A resource for the PDX literary community. Produced by Old Pal.
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!
Questions about applying for an Oregon Literary Fellowship? Join us for a Zoom meeting and bring your questions. Pre-registration is required, but you can attend any time between 10:00 a.m. and noon. Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYqcO-prTMvE9zkB_strVksHB0e-VTiszg5
Before Jennifer Egan, Louise Erdrich, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Jonathan Lethem became revered authors, they were readers. In their ebullient new book, The Writer’s Library (HarperOne), America’s favorite librarian Nancy Pearl and noted playwright Jeff Schwager interview a diverse range of America's most notable and influential writers about the books that shaped them and inspired them to leave their own literary mark. The Writer’s Library is a revelatory exploration of the studies, libraries, and bookstores of today’s favorite authors (including Donna Tartt, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Andrew Sean Greer, Laila Lalami, and Michael Chabon) — the creative artists whose imagination and sublime talent make America's literary scene the wonderful, dynamic world it is. A love letter to books and a celebration of wordsmiths, The Writer’s Library…
Annie Bloom's welcomes Northwest poets Megan Alpert, Amelia Díaz Ettinger, and Jennifer Perrine for a livestream reading from their new collections, published by Portland's own Airlie Press. Register here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/poetry-reading-megan Pre-signed copies of all books will be available for pickup, local delivery, or shipping. In Washington state poet Megan Alpert's The Animal at Your Side, narrators scavenge for clues, trying to stitch together a life in the midst of unrootedness. Finding bones, talismans, and half-heard voices that portal back to both personal and collective history, the speakers are haunted by diaspora, family estrangement, intergenerational trauma, and resilience. What are the costs of being far away from a homeplace? What are the costs of returning? And when the costs are too high on both sides, how do you…
Composed in the era of the Second World War, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has become, through various incarnations, one of the best known stories in the world and also part of a larger system of myth and lore–thee so-called “Tolkien universe”–that also includes the Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and countless additional tales in prose and verse. The three volumes of The Lord of the Rings, however, are a distinct and remarkable literary accomplishment in their own right, the summoning up of an entire narrative world (with its own contexts, traditions, languages, civilizations, personae, and challenges), at once related to and distinct from the modern world of industry and war. Tolkien’s personal experience, his deep immersion in modern philology, his spiritual and historical affinities,…
NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond everyone's control, this month's reading will take place over Zoom. Email christopherjluna@gmail.com by no later than 3 pm on September 10 to indicate your interest in participating. In the subject line, let us know if you are "Reading" or "Just Listening." You will receive instructions for how to join the meeting. Open mic readers are invited to share one poem for three minutes or less. The Loranger family, who have been loyal regulars since our very first reading in November 2004, recently lost their home in a fire. In lieu of a five-dollar suggested donation, we request that you donate to the Loranger’s GoFundMe page. Let’s come together as a community to help our friends in need: https://www.gofundme.com/f/jack-and-lori-loranger-fire-fund Ghost Town…