2016.11.5. Wordstock - a Portland book festival

11/5 Saturday. Rain. Wordstock is not a well managed event as I hoped. Tickets are expensive: $15 advance, $18 at the door. Free author interviews and readings scattered over 7 venues (+1 for children's literature, +1 for book sales) of various sizes (only 1 large enough: Arlene Schnitzer Hall), so it practically guaranteed that you don't get in some of what you want to hear. 2 hour workshops are $75 each. Over-printed programs for just a day (many piles of them untouched at the end of the day). It was raining all day, getting in and out of places was inconvenient, especially I had to check in my backpack and umbrella in a few places.

All the author events are "moderated". Sometimes the moderator is a bore. Q&A isn't always allowed. I enjoyed Sherman Alexie's picture book "Thunder Boy Junior". He's quite funny. Not so much with Colson Whitehead and Yaa Gyasi, as the well prepared moderator spoke more than the two authors combined. She was trying to make common analogy into each question to both authors, which is completely unnecessary. I didn't come to hear you talk! Some venues would have a moderator with 3 writers, and the poor moderator tried to ask the same questions to all 3. None of the writers gets a fair share of time to express their ideas or their books. I prefer letting the author talk whatever (s)he wants, or do one-on-one interview. I enjoyed Christopher Rothko, Rob Spillman, Garrard Conley I didn't like the interview with Sally Tisdale as much as I'd hoped.

Since this festival is in and next Portland Art Museum, I checked out the new Andy Warhol exhibition. Some of his drawings are shocking, some are fun, some are typically boring. Again, have to check in my pack and umbrella.