Suuuuper awesome event goin’ down at Powell’s in Portland tonight. Rad Dad editors Tomas Moniz and Jeremy Adam Smith are “opening” for Ariel Gore, who will be reading from her killer new book All the Pretty People. Check out Ariel’s blog here, Tomas‘s here, and Smith’s Daddy Dialectics site. All the fun starts today (August 5th) at Powell’s (1005 Burnside) at 7:30pm. It is free, free, free…
ABOUT ALL THE PRETTY PEOPLE This new book by Ariel Gore brings out all of the dirt on 1970s suburban hippies. Through an authentic voice, funny stories alternate between warming and saddening your soul. It’s a queer love story. But it’s also got no shortage of shame, violence, and Barbie envy. It’s about the pretty people she used to know in California—the people she wanted to be but never quite felt she was. “How was I to know that all the pretty people got their answers from TV?”
ABOUT THE NEW RAD DAD BOOK Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood combines the best from the award-winning zine Rad Dad and from Daddy Dialectic, two kindred publications that have explored parenting as political territory. Both have pushed the conversation around fathering beyond the safe, apolitical focus and have worked hard to create a diverse, multi-faceted space to grapple with the complexity of fathering. Today more than ever, fatherhood demands constant improvisation, risk, and struggle. With grace, honesty, and strength, Rad Dad’s writers tackle all the issues that other parenting guides are afraid to touch: the brutalities, beauties, and politics of the birth experience, the challenges of parenting on an equal basis with mothers, the tests faced by transgendered and gay fathers, the emotions of sperm donation, and parental confrontations with war, violence, racism, and incarceration. Rad Dad is for every father out in the real world trying to parent in ways that are loving, meaningful, authentic, and ultimately revolutionary. Contributors Include: Steve Almond, Jack Amoureux, Mike Araujo, Mark Andersen, Jeff Chang, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jeff Conant, Jason Denzin, Cory Doctorow, Craig Elliott, Chip Gagnon, Keith Hennessy, David L. Hoyt, Simon Knapus, Ian MacKaye, Tomas Moniz, Zappa Montag, Raj Patel, Jeremy Adam Smith, Jason Sperber, Burke Stansbury, Shawn Taylor, Tata, Mark Whiteley, and Jeff West.