One day, veteran Los Angeles TV producer and writer David Weddle (Battlestar Galactica, The Strain, For All Mankind) spotted glass-plate photographs of an unidentified Victorian family at a swap meet. Weddle says he asked the swap-meet vendor who the glass-plate subjects were, and the vendor couldn’t answer. This inspired Weddle to tell his family’s story before it, too, is forgotten. Weddle reads from his new family memoir, The Birds That Fly Backwards Volume 1 – Ouroboros, Nov. 8 for Emergency Horse’s fall issue release event at Tsunami Books. Emergency Horse is a biannual Eugene- and Portland-based magazine, which finished third in Eugene Weekly’s 2026 Best of Eugene Best Zine category. Weddle wrote his memoir in the unique formatting and syntax of a screenplay. He published the book through Luminare Press, a Eugene-based assisted self-publishing company, and shared an excerpt in Emergency Horse. “A family is a microcosm of the larger culture surrounding it,” Weddle says. “To understand the American journey over the last 100 years — from 1926 to 2026 — you need look no further than your family’s living room.” Local authors Ty Connor, Darrin Daniel, Miriam Gershow, Erica Goss and Scott Taylor, from Berlin, join Weddle at Tsunami, reading selections from the Emergency Horse fall edition.

The Emergency Horse No. 10 reading is 5 pm Sunday, Nov. 8, at Tsunami Books, 2585 Willamette. Free. The event is all ages.