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!

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

Terry Brooks in Conversation With Sarah Beth Durst

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Child of Light (Del Rey) is the electrifying first novel of an all-new fantasy series from the legendary author behind the Shannara saga, about a human girl struggling to find her place in a magical world she’s never known. At 19, Auris Afton Grieg has led an… unusual life. Since the age of 15, she has been trapped in a sinister prison. Why? She does not know. She has no memories of her past beyond the vaguest of impressions. All she knows is that she is about to age out of the children’s prison, and rumors say that the adult version is far, far worse. So she and some friends stage a desperate escape into the surrounding wastelands. And it is there that Auris’s journey…

Free

Killer Book Club (REMOTE)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for Killer Book Club. This book club features all things murder in fiction and nonfiction including mysteries, thrillers, horror, true crime and more. We will meet second Thursdays. Our October meeting of the Killer Book Club will be on Thursday October 14th at 6:30pm. We will discuss Halloween Fiend by C V Hunt. About the Book: Strang isn't the small, quaint town it appears to be. It's haunted every night by a creature the townsfolk refer to as Halloween. Once the sun sets each day, Halloween emerges to collect its treats: a small, live offering from each household. The residents comply because no one wants to be the target of Halloween's tricks. But the nightmare of residing in Strang is nothing compared to the yearly ritual Halloween demands of the citizens…

$16

Livestream Event: Belonging – Middle Grade Author Panel

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join Annie Bloom's Books for a livestream event with middle grade authors Waka Brown (While I was Away), Kathleen Lane (Pity Party), Susan Hill Long (The Care and Keeping of Freddy), Rosanne Parry (A Whale of the Wild) and Kate Ristau (Clockbreakers series). The authors will discuss the theme of belonging: how kids search for and maintain connections, and how the books they read explore and support those connections too. This event is free and open to all ages. Please register in advance for this Zoom event: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIud-CqqzgpG9UUTbHOhaYNOUq-9c1Smc0q If you would like signed or personalized copies of the authors' books, please leave a note in the comments section of your order! Waka T. Brown's While I Was Away is an empowering middle grade memoir from debut author…

Free

WRITING & THE BODY w/ Lidia Yuknavitch and Jen Pastiloff

The Corporeal Writing Center 510 SW 3rd Ave #101, Portland, OR, United States

Jennifer Pastiloff and Lidia Yuknavitch were running their infamous workshop four times a year before the pandemic hit. Covid-19 led to the cancellation of three of these in 2021…Lucky for us, we’re back! Jen & Lidia are both renowned in their fields in their own right, and both of them are known for their inventive, non-traditional methods. Together they lead you to your most creative place by tapping into your body first, and then picking up the pen. But don't worry! You do not have to be a published or experienced writer or yogi- we are looking for people who have heart. You have a desire to write? You have a body? Then this weekend is for you. IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to continued concerns about the spread…

$995

Telltale Presents: Don’t Be Afraid

Chapel Theatre 4107 SE Harrison St, Milwaukie, OR, United States

Hey, champ! Thanks for checking out Telltale. We are a monthly curated storytelling event for people that like to get vulnerable and take no shit. We are keen on connection, laughter, heartbreak, poignant moments, and community building. We are in our fifth season now, which is wild. After a number of zoom shows, and then a number of outdoor summer shows.... we are just rolling with what's happening around us and we are officially back inside the Chapel Theatre starting in October--unless the weather is magically perfect--with an all vaccinated staff, vaccinated performers, and a vaccine card requirement at the door, as well as many assertive reminders about wearing your mask properly. At Telltale, you can expect about 7-10 performers sharing something with you, in…

Free – $10

Live Wire: Tom Scharpling, Mohanad Elshieky, Kaveh Akbar, and MAITA

Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR, United States

TOM SCHARPLING Tom Scharpling has hosted the weekly radio call-in comedy program, The Best Show with Tom Scharpling, for 18 years. He and his comedy parter Jon Wurster released a 16 disc compilation of their greatest hits, The Best of the Best Show, in 2015 to critical acclaim. He is also known as the voice of Greg Universe on the hit Cartoon Network animated series Steven Universe and as a writer-executive producer for the Emmy Award–winning show Monk. In his new book, It Never Ends, Scharpling is sharing a story he has never told before—his own harrowing coming of age. He chronicles the lengths he has gone to pull away from the brink of self-destruction, his difficult rehabilitation and how he committed himself to reinvention…

$30 – $45

Beautiful, Flawed, and Troubled: Creating Memorable Characters with Carter Sickels

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHAT: A four-week generative online collaboration WHEN: Begins Saturday, October 16th, 2021. This class is hosted on our rich interactive online platform, WetInk. The class is broken into four weeks, and within those weeks you go at your own pace. There will be one Zoom meeting at the end of the class to wrap things up, date TBD. ACCESS: $350. Payment plans always available—contact Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com SCHOLARSHIPS: Scholarships are available, please click here to apply. The most memorable characters in fiction are the most human, motivated by desires and regrets, and deeply shaped by places, people, and memories. In this creative incubator, we’ll explore how to develop complex characters with emotional depth. How does desire inform the mystery of a character? How do characters…

$350

Attic Institute: FALL Online Campus: Story Energy with Joanna Rose

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Tension – it’s not just for thrillers! Tension draws writer and reader into any story and evokes more deeply human experience. The constant adjusting of tension affects pacing and drives story in countless ways:  interactions among characters, sentence structure,  and even word choice. We’ll use excerpts from published works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry as well as work submitted weekly by participants to explore how the use of tension can create a vivid, visceral narrative.  | Maximum: 12 students Register for this workshop NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering our workshops via Zoom. All students must first sign up for a free Zoom account. Setting it up is easy. And we can help you with questions, if needed. For each class, you'll receive a Zoom "invitation," from…

$215 – $242