Are you read-y?
Oregon Legacy Literary Series returns to Lincoln City
Five accomplished writers will headline the 2026 Oregon Legacy literary series at Lincoln City’s Driftwood Public Library this March.
The Sunday afternoon programs will bring nationally and regionally recognized authors to the Oregon Coast for readings and discussion.
The series opens March 1 with Justin Hocking, whose memoir “The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld” won the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and was a PEN Center USA Award finalist. The book was also a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a Library Journal "Best Books of 2014" pick, and one of "Ten Brilliant Books That Will Grab You from Page One" in The Huffington Post and Kirkus Reviews. He is a recipient of the Willamette Writers' Humanitarian Award, an Oregon Literary Fellowship for fiction and four Regional Arts and Culture Council Project Grant awards and was named as one of "Ten Writers Who Made Portland" by Willamette Week. His work has appeared in outlets including The Rumpus, Orion, Tin House online and Poets & Writers. His latest book, “A Field Guide to the Subterranean” was released in 2025.
The series continues March 8 with a visit from Portland-based writer and journalist Elizabeth Mehren. A former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and faculty member at Boston University, Mehren is the author of five books. Her newest, “I Lived to Tell the World: Stories from Survivors of Holocaust, Genocide, and the Atrocities of War,” presents 13 inspiring profiles of men and women from Rwanda, Myanmar, Bosnia, Syria and more who have endured unthinkable cruelty, only to resume productive lives in their new homes in Oregon. Mehren earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at UC Berkeley and has written for national magazines, appeared on television and radio, and has received awards for teaching and journalism.
Oregon Legacy continues March 15 with a return visit from writer Leni Zumas. Zumas is the author of four books of fiction, most recently “Wolf Bells,” which was named a Best Book of 2025 by The Washington Post and Portland Monthly. Her bestselling novel “Red Clocks” won the 2019 Oregon Book Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Neukom Award for Speculative Fiction.
Zumas is also the author of the short story collection “Farewell Navigator” and the novel “The Listeners.” Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Granta, Guernica, The Cut, Tin House and elsewhere.
A finalist for the 2021 John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, Zumas lives in Portland, where she is a professor in the creative writing program at Portland State University.
On March 22, the series welcomes Joel Mayward, assistant professor of Christian ministries, theology and the arts at George Fox University. He is an alumnus of Portland Seminary and the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he earned a doctorate in divinity with studies in theology, philosophy and film.
Mayward is the author of “The Dardenne Brothers’ Cinematic Parables: Integrating Theology, Philosophy, and Film,” an academic monograph examining the filmography of Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne through the lenses of theological aesthetics,
Beyond authoring books, He has published articles in refereed academic journals including Pro Ecclesia, Horizons, Theology, ARTS, Journal of Youth and Theology, Journal of Religion and Film and Journal for Religion, Film and Media, as well as in popular magazines such as Christianity Today.
The series concludes March 29 with a visit from Scott Nadelson.
Nadelson grew up in northern New Jersey before moving to Oregon, where he has lived for the past 27 years. He has published a novel, a memoir and six collections of short stories, most recently “While It Lasts,” winner of the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, and his newest novel, “Trust Me,” published in 2024.
Nadelson’s work has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, including Ploughshares, STORY, The Southern Review, New England Review, Harvard Review, Glimmer Train and The Best American Short Stories.
He teaches at Willamette University, where he is Hallie Brown Ford Chair in Writing, and in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
Each program begins at 3 pm on Sundays throughout March at Driftwood Public Library, located on the second floor of City Hall at 801 SW Hwy. 101. For more information, email khobson@lincolncity.org or go to driftwoodlib.org.