An Evening with Casey Parks

Parks, who spent a decade as a reporter at The Oregonian, covers gender and family issues for the Post. Her first book, Diary of a Misfit, explores sexual identity, its treatment by the Southern Christian churches in which Parks grew up, and her tortured relationship with her mother. The New York Times said of the book: "Most moving is Parks’s depiction of a queer lineage, her assertion of an ancestry of outcasts, a tapestry of fellow misfits into which the marginalized will always, for better or worse, fit."

Astoria cartoonist and author Alyssa Graybeal will open the evening. Graybeal is the author of Floppy, an award-winning memoir about living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic disorder affecting the body’s connective tissues.

The reading will be followed by a reception and signing by the authors.