On Monday, October 27, I’ll be visiting the University of Portland as one of the featured authors in its 2025-26 Readings and Lecture Series.
My first stop at the school will be an American Literature class, where I’ll do my best to answer student questions about my writing and literature in general. One thing we’ll surely talk about is my biography subject Robert Lax’s relationship with Jack Kerouac, whose writing they will have read.
The Last Grand Tour‘s entrance into the world came on January 28, and its first two weeks have been far more successful than I or my publisher hoped.
On launch day, I returned to Portland State University for the first time since retiring (in 2017) from 17 years of teaching in the creative writing program there. The reason for my return was a panel discussion with my publisher (Mike Schepps), editor (Molly Simas), and book designer (Olivia Croom Hammerman) titled “From Manuscript to Marketplace: The Last Grand Tour’s Collaborative Journey.” We had a lovely turnout, with current and former students, faculty, and community members.
That evening, I appeared at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland with documentary filmmaker Brian Lindstrom interviewing me. The place was packed, with friends from many parts of my life attending, some of whom I hadn’t seen in years. A Powell’s representative told me there were 80 people there, and they sold so many books, my publisher had to run out for more.
Two days later, on January 30, I was back in the Seattle area at the Edmonds Bookshop, where 50 people showed up to hear my good friend and fellow European guide Gene Openshaw interview me.
Then, this past Thursday, Sylvia and I traveled up to snowy Bellingham, where the turnout was smaller but still filled the event space. Gene Openshaw was my partner on stage again and the conversation range even more widely, thanks to some great audience questions. We talked about everything from post-Wall European freedom to Romanticism to my development as a writer and how a fiction writer creates an imagined world.
The next event on the Last Grand Tour tour will be the book’s Seattle launch at Third Place Books in Ravenna at 7 p.m. this coming Tuesday, November 11. Click on the image below for more details.
This honor comes just 13 days before the novel’s release on January 28. On that day, Powell’s Books in downtown Portland, OR, will be hosting the book’s launch. At the event, I’ll be in conversation with the brilliant documentary filmmaker Brian Lindstrom. Brian’s latest film is the fascinating “Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill.” Click on the title to watch a trailer for it.
A huge thank you to Powell’s for hosting this celebration!
Panel Discussion, From Manuscript to Marketplace: The Last Grand Tour’s Collaborative Journey
Tuesday, Jan. 28 | 3pm | FMH 302
Discussion with PSU Creative Writing alumni from local small press Korza Books and Professor Emeritus Michael N. McGregor about their collaborative work to prepare McGregor’s Kirkus-starred and highly acclaimed debut novel, The Last Grand Tour, for its release that day. Michael and the Korza staff will give attendees an inside look at the journey from manuscript to published book, focusing on the practical steps of manuscript evaluation, revision and editing, cover and page design, promotion and marketing, and more.
The Last Grand Tour is one of just four new “standout” books featured in Oregon Winter, Willamette Week‘s annual winter activity magazine. The guide can be picked up for free at locations all around Portland, OR.
In an article titled “These Standout New Books by Pacific Northwest Writers Will Transport You This Winter,” WW writer Michelle Kicherer recommends Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir Reading the Waves, John Larison’s novel The Ancients, Judy Nahum’s poetry collection I Have Wrestled with the Way Clouds Weep, and The Last Grand Tour for “cozying up indoors this winter.”
“The Last Grand Tour,” Kicherer writes, “offers a grand escape this winter that might make you grateful to be home under a blanket.”
A beautiful new endorsement of THE LAST GRAND TOUR by Chelsea Bieker, author of the new breakout bestseller MADWOMAN.
“[Bieker’s] writing is raw, breathlessly confessional, brilliant in its depiction of the long shadows cast by domestic violence, the constant tension carried by survivors.”
The publication-day launch for The Last Grand Tour is set for 7 p.m. on Tuesday, January 28, 2025, at Powell’s Books in downtown Portland!
I hope you’ll be there!
If you can’t come, you can pre-order the book from Powell’s and they’ll send you a signed copy right after the event. Just click here.
I’m delighted to have documentary filmmaker Brian Lindstrom interviewing me that night. A few months ago, I attended a pre-release showing of Brian’s latest film, Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill, and was blown away. It’s a thoroughly fascinating look at the difficult times of a terrifically talented singer-songwriter whose name and songs might have become as common as those of Joni Mitchell or James Taylor if her life had gone differently.
Lost Angel is available on Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime. And Brian’s earlier documentary, Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse, is available on Kanopy. He is currently working on a documentary about the marathon program at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn, OR, and a follow-up to his 2016 film Mothering Inside about the Family Preservation Project at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, OR.
I hope you’ll come out on January 28 to celebrate the release of The Last Grand Tour into the world!
For those who don’t know about Kirkus starred reviews, here’s what one author wrote about them:
“Kirkus stars are like diamonds: extremely rare. A starred review is the top of the top, a prestigious, Holy Grail that highlights books of “exceptional merit.” A starred review represents outstanding writing.”
This kind of attention is huge for a first novel from a small publisher. I’m deeply thankful to the unnamed reviewer.
The other day, Sylvia brought out photo albums from our tour guiding days in the 1990s. The shots here are from one of the trips I led through Greece and Turkey when I had my own company, Halcyon Tours.
My tours were focused on small groups, learning about the local culture, and staying in local-style places where my clients could get to know the people of an area. Of course, there were plenty of opportunities for wine-drinking on rooftops in places like Oia on Santorini too!
Back then, Oia was still somewhat unvisited. Many of the buildings hadn’t been rebuilt after the massive (7.5 magnitude) earthquake that hit the island in 1956.
In high season now, as many as 17,000 cruise ship tourists disembark on the island EACH DAY, with most of them crowding into the small town of Oia at sunset time.
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To be immersed in the kind of adventure it was possible to have in Europe before the awful crush of cruise-ship mass tourism, check out my forthcoming novel, The Last Grand Tour, available for pre-order now. (It will be published on January 28, 2025.)
Here’s a synopsis:
American tour guide Joe Newhouse wants nothing more than to reach Venice. Since moving to Munich after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he’s watched his business fail, his wife leave him, and his love for Europe diminish. Now he faces one last ten-day tour with a surly group that doesn’t want to be there. As he leads them through the mythic lands of Europe’s Romantic past, he grows increasingly disturbed by their stories of earlier lives, puzzled by their desire to be with a man who doesn’t arrive, and entangled in an illicit affair that promises to either save him or plunge his tour-and his life-into madness.
Soaked in the Romantic atmosphere and dark deeds of old Europe-as well as the freedoms and hopes of a new era-The Last Grand Tour takes us on a perilous journey through Hitler’s Berchtesgaden, Mozart’s Salzburg, and Mad King Ludwig’s Bavarian fantasyland before reaching its stunning climax in the murky waters of Venice. Along the way, it explores the often-shifting lines between fidelity and freedom, illusion and reality, regret and desire.
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