Winter 2016
Tuesday, February 16
4 - 5 p.m.
Saint Clare Room, 3rd Floor
Learning Commons
RSVP
In collaboration with Silicon Valley Reads, the University Library is pleased to feature Benjamin Parzybok, author of Sherwood Nation, for the Winter Book of the Quarter. Parzybok will discuss his book with John Farnsworth, Senior Lecturer in the Environmental Studies and Sciences department, and will be available to answer questions from faculty, staff, and students. A limited supply of books are available in the campus bookstore for purchase.
About the Book
Water rations are down to one gallon per person per day . . . the mayor is proposing digging a trench to the Pacific Ocean . . . dried out West Coast cities are crumbling and being abandoned by the east . . . and in Portland, Oregon, water is declared a communal right but hoarding and riots persist.
Amidst this, a young water activist nicknamed Maid Marian (a.k.a. Renee, 20-something, barista and eternal part-time college student) becomes a hero. She rides her swelling popularity in opposition to the city government and becomes an icon to a city in need.
Sherwood Nation is a post-collapse non-apocalyptic novel! It is the story of the rise and fall of a micronation within a city. It is a love story, a war story, a grand social experiment, a treatise on hacking and remaking government, on freedom and necessity, on individualism and community.
About the Author
Benjamin Parzybok is the author of Sherwood Nation and the novel Couch. He has been the creator/co-creator of many other projects, including Gumball Poetry, The Black Magic Insurance Agency (city-wide, one night alternate reality game), and Project Hamad. He lives in Portland with the artist Laura Moulton and their two kids.