Steve Wasserman discussing his new book published by Heyday, Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It’s a Lie, in conversation with Marc Cooper at Powell’s City of Books main location in Portland.

In-person event. 1005 W Burnside St, Portland, OR.

Steve Wasserman, raised in Berkeley and a graduate of Cal, is Heyday’s publisher. He is a former editor-at-large for Yale University Press and editorial director of Times Books/Random House and publisher of Hill & Wang and The Noonday Press at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He has worked with many authors and published numerous books, including, most recently, Greil Marcus’s The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs, Martha Hodes’s Mourning Lincoln, David Thomson’s Why Acting Matters, and two posthumous volumes of the late critic Ralph J. Gleason’s musical and political writings. A founder of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California, Wasserman was a principal architect of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books during the nine years he served as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review (1996–2005). He began his career as an assistant editor to Warren Hinckle at Francis Ford Coppola’s City Magazine of San Franciscoand went on to become deputy editor of the Sunday Opinion section and Op-Ed Page of the Los Angeles Times (1978–1983) before becoming editor in chief of New Republic Books, based in Washington, D.C., and New York. He was also a partner in Kneerim & Williams, a Boston-based literary agency, and represented, among others, Robert Scheer, Christopher Hitchens, David Thomson, Linda Ronstadt, and Placido Domingo. He has written for many publications, including The Village Voice, Threepenny Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The American Conservative, The Progressive, Columbia Journalism Review, Los Angeles Times, and the (London) Times Literary Supplement.

Marc Cooper, associate professor and director of Annenberg Digital News at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, has covered upheavals in Europe and Latin America, wars in the Middle East, and several U.S. presidential campaigns. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, Playboy, The Nation, and the Washington Post. He is a former columnist and senior editor for the LA Weekly. An early practitioner of the new media, he founded MarcCooper.com in 2004. In the 2008 presidential campaign, he was senior editor and special correspondent for The Huffington Post and editor of its OffTheBus project. Cooper has produced or reported for CBS News, PBS Frontline, NBC, Pacifica Radio, and the CBC and BBC radio services. He is a contributing editor to The Nation and former host of the nationally syndicated Radio Nation. Among his books are the best-selling Pinochet and Me, a memoir of his stint as translator for Chilean president Salvador Allende. Awards include an Armstrong Memorial Award and a Sidney Hillman Foundation Award.