Join us at the Cannon Beach Library for our NW Authors Series. Oregon Book Award-winning author and Emmy-nominated screenwriter Jon Raymond will discuss his works. His latest book, Denial, is nominated for a 2023 Oregon Book Award. Reviewers have called it deeply humane, exquisitely descriptive, and enthralling. Books will be available for purchase and signing after the event.

Jon Raymond is the author of the books The Half-Life (a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 2004), Livability (a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and winner of the Oregon Book Award, 2009), Rain Dragon (2012), Freebird (an Indie Next Great Reads selection, 2017), and Denial (a New York Time’s Book Review Editor’s Choice, 2022) . He also published a collection of art writing called The Community: Writings About Art In and Around Portland, 1997 – 2016. He’s collaborated on six screenplays with the director Kelly Reichardt, including Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Night Moves, First Cow, and Showing Up, numerous of which were based on his fiction, and on the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce with Todd Haynes. He was editor of Plazm Magazine, an Associate and Contributing Editor at Tin House Magazine, and served on the Board of Directors of Literary Arts. His writing has appeared in Zoetrope, Tin House, Artforum, Bookforum, and many other places. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his partner, the writer Emily Chenoweth, and their kids, Eliza and Josephine.

“Denial is a short, sharp book, a subtle exploration of what justice means on the other side of human-driven climate calamity. Jon Raymond has created a scarily plausible future, and against this future considers one of the pivotal questions of our age—how to hold responsible those who, in the dizzying days before the worst of things, profited off the planet’s destruction. There are no easy answers in this novel, only a deeply humane look at the chasm between crime and punishment, cause and consequence.”—Omar El Akkad, author of the national bestseller American War and What Strange Paradise

“Enthralling…The not-so-distant future of Denial questions much of what we think we know about life and death and the consequences of our decisions…This subtle and morally engaging novel is a simple yet thought-provoking read. Raymond’s chaste yet exquisitely descriptive language paints the world for what it is—in all of its beauty and destruction—and his well-constructed plot turns the thrill of the chase on its head.”—Emma Mayer, Newsweek

Denial is a riveting tale that dares to imagine the afterlife of meaningful climate action. Jon Raymond wonders beautifully what it might feel like to summon the collective will to alter our society’s suicidal arrangement. A thrilling and boldly hopeful ode to moving on, however imperfectly.”—Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus and I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness