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!

Starting the Story

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This 4 -week short fiction workshop will focus on generating new work and simply getting words down on a page.  We will read excerpts, share just-written work aloud, and sometimes discuss assigned weekly readings together. We will investigate ways to unearth material together and share strategies for maintaining a regular writing practice. Participants will leave will many fragments and several starts for new work. Access Program We want our classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers class registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available. Please…

$200

Jess Walter

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

From the author of Beautiful Ruins and The Cold Millions comes a stunning collection about those moments when everything changes — for the better, for the worse, for the outrageous — as a diverse cast of characters bounces from Italy to Idaho, questioning their roles in life and finding inspiration in the unlikeliest places. We all live like we’re famous now, curating our social media presences, performing our identities, withholding those parts of ourselves we don’t want others to see. In The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories (Harper), the riveting new collection of stories from Jess Walter, a teenage girl tries to live up to the image of her beautiful, missing mother. An elderly couple confronts the fiction writer eavesdropping on their conversation. A…

Free

Alyson Noël in Conversation With Tracy Wolff

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

My life goes completely sideways the moment I meet the mysterious Braxton. Sure, he’s ridiculously hot, but he’s also the reason I’ve been kicked out of school and recruited into Gray Wolf Academy — a remote island school completely off the grid. I never should have trusted a face so perfect. But the reality of why Gray Wolf wanted me is what truly blows my mind. It’s a school for time travelers. Tripping, they call it. This place is filled with elaborate costumes and rare artifacts, where every move is strategic and the halls are filled with shadows and secrets. Here, what you see isn’t always what it appears. Including Braxton. Because even though there’s an energy connecting us together, the more secrets he keeps…

Free

Daniel Nieh

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

Victor Li is a man without a past. To his new employer, Mark, he’s just an anonymous hired hand to help with the dirty work. Together, they break into storage units that contain the possessions of the recently deported, pocketing whatever is worth selling. Only Victor and his sister, Jules, know that he’s a wanted man. Amid the backpacks and suitcases, Victor makes the find of a lifetime: a gem rare and valuable enough to change his fortunes in an instant. But selling it on the sly? Nearly impossible. Thankfully, its former owner, a woman named Song Fei, also left a book of cryptic notes — including the name of a gemstone dealer in Mexico City. When Victor and Mark cross the southern border, they…

Free

Write Around Portland: Bi-Monthly BIPOC Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

"I love being witnessed, and I absolutely love witnessing the words of everyone else in the group. It’s our own kind of magic." —BIPOC Online Workshop Participant For people who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC). 2nd & 4th Friday of every month from 4 to 5:30 pm (Pacific Time), Free. Workshops are held via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Registration opens the 1st of the month every month and closes when filled or at 12noon the day before the workshop. Pre-register for our 2nd Friday workshop here. Pre-register for our 4th Friday workshop here.  Click here for more workshop details. 

Free

Ledger Editions Reading Series

IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) 318 SE Main Street #175, Portland, OR, United States

*This event is in-person. Masks + Proof of Vaccination Required. See more about the IPRC’s COVID Policy here. July 9th 7-9pm Register here Please join the IPRC for the first reading of our Ledger Editions Readings. We’ll be joined by poets & writers Warren C. Longmire, Jeff Alessandrelli and Janice Lee. This event is made possible with support from the Kinsman Foundation. Warren C. Longmire is a poet, artist, software engineer, and an educator from the bad part of  North Philadelphia. He is a former co-editor of Apiary Magazine, a board member for Blue  Stoop and teaches when he can at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He’s been  published in journals including Prolit, American Poetry Review, Cartridge Lit and The  Painted Bride Quarterly…

Free

Spring Forward, Fall Back: Time in Prose Writing

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

How to handle time can be challenging to master when writing in any genre. When should we slow down and dwell in a scene? When should we summarize and move rapidly through weeks, years, or even decades? Should we go back in time to unpack and understand a character’s motivation? How does the manipulation of time, the unfolding of events, work in a short story, a novel, or in memoir? This workshop will explore how writers bend time to create different narrative effects. We will read work by Tessa Hadley, Rachel Cusk, Sally Rooney, Toni Morrison, John Cheever and others, as well as look at examples from TV shows and films such as Ted Lasso, Atlanta, and The Lost Daughter. After the discussion, we’ll work…

$145

The Dandelions Are Prophesizing: A Writing Workshop Through Plant & Mycelial Encounters with Janice Lee —begins July 10th

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The Dandelions Are Prophesizing: A Writing Workshop Through Plant & Mycelial Encounters July 10 - August 6, 2022 (Synchronous Zoom sessions Mondays 7/11, 7/18, 7/25, 8/1) ***SOLD OUT! Email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com to add your name to the waitlist*** “The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. It is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature.” – Thich Nhat Hanh  “If we are interested in livability, impermanence, and…

$50

2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Megan Giddings, Anis Mojgani, Lidia Yuknavitch

Reed College - Cerf Amphitheater 3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

We are excited to once again be offering in-person readings as part of our 2022 Summer Workshop programming. Starting at 7:30 pm, these events will take place in Reed College’s Cerf Amphitheater and are free and open to the public. Faculty books will be available for purchase at the Reed Bookstore, with authors signing after the event. Masks are not required in the outdoor amphitheater. Megan Giddings has degrees from University of Michigan and Indiana University. She is a senior features editor at The Rumpus. In 2018, she was a recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial fund grant for feminist fiction. Her novel, Lakewood, was published by Amistad in 2020. It was one of New York Magazine’s 10 best books of 2020, one of NPR’s…

Free

Louis Bayard in Conversation With Julia Claiborne Johnson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Louis Bayard, author of The Pale Blue Eye and The Black Tower, is back with a brilliantly wrought, witty, and sensitive novel about the young Jacqueline Bouvier before she became that Jackie — and about a marriage that almost never happened. In the spring of 1951, debutante Jacqueline Bouvier, working as the Inquiring Photographer for the Washington Times-Herald, meets Jack Kennedy, a charming congressman from a notorious and powerful family, at a party in Washington, DC. Young, rebellious, eager to break free from her mother, Jackie is drawn to the elusive young politician, and soon she and Jack are bantering over secret dinner dates and short work phone calls. Jack, busy with House duties during the week and Senate campaigning on the weekend (as well…

Free