LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.

For details regarding specific events please contact the organizers or venues. If you are an organizer or venue and would like to reach out to us please feel free to contact us or submit an event using our submission form. We’d love to hear from you!

Craft of Memoir Workshop w Brian Benson

Attic Institute 4232 SE Hawthorne, Portland

“For who will testify, who will accurately describe our lives if we do not do it ourselves?” ~ Faye Moskowitz Whether you're just getting started or looking to improve your work-in-progress, this new workshop will help you translate your personal experiences into a vivid, absorbing memoir. Through a mix of discussion, guided exercises and peer critique, we'll explore the many ways to pull compelling, relatable stories from one's life story, and we'll read and discuss a wide variety of memoir for inspiration and insight. Students will leave the workshop with many reading recommendations and writing resources. | Maximum 12 students Register for this workshop Teacher: Brian Benson Time: Tuesdays, 5:30 - 7:30pm, Oct 22 - Nov 19, 5 weeks Location: Attic Institute of Arts and…

$210 – $237

Kim Stafford

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland

Oregon Poet Laureate Kim Stafford joins us  to read from his new collection of poems, Wild Honey, Tough Salt. Stafford’s new collection offers a prismatic view of Earth citizenship, where we must now be ambidextrous. The book takes a stern look inward calling for sturdy character and supple spirit, and a bold look outward seeking ways to engage grief trouble. The book begins with poems that witness a buoyant life in a difficult world: wandering New Orleans in a trance, savoring the life of artist Tove Jansson, reading the fine print on the Mexican peso and the Scottish five-pound note. Clues to untapped energy lie everywhere by the lens of poetry. The book then moves to considerations of the worst in us--torture and war: how…

Free

Brent Weeks

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton

In The Burning White (Orbit), the stunning conclusion to Brent Weeks’s epic Lightbringer series, kingdoms clash as Kip must finally escape his family's shadow in order to protect the land and people he loves. As the White King springs his great trap, and the Chromeria itself is threatened by treason and siege, Kip Guile and his companions will scramble to return for one impossible final stand.

Free

The Moth: GrandSLAM Championship

Aladdin Theater 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave, Portland

The Moth is dedicated to finding intriguing people to tell inspired stories. At The Moth StorySLAM, those people find us. On this night, using words as weapons, they compete to determine The Moth's Portland GrandSLAM Story Champion.

$25

SFWA Portland Publishing Happy Hour – October 2019

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland

Calling Portland-area publishing professionals, including writers (any genre), freelancers, editors, agents, publishers, designers, artists, and anyone interested in books and storytelling! Please join us for the 4th Portland Publishing Happy Hour. Held at rotating venues in and around Portland, the PPHH is an informal gathering of the diverse creative interests that make up Portland's publishing and writing landscape. The meetups are sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), but you don't need to be a member to attend. The happy hours are intended as purely a social time with no fixed agenda, but a great place to meet fellow creatives in publishing fields in an informal atmosphere. Please register to join us at the Rose City Book Pub; SPACE IS LIMITED.…

Free

Christopher Ryan

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland

In his new book, Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress (Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster), Christopher Ryan, bestselling coauthor of Sex at Dawn, explores the ways in which “progress” has perverted the way we live: how we eat, learn, feel, mate, parent, communicate, work, and die. Ryan makes the claim that we should start looking backwards to find our way into a better future.

Free

Revision Strategies Workshop w Patrick Dundon

Attic Institute 4232 SE Hawthorne, Portland

What do we do with a piece of writing that feels stuck, stagnant, that we want to transform? Revision can be difficult: we don’t want to lose the raw energy, the life-blood, of our original draft, yet sometimes we need to let go of our original ideas and inspiration in service of the poem or story. Too often revision is thought of as a process refinement and clarification, but revision literally means to “see again,” and in this class we’ll do just that: seeking out ways to enliven old drafts and see them from a fresh perspective, with a sense of curiosity and wonder. Through both in-class exercises and critique, we’ll explore a wide variety of revision strategies designed to bring our drafts to life…

$210 – $237