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!

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

2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Casey Plett, T Kira Madden, Nafissa Thompson-Spires

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. Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, A Safe Girl to Love, the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers, and the Publisher at LittlePuss Press. She has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. A winner of the Amazon First Novel Award, the…

Free

Forest Bathing and Writing: Hoyt Arboretum

Hoyt Arboretum 4000 SW Fairview Blvd., Portland, OR, United States

This class, held outdoors at Hoyt Arboretum, will guide you in practicing skills associated with shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing—a gentle, meditative approach to being with nature. The class will include several invitations to explore your senses and your relationship with nature, time for written reflection, and opportunities to share your observations and your writing, if you wish. In each class, you’ll learn approaches to writing and to being with nature that you can use in your everyday life to help promote a sense of relaxation, connection, and wonder. No prior experience with writing is required. All forest bathing and writing prompts may be practiced seated, standing, or walking, depending on your comfort, ability, and interest. Classes will be held rain or shine, so please dress…

$75

CANCELLED Mat Johnson in Conversation With Cari Luna

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

We are sorry to report that this event has been cancelled. When sociologist Nalini Jackson joins the SS Delany for the first manned mission to Jupiter, all she wants is a career opportunity: the chance to conduct the first field study of group dynamics on long-haul cryoships. But what she discovers instead is an entire city encased in a bubble on Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Even more unexpected, Nalini and the rest of the crew soon find themselves joining its captive population. New Roanoke is a city riven by wealth inequality and governed by a feckless, predatory elite, its economy run on heedless consumption and income inequality. But in other ways it's different from the cities we already know: It’s covered by an enormous…

Free

In-Store Reading: P. C. Cast: Into the Mist

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes local author P. C. Cast for an in-store reading from her new novel, Into the Mist. A few reminders if you are planning to attend the event: Masks are required, and must be worn at all times. Social distancing is also required, and any photographs or selfies will have to be taken from a distance. Everyone must remain masked while indoors, including for photographs. Our current capacity is for 40 attendees. Seating is also limited, and this reading is first-come, first-served. If we reach capacity, you are welcome to order a copy of Into the Mist here, to be signed after the event, and either picked-up or mailed to you. Out of respect for the author and other attendees, our events have…

Free

Oregon Literary Fellowships Information Session

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Questions about applying to this year’s Oregon Literary Fellowships? Join us at this information session! Drop-in anytime between 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. Register in advance for this meeting here. Please contact Susan Moore (susan@literary-arts.org) or Jessica Meza-Torres (jessica@literary-arts.org) if you have any questions.  

Free