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!

Fall 2020 Online:September Writer of Color Workshop

Online N/A, Portland

For writers of color at all levels Searching for a space to create new work with fellow writers of color? This two-hour workshop meets on Zoom. A variety of prompts will be presented as avenues for generating and sharing new work in an informal setting. Open to writers of color at all levels writing in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. You can also bring your own prompts and questions about the writing process, and explore them with the group. Scholarships are available. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org for more information. Sunday, September 20, 2020 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. online via Zoom Instructor: Jacqueline Fitzgerald Jacqueline Fitzgerald is an educator, coach, and writer who strives to lead through a love ethic and believes in the power of stories…

$15

Erase the Patriarchy! 9.20 UHell Event

Online N/A, Portland

Join University of Hell Press and anthology editor Isobel O'Hare for two Zoom-based launch events in celebration of Erase the Patriarchy: An Anthology of Erasure Poetry. Erasure artists will display their work on-screen and talk about their process. There will be time at the end for Q&A. The webinar ID for both events is 841-0632-8517. We look forward to seeing you! 9.20 Event Lineup Marcella Prokop Tara Campbell Sarah Lyn Rogers Rachel Neff Krista Cox Maggie Rosenau Laura Davis Addie Tsai Andrea Avery Kegan Gaspar

Free

Kim Johnson & Ibi Zoboi

Online N/A, Portland

Every week, 17-year-old Tracy Beaumont writes letters to Innocence X, asking the organization to help her father, an innocent Black man on death row. After seven years, Tracy is running out of time — her dad has only 267 days left. Then the unthinkable happens. The police arrive in the night, and Tracy’s older brother, Jamal, goes from being a bright, promising track star to a “thug” on the run, accused of killing a white girl. Determined to save her brother, Tracy investigates what really happened between Jamal and Angela down at the Pike. But will Tracy and her family survive the uncovering of the skeletons of their Texas town’s racist history that still haunt the present? Kim Johnson’s This Is My America (Random House)…

Free

Fall 2020 Online: Memoir Infusion!

Online N/A, Portland

The best work speaks intimately to you even though it has been consciously made to speak intimately to thousands of others.- Jeanette Winterson This class is meant to get you moving, excited and deeply engaged with your memoir project. Whether you’ve almost got a full draft, are just beginning, or somewhere in between, together we’re going to make progress. Through reading memoir samples, craft talks and readings, plus specific writing exercises, we’ll examine what makes a reader engage with your story. We will look at ways to organize and shape life-chaos into art. Through vivid details, authentic voice, inventive uses of form, captivating dialog and invigorated settings, we can indeed make our personal stories universal. During the first half of class we will workshop short…

$650

Fall Poetry Workshop

Online N/A, Portland

IPRC Creative Workshops for Fall 2020 will be held online via zoom, PST. This is a workshop for all levels, whether you’ve just written your first poem or have been seriously writing for years. Each week, we’ll read and discuss one another’s work, emphasizing both craft (the shaping and forming of language) as well as the vision that's unique to each individual. Our conversations will rest upon the assumption that there is no “correct” answer in art—that is, the thoughts and feelings that each piece of writing evokes will be a welcome part of the discussion. All aesthetics are welcome, experimentation is encouraged, and we will strive to meet each piece of writing on its own terms. Through engaging with one another’s work, we’ll dive…

$250

JAMONDRIA HARRIS: Audiovisual Soundscapes and Live Rounds

Online N/A, Portland

all new parts are entire: a circle of audiovisual soundscapes and live rounds from chloe alexandra, c. lavender, and jamondria harris (meroitic). Curated by jamondria harris for their 2020 artist residency at Yale Union. Sunday, Sept. 20, 2020 3pm PDT/6pm EDT Livestreaming on TWITCH C. Lavender is a Brooklyn, New York–based multidisciplinary sound artist, sound healing practitioner, and educator whose work spans live performance, recording, installations, videos, compositions, and workshops. She seeks to create an immersive aural landscape for the listener, an experience which is intensely physical, emotional and ultimately cathartic as noted in a performance review from the Village Voice: “downright iconic, charged with meaning and transgression.” C. Lavender has performed, lectured, and hosted workshops at MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, the…

Free

Light Sleeper Release Party

Online N/A, Portland

Light Sleeper: Poems is the newest poetry collection by Coleman Stevenson. Please join us for a virtual release party, at which Coleman will read from the book, answer questions, and perform bibliomancy with the book itself! This is a FREE event. RSVP and pre-registration required! Access the registration page here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkfu2qrT4sHdG05oHAjEtgel5ZlkbBg9s9 Coleman Stevenson is the author of Breakfast: 43 Poems (Reprobate/GobQ Books, 2015), The Accidental Rarefication of Pattern #5609 (Bedouin Books, 2012), and a number of books and decks for divination through her company The Dark Exact. See more about her tarot and fine art work at www.colemanstevenson.com.

Free

Belly of the World: a Creative Writing & Critical Discussion Workshop

Online N/A, Portland

IPRC Creative Workshops for Fall 2020 will be held online via zoom, PST. Belly of the World is a writing and discussion-based journaling workshop that deals in writing a biomythography of queer and trans living in both relation and entangled non-relation to the external world. We will hold group workshops on what it means for queer and trans bodies to be “in the world, and not of it” through our crafting of personal poems and reimagining of our own narratives and scripts. This workshop is designed for black, brown and indigenous women, femmes and trans folks. Instructor: loose cornrows Sundays 6-8pm PST: Sept. 20th & 27th, Oct. 4th & 11th Class capacity: 15 Class meetings: 4 Cost: $50 *3 spots available at sliding scale, BIPOC…

$50