Pacific Northwest Authors to Read: Local Pride from Our Shelves
There’s a particular pleasure in reading a book set down the road from where you live. Here in Milwaukie, just south of Portland, we shelve a remarkable number of authors who called the Pacific Northwest home — or who grew up tromping through the same rain we do. Here are some local-pride picks, most of which turn up regularly in our used stacks.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Portland’s own
Le Guin lived and wrote in Portland for decades, and her imagination looms over the whole region. Start with A Wizard of Earthsea if you want fantasy with real moral weight, or The Left Hand of Darkness for science fiction that still feels decades ahead of its time. The Dispossessedis the one readers tend to press into friends’ hands and never get back.
Beverly Cleary, who grew up here
Generations of kids met Ramona Quimby on Klickitat Street — a real street in Portland’s Grant Park, where Cleary herself grew up. Ramona the Pest, Henry Huggins, and Dear Mr. Henshaware perennials we’re always restocking. If there’s a young reader in your life, these belong on the shelf; see our best chapter books for young readers for more.
The great Northwest memoirists
Cheryl Strayed wrote Wildabout hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and the book carries the damp, fir-scented spirit of this corner of the country. Pair it with Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and Into Thin Air — Krakauer is a Pacific Northwest native, and few writers capture the pull of wild places more honestly.
Sharp Northwest fiction
Chuck Palahniuk, born in Pasco, Washington and long a Portland fixture, wrote Fight Club— still his most famous, still his most misread. For a warmer but no less incisive voice, Spokane’s Jess Walter delivers with Beautiful Ruins and the story collection We Live in Water. Both writers prove the region grows more than rain clouds.
History with a Northwest accent
Timothy Egan, a Seattle native, writes narrative history that reads like a novel. The Worst Hard Time, about the Dust Bowl, won the National Book Award; The Big Burnrecounts the great 1910 fire that swept the Northern Rockies. They’re the kind of books that make you grateful for a rainy afternoon and a comfortable chair.
Why used is the way in
The happy thing about reading local legends is that, around here, their books are everywhere secondhand. Le Guin paperbacks, Cleary hardcovers, and well-loved copies of Wildpass across our counter all the time — often for a few dollars and a little trade-in credit. It’s the most affordable way to build a Northwest shelf.
Come browse our curated selection, or stop by the shopand tell us which Northwest voice you’re chasing — we love this hunt. Not sure where to start? Let the Next Read Matchmakerpoint you, and if you’re shopping for someone else, our book gifts for teachers guide is full of ideas.