Western Book Roundup

Happy Birthday Neal Cassady, Oregon Book Awards, and The Writers’ Round-Up

By Jenny Shank, 2-09-11

	Neal Cassady.

Denver Mayor Guillermo Vidal proclaimed Friday “Neal Cassady Day” in honor of the famous Beat muse’s 85th birthday. As William Porter wrote in his informative profile of Cassady for the Denver Post, “Not bad for a kid who grew up in Larimer Street flophouses, did time in jail and bragged about boosting 500 cars by the time he was 20.” The Mercury Café hosted a party to celebrate the birthday of Cassady, the model for the charismatic Dean Moriarty figure in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Porter listed the many works of literature that feature Cassady, including Keruoac’s Visions of Cody, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  Cassady is also the subject of a new documentary, “Neal Cassady: The Denver Years,” by Denver’s Heather Dalton. Anyone who aspires to be a film producer can help Dalton fund the project on Kickstarter.

• David Vann will discuss his new novel Caribou Island, at the Tattered Cover (Colfax) on February 15 (7:30 p.m.). The novel is set in Alaska, and Washington Post book critic Ron Charles described it in this way: “Inspired by the experience of [Vann’s] stepmother’s parents, this story of a family in southern Alaska comes to us in a series of vibrant moments as bracing, invigorating and finally as deadly as the icy water that surrounds these characters.” Vann has won many writing awards—check out this mind-boggling list on his website, and look for my review of the novel soon.

• The Patagonia Public Library in Arizona will host its annual fundraiser, The Writers’ Round-Up, on Saturday, February 12 (Cady Hall, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.). Thirty writers will be on hand for readings, book signings, and writing workshops. Several authors we’ve featured on New West will be there, including Philip Caputo, Tom Miller, Deanne Stillman, Stephen Strom. Other notable participants include poet and fiction writer Jimmy Santiago Baca, and several children’s book authors: Chris Call, author of DinoTrux, Juanita Havill, author of the Jamaica series, and Susan Lowell, author of The Three Little Javelinas.

• Billings-based Craig Lancaster is on an old-fashioned book tour and a blog book tour in support of his second novel, The Summer Son. Among the stops on the blog tour: Jim Thomsen interviewed Lancaster, and Lancaster wrote an essay about his thoughts on writing in Montana for Chérie Newman’s The Write Question blog. Lancaster will appear in person at Liberty Bay Books in Poulsbo, Washington tonight, and he’ll be at Red Lodge books in Red Lodge, Mont. on February 19.

• It’s book award season in Oregon, and this year The Oregonian and Literary Arts are sponsoring a Readers’ Choice Award. People can vote for their favorite Oregon book of 2010 here, and the winners will be announced on Monday, April 25, 2011 at The Gerding Theater in Portland, along with the winners in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and more.

Please follow me on Twitter and with any regional books news or events.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.