Please join us for a Thursday Evening Book Talk with authors Caroline and Jane Kurtz. They will both read from and discuss their new books. Books will be available for purchase and all are welcome!
CAROLINE KURTZ | WALKING THE TIDELINE: LOSS AND RENEWAL ON THE OREGON COAST TRAIL
In Walking the Tideline, Caroline Kurtz solo hikes the rugged, beautiful Oregon Coast—an expedition of isolation, adventure, joy, and grief inside the emotional wilderness of finding one's identity after the death of a loved one.
From the age of five, Caroline Kurtz grew up in Ethiopia. There, her father supervised the first school, clinic and protestant church near the remote town of Maji in the mountainous southwestern corner. Beginning at the age of ten, Caroline attended boarding school, first in Addis Ababa and then Alexandria, Egypt. She left for college in the United States at eighteen. After graduation, she married a boy she’d met in boarding school, and the couple returned with their family to live and work for twelve years in Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan.
They returned to the US and lived in Salem, Oregon until he died in 2013. Caroline moved to Portland where she and her sister, the children’s author Jane Kurtz, launched bilingual books for early Ethiopian readers. Their publisher, Open Hearts Big Dreams, has now printed anddistributed over 100 titles in various Ethiopian languages. From Portland, Caroline returns regularly to Ethiopia, bringing solar power and economic development options to women in Maji, where she grew up.
Learn more about Caroline and her work at www.DevelopMaji.org.
JANE KURTZ | OH, GIVE ME A HOME
In verse, Oh Give Me a Home relates the story of a girl’s inside-out view of America as she journeys from Ethiopia, searches for friends and belonging.
Award-winning children’s book author Jane Kurtz was born in Portland but spent almost all her childhood and teenage years in Ethiopia. In a starred review, Kirkus called her new memoir in verse a buoyant, beautiful story “of cultural adjustment as seen through a child’s eyes.” Booklist said the book was “heartwarming, relatable, and humorous” (also a starred review) and Foreword called it a touching memoir about belonging and sisterhood. Jane Kurtz is an author of more than 40 fiction and nonfiction books for young readers.