Rene Denfeld reading from The Child Finder
Willy Vlautin reading from Don’t Skip Out on Me
Saturday, May 19 | 7:00 p.m.
Admission: $7.00
No Open Mic
Join us for a special evening featuring two acclaimed authors reading from their most recent work.
Rene Denfeld will read from her second novel, The Childfinder.
A private investigator dubbed “the Child Finder” searches Oregon’s Skookum National Forest for an eight-year-old girl who disappeared three years prior. Naomi’s methodical search takes her deep into the icy, mysterious forest in the Pacific Northwest, and into her own fragmented past.
The Childfinder received a starred Library Journal review and glowing reviews from major press, Publisher’s Weekly to the New York Times Book Review . An Indie Next pick, the book landed as the #1 fiction bestseller at Powell’s within its first week, and became a top #10 bestseller in Canada and a bestseller in the United States.
Rene’s lyrical, beautiful writing is inspired by her work with sex trafficking victims and innocents in prison. Rene was the Chief Investigator at a public defender’s office and has worked hundreds of cases. In addition to her advocacy work, Rene has been a foster adoptive parent for twenty years.
“A darkly luminous story of resilience and the deeply human instinct for survival, for love… The Child Finder is a terrifying and ultimately uplifting novel that demands to be consumed and then once inside you–lingers….” — A.M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven
Willy Vlautin will read from his latest novel, Don’t Skip Out on Me.
A moving story about a young man’s search for belonging, Vlautin’s fifth novel is an understated yet powerful exploration of identity and loneliness. Horace Hopper, half-Paiute and half-Irish, abandoned by his parents, dreams of proving his worth as a championship boxer.
“Don’t Skip Out on Me is going to make your heart crumple into a little wad of paper and then open back up into a perfect paper airplane sailing the skies from the hand of a boy. How does a bi-cultural man find a self when he’s been abandoned by his parents? He invents it, that’s how, with his hands, his fists, and that fist-shaped muscle, a heart. No one anywhere writes as beautifully about people whose stories stay close to the dirt.” Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Misfit’s Manefisto.
Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Vlautin immersed himself in music from early on. A Paul Kelly song, based on Raymond Carver’s Too Much Water So Close to Home, inspired him to write stories. Vlautin has published four other novels, The Motel Life, Northline, Lean on Pete and The Free. The movie Lean on Pete, filmed in Oregon, was released in April.
Vlautin also founded the band Richmond Fontaine in 1994. The band produced eleven studio albums, plus a handful of live recordings, driven by Vlautin’s dark, story-like songwriting.
There will be no Open Mic at the evening event to allow for the reading and Q&A with two authors.
Doors open at 630.
The Manzanita Writers’ Series presents a special evening with two acclaimed authors: Rene Denfeld and Willy Vlautin, reading from their latest books, The Child Finder and Don’t Skip Out on Me.
