Grace Krilanovich & Jim Ruland—Acid Green Velvet & Mightier Than the Sword

Third Place Books welcomes authors Grace Krilanovich (The Orange Eats Creeps) and Jim Ruland (Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records) to our Ravenna store for a conversation about Grace's new book Acid Green Velvet, a surreal exploration of nihilism, paternity, and American rot, and Jim's new book Mightier than the Sword, a twisty, pulp take on the dirtiest job of them all: working as a part-time professor in a college town.

For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!

Tickets:

This event is free to attend. Registration is recommended in advance.

Please note: While RSVP helps us anticipate attendance, your RSVP may not guarantee a seat. Seating is first-come, first-served, and all events at our Ravenna neighborhood store are free and open to the public. Only standing room may be available for events with high interest.

We are happy to accommodate any accessibility concerns. Please contact us at events@thirdplacebooks.com or call our Ravenna store at (206) 525-2347.

About Acid Green Velvet. . .

The breathtaking and consequential first novel in nearly two decades from the award-winning author of the cult sensation, The Orange Eats Creeps.

"Meticulously realized and yet brazenly fresh, Acid Green Velvet is a marvel of character and situation. Krilanovich writes unlike any other writer."
—Jeff VanderMeer, author of The Southern Reach Trilogy

In the late 19th century on the central California coast, two wayward young hoboes — Paulette and Kenneth — threaten to kill a menacing man who wronged them: Paulette’s father, Rodney Eligon.

A handful of years later, the town of Anzar has become the stomping grounds for all manner of cults, eccentrics, earth religions, and communal living. Presiding over the town from the luxe frivolity of their family manor, the Hasleys have ruled Anzar for generations. Their grip on the town is threatened by the rise of the working class, and their union with the itinerant population. Meanwhile, Paulette has taken up residence in the home of Johnny Hasley, a wealthy faux-socialist poseur, hoping to become his wife. Her plans are complicated by boot-prints in the garden signaling the arrival of Kenneth, who carries with him a dark secret that poses a grave threat to both of them.

In Anzar’s cracked mirror, Californian freakiness meets Victorian preoccupations with the domestic, pollution and filth, haunted houses, fringe societies, living death, spiritualism, vampiric women, and class parasites. Acid Green Velvet is a surreal powder keg of nihilism, fathers and their failures, manifest destiny, and American identity, penned in rapturous prose by the fiercest writer of her generation.

About Mightier Than the Sword. . .

What do a gambler, a poet, a punk, and a writer of westerns have in common?

Four college professors embark on a crime spree in Northern Arizona in 1993. They start by robbing an off-campus bookstore, but when things don't go as planned, the book bandits are drawn into a bigger, bolder caper involving corrupt university officials, drug-dealing frat boys, Navajo ex-cons, and a mysterious golden pen. Steeped in the lore of the West, Mightier Than the Sword is a twisty, pulp take on the dirtiest job of them all: working as a part-time professor in a college town.

Grace Krilanovich is the author of The Orange Eats Creeps, a finalist for The Believer Book Award and the Indie Booksellers’ Choice Award in 2010, and reissued in 2025 for Two Dollar Radio’s New Classics series. Her work has appeared in Black Clock, The Rumpus, The Comics Journal, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She was a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree in 2010. She lives in Los Angeles.

Jim Ruland is an old punk who lives by the sea. He is the author of the novels Mightier than the Sword, Make It Stop and Forest of Fortune and the short story collection Big Lonesome. He is also the LA Times bestselling author of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, which was named a best book of 2022 by Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Ruland is the co-author of Do What You Want with Bad Religion and My Damage with Keith Morris. The Repo Code: How Repo Man Brought Punk to the Masses and Became a Gen X Manifesto will be published summer 2027. In addition, Jim is a frequent contributor to the LA Times, a columnist for Razorcake fanzine, and a veteran of the US Navy.

About Third Place Books

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.