missing pachyderm. If readers look close enough, they’ll find one on every page.
A complete list of the authors who will be autographing at the Authors & Artists Fair, along with the titles of their most recent works, is available at bit.ly/413heRi. Note that some authors will only attend for half of the day.
William L. Sullivan is the author of 23 books, including “The Ship in the Woods” and the updated “100 Hikes” series for Oregon. Learn more at www.oregonhiking.com.
