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!

Jessica Hische

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

In the follow-up to Tomorrow I’ll Be Brave, award-winning illustrator Jessica Hische brings to life another series of inspirational words and scenes with her lovely hand lettering and adorable illustrations. Tomorrow I’ll Be Kind (Penguin Workshop) is an uplifting and positive book that encourages kids to promise that tomorrow, they will be grateful, helpful, and kind. This book is a reminder to all readers that the smallest kind gesture can make the biggest difference in the world.

Free

Mystery Author Event

Vintage Books 6613 E Mill Plain Blvd, Vancouver, WA, United States

Please join Friends of Mystery members and authors J. S. James and W. H. Cameron for an afternoon of readings from River Run and Crossroad, followed by conversations with the authors and book signings on Saturday, January 18th at 1:00 pm. The authors have won recognition for their work from writer’s organizations, including the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association, the UK’s Crime Writer’s Association the Spotted Owl Award and the Rocky Award. James was desperately spinning his writing wheels when he won the PNWA mystery/thriller competition and got the traction needed to finish his debut novel. He lives near Portland, Oregon with his family, including their “Velcro” Vizsla and furry red exercise machine, Maggie. He writes in a casino for atmosphere, and is hard at work…

Free

Liska Jacobs

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

To coolheaded, fastidious Pricilla Messing, Italy will be an escape, a brief glimpse of freedom from a life that's starting to feel like one long decline. Rescued from the bedside of her difficult mother, 40-something Cilla finds herself called away to Rome to keep an eye on her wayward teenage niece, Hannah. But after years of caregiving, babysitting is the last thing Cilla wants to do. Instead she throws herself into Hannah's youthful, heedless world – relishing the heady atmosphere of the Italian summer. But being so close to Hannah brings up complicated memories, making Cilla restless and increasingly reckless, and a dangerous flirtation with a teenage boy soon threatens to send her into a tailspin. In The Worst Kind of Want (MCD), Liska Jacobs…

Free

Emily Suvada in Conversation With Fonda Lee

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

Cat’s hacking skills weren’t enough to keep her from losing everything – her identity, her past, and now her freedom. She’s trapped and alone, but she’s survived this long, and she’s not giving up without a fight. Though the outbreak has been contained, a new threat has emerged – one that’s taken the world to the brink of a devastating war. With genetic technology that promises not just a cure for the plague, but a way to prevent death itself, both sides will stop at nothing to seize control of humanity’s future. Facing her most devastating enemy yet, Cat must race against the clock to protect her friends and save the lives of millions. This Vicious Cure (Simon Pulse) is the gripping finale to Emily…

Free

Chad Dundas

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

Having lost much of his memory from a traumatic brain injury sustained in Iraq, army veteran Matthew Rose is called back to Montana after his father’s death to settle his affairs, and hopefully to settle the past as well. It’s not only a blank to him, but a mystery. Why as a teen did he suddenly become sullen and vacant, abandoning the activities and people that had meant most to him? Then on his first night back, Matthew sees a house go up in flames, and it turns out a local college student has died inside. And this event sparks a memory of a different fire, an unsolved crime from long ago, a part of Matthew’s past that might lead to all the answers he’s…

Free

DELVE: Women Write the West: Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Proulx and Claire Vaye Watkins

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

In this seminar, we will explore the works of award-winning contemporary writers Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Proulx, and Claire Vaye Watkins and how they confront, disrupt, challenge, and complicate the dominant narrative of the West. Leslie Marmon Silko’s now classic novel Ceremony weaves desert landscape and tribal origin stories into a tale of a returning war veteran’s trauma and healing. In Close Range: The Wyoming Stories, the first of three short story collections unified by setting, Annie Proulx tells the hard luck tales of Wyoming’s inhabitants in her exacting prose. The stories are merciless, yet beautifully rendered, the antithesis of a romanticized cowboy tale. Claire Vaye Watkins rounds out the seminar with her stunning debut short story collection Battleborn, set in the Mojave Desert and…

$220

William Gibson

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

Verity Jane, gifted app-whisperer, has been out of work since her exit from a problematic relationship with a Silicon Valley billionaire. Then she signs the NDA of a dodgy start-up, becoming the beta tester for their latest product: a digital assistant, accessed through a pair of ordinary-looking glasses. “Eunice,” the disarmingly human AI in the glasses, soon manifests a face, a fragmentary past, and an unnervingly canny grasp of combat strategy. Meanwhile, a century ahead, Wilf Netherton works amid plutocrats and plunderers, survivors of the slow and steady apocalypse known as the Jackpot. His employer, Ainsley Lowbeer, can look into alternate pasts and nudge their ultimate directions. Verity and Eunice have become her current project. Wilf can see what Verity and Eunice can’t: their own…

Free

Kate Milford

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

Marzana and her best friend are bored. Even though they live in a notorious city where normal rules do not apply, nothing interesting ever happens to them. Nothing, that is, until Marzana’s parents are recruited to help solve an odd crime, and she realizes that this could be the excitement she’s been waiting for. She assembles a group of kid detectives with special skills and together, they explore hidden passageways, navigate architecture that changes overnight, and try to unravel the puzzle of who the kidnappers are. But will they beat the deadline for a ransom that’s impossible to pay? The Thief Knot (Clarion) is the new standalone middle reader mystery set in the world of the Greenglass House, from National Book Award nominee and Edgar…

Free

Rene Denfeld and Kimberly King Parsons

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Rene Denfeld and Kimberly King Parson, in Conversation We are thrilled to welcome Portland authors Rene Denfeld and Kimberly King Parsons to discuss their most recent books, The Butterfly Girl and Black Light, respectively. The authors will each read and then discuss writing, individual life experiences and influences, and the publishing process, as well as take questions from the audience. Rene Denfeld is the author of the acclaimed novels The Enchanted, The Child Finder, and The Butterfly Girl. After captivating readers in The Child Finder, Naomi--the investigator with an uncanny ability for finding missing children—returns in The Butterfly Girl. In addition to being an internationally bestselling author, Denfeld has also worked as a journalist and licensed investigator. She lives in Portland, where she is the…

Free

Fiction Addiction Book Club

Books Around the Corner 40 NW 2nd Street, Gresham, OR, United States

We will discuss The River by Peter Heller. The story of two college students on a wilderness canoe trip--a gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, white water, and violence. Available at a 15% discount to order if you plan on attending the book club.

Free