Some interesting events popping up this weekend starting with tonight's release party for Alex Felton's book Funny or Die at Container Corps (1322 N Killingsworth Street) at 7 p.m. The book "mines the darker, stranger corners of his day job, the Multnomah County Library, to create subversive comedy in the form of digital collages." Beverages by Ninkasi.


Saturday's events are mercifully separated by an hour and the Morrison bridge so if you're the sort of crazy, literary event hopping monkeys I assume you are you'll have no problem making them both and eating a steak at Sassy's in between.

The Indie Lit Roadshow is hosted and sponsored and tabled by so many different (four) Northwest magazines and publishers that I don't want to type them all. Poor Claudia and Sparkplug Comics will be represented, and Matty Byloos of the Smalldoggies magazine will be reading, along with a bunch of people from Seattle. And it's in the mall! PLACE at Pioneer Place from 2-6 p.m. Here's the Facebook page.

After that's over, jump on the 15 bus and head to Microcosm Publishing (636 SE 11th Avenue). At 7 p.m. they're hosting author Andrej Grubacic, writer of Don't Mourn, Balkanize!. From the press release:

Don't Mourn, Balkanize! Is the first book written from the radical left perspective on the topic of Yugoslav space after the dismantling of the country. In this collection of essays, commentaries and interviews, written between 2002 and 2010, Andrej Grubacic speaks about the politics of balkanization—about the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, neoliberal structural adjustment, humanitarian intervention, supervised independence of Kosovo, occupation of Bosnia, and other episodes of Power which he situates in the long historical context of colonialism, conquest and intervention.

Finally on Sunday evening is the latest installment of Literary Mix Tape. At Valentine's (232 SW Ankeny) writers Arthur Bradford, Frayn Masters (link to a short story I found Googling her name), and Nate Carson (of Witch Mountain) will be reading some of their favorite short stories, excerpts, poems, or whatever. This is a cool event because you get exposed to all kinds of new stuff and because talented readers tend to really loosen up when they're reading someone else's work.

Or you could just nerd out on this actually funny College Humor bit.

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