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!

My Bizarre Writing Career with Phillip M. Margolin

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Phil grew up in NYC and Levittown, New York. He graduated from The American University in Washington, D.C. with a bachelor’s degree in Government. From 1965 to 1967, he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. In 1970, he graduated from New York University School of Law. During his last two years in law school, Phil worked his way through by teaching junior high school in the South Bronx in New York City. His first job after law school was a clerkship with Herbert M. Schwab, the Chief Judge of the Oregon Court of Appeals. From 1972 until 1996, Phil was in private practice specializing in criminal defense at the trial and appellate levels. As an appellate attorney, he appeared before the United…

Free – $15

Writing Characters Who Take Up Space

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For all the descriptive writing in the world, it is often difficult to fully realize a physical body in a physical space for a reader. Bodies are so varied, spaces contain so many possibilities, but both bodies and spatial possibilities are often overlooked in writing craft. This class will use ideas presented in Amy Cuddy’s book, Presence: Bringing your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, Bessel Van Der Kolk’s, The Body Keeps Score, and others, to present new ways of exploring the physical presence of characters on the page, their experiences with themselves, with their environment and with other characters. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present…

$190

Scary Stories with Wendy N. Wagner at Willamette Writers

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Trick or treat? Join us for BOTH this October 11th online at 7PM as we talk scary stories, submissions, and so much more with author and editor, Wendy Wagner. The Eugene and Southern Chapters would love you to join us for this spooky evening! About Wendy N. Wagner Wendy N. Wagner is the editor-in-chief of Nightmare Magazine and the managing/senior editor of Lightspeed. Her short stories, essays, and poems run the gamut from horror to environmental literature. Her longer work includes the novella The Secret Skin (forthcoming at the end of October), the horror novel The Deer Kings, the Locus bestselling SF eco-thriller An Oath of Dogs, and two novels for the Pathfinder role-playing game. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family, two…

Free

Story Time for Grownups – You Might As Well Laugh

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

"After 20 months off, “Story Time for Grownups” is back! … with a program of humorous readings from Mark Twain, Woody Allen, Robert Fulghum, Dorothy Parker, Ian Frazier, and David Niven. No cover. Warm yourself with a mug of beer, a pot of tea, soup, sandwich, or cookies while reliving the childhood experience of being read to before bedtime. Proof of covid vaccination is required of all attendees. Rose City Book Pub observes all the current anti-infection protocols. David Loftus has read aloud to live audiences, for recordings, and as a principal character in the science-fiction podcast series “Exoplanetary.” He has performed as a voice character and narrator with the Willamette Radio Workshop, Filmusik, and Third Angle New Music Ensemble; and at Powell’s Books, Borders…

Free

Author Talk: Good Morning, Midnight with PSU alumna Lily Brooks-Dalton

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join fellow alumni and friends for a Q&A with alumna author of Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton, MFA '16. The talk will be moderated by Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Gabriel Urza. The PSU Alumni Book Club will finish reading Good Morning, Midnight at t he end of September. All PSU alumni and friends of PSU are welcome to join the Book Club. Learn more at https://www.pdx.edu/alumni/book-club

Free

Jonathan Franzen in Conversation With Maria Semple / Ticketed Event

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), the first novel in his new magnum opus trilogy, A Key to All Mythologies. It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless — unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high school class,…

$30

Archiving Ancestors, Collective Grief, and the Illusion of Time

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The quiet and stillness of quarantine transported many of us beyond the bounds of time and space. Through our unexpected journeys, we may have traced new threads from ancestral roots to our present moments and felt them stretch towards an unknown somewhere on a vast continuum of time. Loss of place, people, and ways of being from the past, present, and anticipatory future left grief to linger and blur the edges of things. This generative writing series will invite us to craft multi-genre pieces that archive the transcendent, dizzying, perplexing, and new. We will honor our ancestors, known, unknown, and chosen. We will write from the dark blue of sorrow to expand our capacity for joy. We will dissolve the illusion of time to embody…

$145

Fantasy Book Club (REMOTE)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The Books Around the Corner Fantasy Book Club meets monthly on the second Tuesday of every month at 6:30PM. We would like to extend an invitation to all of our fantasy loving customers. Join us on Tuesday October 12th at 6:30pm for our Books Around the Corner Fantasy Book Club. We will discuss Star Eater by Kerstin Hall. About the book: All martyrdoms are difficult. Elfreda Raughn will avoid pregnancy if it kills her, and one way or another, it will kill her. Though she's able to stomach her gruesome day-to-day duties, the reality of preserving the Sisterhood of Aytrium's magical bloodline horrifies her. She wants out, whatever the cost. So when a shadowy faction approaches Elfreda with an offer of escape, she leaps at the opportunity. As their spy, she gains…

$26.99

Pitch Roulette

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

What goes through an editor’s mind when they read a pitch? What turns them off, and what grabs their interest? One of our most popular salons is back with a twist: Editor-in-Chief Denne Michele Norris and Executive Director Halimah Marcus will review your anonymous pitches, submitted just for this event. They will read each pitch for the first time live on screen, sharing their immediate reactions as they go. Your pitch may even be commissioned for Electric Lit! Submission instructions: You can find the link to submit in the chat, on the right hand side of the event page. (Please note, you will only see the chat if you are registered for the event.) If you are unable to find the submission portal or have questions…

$10

Band of Submitting Writers & Artists

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Band of Submitting Writers & Artists with Katie Collins Guinn WHAT: A two week online creative lab on sending work to literary publications WHEN: Wednesdays, October 13th, & October 20th @4:30-6:30pm PT ACCESS: $100 :: Payment plans always available—contact Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com Where: The Corporeal Writing Zoom Room :: A Zoom link will be provided. SCHOLARSHIPS: Scholarships are available please click here to apply. So, you’ve written something and/or created some visual art and want to get it out into the world of literary publications, now what? The process of sending out work can be overwhelming, whether you’re just beginning to think about it, or returning to the process, and doing it alone can seem even more daunting. Where do we begin? Who do we…

$100