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!

HOCUS: Submissions Open!

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

neverland (ne-vər-land): 1.) an unreal, imaginary, or ideal state, condition, place 2.) any remote, isolated, barren, or sparsely settled region Send us your stories and poems of pipe dreams, utopias, and Shangri-Las! HOCUS accepts prose, poetry, and creative nonfiction of up to 2,000 words. We welcome literary fiction and poetry submissions from everyone regardless of race, class, gender, sexuality, geography, religious or cultural background. Our programming is in English. We especially invite Black, Indigenous, and other people of color to take part. We recognize all genders. The reading will be on Friday, March 11th from 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. at the Rose City Book Pub in NE Portland. Please be aware that the Book Pub is currently requiring proof of vaccination. We are keeping in…

Free

Write Now Online: The Narrative Triptych w/ videos by Lidia Yuknavitch (Introvert VersionOngoing)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Write Now: The Narrative Triptych—a 4-week creative incubator Extrovert Version Begins March 13th! A painted or carved triptych typically has three hinged panels, and the two outer panels can be folded in towards the central one. A literary or musical triptych generally consists of three closely related or contrasting themes or parts. Triptych derives from the Greek triptychos ("having three folds"), formed by combining tri- ("three") and ptychē ("fold" or "layer"). Although triptych originally described a specific type of Roman writing tablet that had three hinged sections, it is not surprising that the idea was generalized first to a type of painting, and then to anything composed of three parts. The triptychs most etched on Lidia’s brain are Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, Ruben's Elevation of the Cross, and Bacon's Three Studies for…

$99

Book Talk: Fencing With the King | Diana Abu Jaber & Omar El Akkad

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Please join the Middle East Studies Center for our next installment of the Scholarly Lecture Series. Author and Portland State University English Faculty Diana Abu Jaber will be discussing her new novel Fencing With the King with award-winning author Omar El Akkad. Zoom Registration About the Book A mesmerizing breakthrough novel of family myths and inheritances by the award-winning author of Crescent. Amani is hooked on a mystery—a poem on airmail paper that slips out of one of her father’s books. It seems to have been written by her grandmother, a refugee who arrived in Jordan during the First World War. Soon the perfect occasion to investigate arises: her Uncle Hafez, an advisor to the King of Jordan, invites her father to celebrate the king’s sixtieth birthday—and to fence…

Free

Overcoming Rejection for Writers

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

FEATURING: Jami Attenberg Deesha Philyaw Tommy Pico Moderated by Denne Michele Norris Sponsored by GrubStreet's Muse & the Marketplace conference Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned pro, all writers face rejection—but how we cope with that rejection plays a huge role in shaping our literary future. Rebounding can be tough, but rather than allowing rejection to stop us in our tracks, we can reframe it into a motivational and instructional tool. Some rejections actually make us stronger—as writers, editors, applicants, and people—while others just need to be ignored. Poet and TV writer Tommy Pico (JUNK, Reservation Dogs), memoirist Jami Attenberg (I Came All This Way to Meet You), and award-winning short story writer Deesha Philyaw (The Secret Lives of Church Ladies) will share…

$10

Busting Myths About Parenting and Writing

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

FEATURING: Claire Vaye Watkins Kaitlyn Greenidge Matthew Salesses Moderated by Kelly Luce Sponsored by GrubStreet's Muse & the Marketplace conference The idea that parenthood is a barrier to art creation is outdated, even dangerous—that we create in spite of having children rather than making complex work productively informed by parenthood in all its glory, sorrow, and ambivalence. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought parenting issues to the forefront of the national conversation, and the result has been that the discussions around parenthood specific to writing have evolved, too. Novelists Claire Vaye Watkins (I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness), Kaitlyn Greenidge (Libertie), and novelist and essayist Matthew Salesses (Craft in the Real World) will talk about the struggles, triumphs, stereotypes, and assumptions of writing as parents…

$10

Submission Roulette III

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

FEATURING: Halimah Marcus Alyssa Songsiridej Sponsored by GrubStreet's Muse & the Marketplace conference Tired of opaque form rejections that offer zero insights into why your submission “wasn’t a fit” or “doesn’t meet our publication’s needs”? Then join Submission Roulette III for, finally, some candid answers. Recommended Reading editors Halimah Marcus and Alyssa Songsiridej will review your anonymously submitted first pages, reading them for the first time live on screen, and share their immediate reactions as they go. What leads an editor to pass after just a few paragraphs, and what entices them to keep reading? And, since the chat has been so lively during past roulettes, we’ve added a fun new twist: we’ll all drink (or hydrate with a non-alcoholic beverage) every time we spot…

$10

Jacob Frank in His Time and Ours: Prof. Pawel Maciejko on the Historical Contexts of Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The 2022 Lorry I. Lokey Program at Portland State University Presents: Jacob Frank in His Time and Ours: Prof. Pawel Maciejko on the Historical Contexts of Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob  In 2014, the Polish Nobel-prizewinning author Olga Tokarczuk published her epic novel The Books of Jacob about Jacob Frank, a real-life messianic leader in eighteenth-century Poland. Pawel Maciejko is an internationally recognized authority on the history of Jacob Frank. Join us for Prof. Maciejko’s scholarly response to the question: How does history inform Tokarczuk’s novel and our reading of it? There will be a question and answer period following Prof. Maciejko’s talk. Jacob Frank was a religious charismatic who claimed to be the messiah. In 1759 he led his Jewish followers into Catholic…

Free

Livestream Reading: Emmeline Duncan: Double Shot Death

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes back local author Emmeline Duncan for the livestream launch of Double Shot Death, the second Ground Rules mystery. Emmeline will be in conversation with fellow Portland mystery author Angela M. Sanders. Please register in advance for this Zoom event: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqd-2orzoqHNHPmwTgicWDkEfUtCqnzXfh Pre-order Double Shot Death and receive a gift from the author! Signed copies are available; please specify any personalization requests in the order comments box when you place your order. About Double Shot Death: Sage Caplin is taking her Portland coffee cart on the road to a sustainable music festival, but murder is an unwanted special guest… At Campathon, an annual eco-friendly festival held on a farm outside of Portland, fans celebrate the Pacific Northwest’s music scene in quintessential PDX style—with gourmet…

Free

Submission Deadline: Pathos Literary Magazine: Spring 2022

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Pathos Literary Magazine submissions for the Spring 2022 issue are open until April 29th! did you have any bright ideas over spring break? 💡we want to read them! submissions for our spring 2022 issue are now open 🌿🌸 You must be a current student at Portland State University to be considered for publication. We are funded by PSU and serve as a creative outlet for its students. We are happy to point non-students toward local publishing resources, but cannot publish non-students at this time. Please only put your name and identifying info in the specified section of the form. All submissions are blind — only the managing editor will know the identity of the submitter until after selections have been made. This eliminates conflicts of interest and…

Free

Submission Deadline: Old Pal: Issue 5

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Old Pal is open for submissions until April 30th, 2022! We publish poetry, fiction, critical non-fiction, audio, mixed-media, and various mediums of art. We encourage artists from all experience levels and communities to submit. Simultaneous submissions welcome, but please let us know if your submission is accepted elsewhere. Multiple genre submissions are also welcome (e.g., if you’d like to submit a combination of poems and art, or poems and a fiction piece, etc.). Contributors will be compensated upon publication. If interested, please send up to 15 pages of written work or 6 pieces of other media to submissions@oldpalmag.com.

Free