Live Wire x Portland Book Festival

Live Wire is proud to partner with the Portland Book Festival for a special matinee performance featuring three extraordinary writers plus a special musical performance.

Live Wire Radio is an independently produced radio show and non-profit based in Portland, Oregon. Hosted by Luke Burbank and announced by Elena Passarello, the show artfully blends unpredictable conversation, live music, and original comedy featuring all kinds of cultural talent and creative minds, from emerging artists to established acts. Live Wire champions discovery by producing engaging, spirited, and genuine live and listening experiences for a local and national audience.

Featured guests:

Morgan Parker is the author of young adult novel Who Put This Song On?; and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. Her debut book of essays, You Get What You Pay For, traces the difficulty and beauty of existing as a Black woman through American history, from the foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin,winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared inThe New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Danielia Cotton is no stranger to reinventing herself. Growing up in Hopewell, NJ, Danielia was raised on a steady diet of classic rock behemoths like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones. With a powerful first album that launched her career, Small White Town, Danielia was selected as “Artist to Watch” by WXPN out of Philadelphia. Danielia’s latest project, Charley’s Pride: A Tribute to Black Country Music, pays homage to trailblazer Charley Pride – the first Black American voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame – while infusing the songs with a fresh, modern approach that is all her own.