Hood River author Kathy Watson and University of Oregon School of Journalism associate professor Brent Walth, will be in conversation at Tsunami Books on Saturday, March 14 at 2 p.m.. Both will read from recent work, and talk about writing the West, the publishing industry, and the future of journalism.

Watson's debut novel, Orphans of the Living, follows the Stovall family's early 20th-century quest for home and redemption as they encounter racism, poverty and inequality across the American South and West. 

The novel is a 2025 Literary Titan Book Award Gold Medalist in Fiction. Early reviews include this one from Willy Vlautin, winner of the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and author of eight novels, including The Horse: 

Watson was nearly a graduate of the UO School of Journalism, leaving one term shy of graduation to take her first newspaper job. She spent years as a public relations executive and journalist, including six as editor-in-chief of Oregon Business magazine, before embarking on a career as a chef and restaurant owner of two Columbia Gorge restaurants.

Brent Walth joined the UO School of Journalism and Communication in 2015 after more than 30 years as an editor, author, and investigative reporter. He was a 2006 Nieman Foundation fellow at Harvard University. He is a five-time winner of the Bruce Baer Award, Oregon’s top reporting prize, and a recipient of the Gerald Loeb Award, the nation’s top honor for business and financial reporting.

At The Oregonian, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2000, and in 2001 he shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for an investigation into abuses by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He is the author of Fire at Eden’s Gate: Tom McCall and the Oregon Story, a portrait of the state’s most influential governor — a book President Bill Clinton called “a remarkable biography.” The UO School of Journalism and Communication inducted Brent into its Hall of Achievement in 2014.

Tsunami Books is located at 2585 Willamette St., Eugene, Oregon.