Hillary Clinton has drawn a connection between the 2016 presidential election campaign and the attack in Portland last week, in which a man went on an anti-Muslim tirade against two young women, then fatally stabbed two men who intervened.

Clinton did not mention Donald Trump, her Republican rival in the presidential election, by name, but said she was “deeply troubled” by a sudden rejection of tolerance in today’s US.

“What I saw in this election was a deliberate effort to blow the top off that, to basically say: ‘Whatever feeling you have, whatever resentment, however angry you might be, get there out and express it and it’s OK to take it out on other people’ – verbally or physically, as we saw during the campaign,” Clinton said. “That is incredibly dangerous.”

“Now, that is unleashing a level of vitriol and defensiveness, hatred, that I don’t think we should tolerate.”

It’s been 204 days since Clinton conceded the election to Trump in the early hours of 9 November. Back then, the Clinton campaign, and most pundits, expected to be hailing the election of the first female president below the glass ceiling at the Jacob K Javits Convention Center.

At the Javits Center on Thursday night, however, Clinton spoke below a generic, beige ceiling to address a crowd of mostly booksellers, publishers and agents at the annual BookExpo.

She was there to promote her forthcoming memoir in an interview with Cheryl Strayed, the bestselling author of Wild. The as-yet-untitled memoir is a series of essays reflecting on the campaign, Clinton’s life and the country.

Hillary Clinton with Wild author Cheryl Strayed at BookExpo. Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images

Clinton said the book was “certainly going a lot further” than she’s gone before because she thinks the current political climate demands she goes “as far as I can”.

The discussion focused primarily on books – Clinton spoke about her most trusted reader (her husband, Bill), her advice for the first female president (“read my book”) and her favorite things to read after the election (mysteries) – though there were also critiques of the current president.

Trump, hours earlier, had exited the Paris climate agreement, an act condemned by scientists, CEOs and world leaders, but Clinton only mentioned the move while speaking about the importance of bookshops as discussion centers for people to explore questions such as, Clinton said: “What does it mean to pull out of the Paris accord, as we apparently are going to do?”

In a tweet posted just before the BookExpo event, Clinton said: “A historic mistake. The world is moving forward together on climate change. Paris withdrawal leaves American workers & families behind.”