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!

Ling Ma in Conversation With Alexandra Kleeman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

What happens when fantasy tears the screen of the everyday to wake us up? Could that waking be our end? In Bliss Montage (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Ling Ma — author of Severance — brings us eight wildly different tales of people making their way through the madness and reality of our collective delusions: love and loneliness, connection and possession, friendship, motherhood, the idea of home. A woman lives in a house with all her ex-boyfriends. A toxic friendship grows up around a drug that makes you invisible. An ancient ritual might heal you of anything — if you bury yourself alive. These and other scenarios investigate the ways that the outlandish and the ordinary are shockingly, deceptively, heartbreakingly alike. Bliss Montage crashes through our…

Free

The Notebook: Your Creative Process

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Can we “chase” our imagination to its source? Where does creativity happen in the mind? These are some of the questions Linda Berry explores in her book Syllabus, which describes the author’s lifelong investigation of the creative process. Participants will discuss Barry’s techniques, and visit their own creative process, and perhaps draft a new story, essay, or chapter in a larger work. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves 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 writing class and Delve tuitions at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classes have at least one…

$285

Nine-Month Novel Intensive: Thursday

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This course for dedicated writers is designed to guide you through the writing and/or revising of your novel. It runs from September through May. You’ll read excerpts from published novels by authors including Han Kang, Tommy Orange, Lina Meruane, Mitchell S. Jackson, Deborah Levy, and Susan Steinberg, as well as craft essays by authors including Dorothy Allison, Jane Alison, and Alexander Chee. Some weeks you’ll have craft assignments to complete outside of class, and other weeks we’ll do in-class exercises together. After the first month of meetings, two students will workshop each week. Each student will have the opportunity to workshop five times, turning in up to 25 double-spaced pages per submission. Students should be prepared to read and comment on up to 50 pages…

$1450

A. M. Homes

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

In her first novel since the Women’s Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, A. M. Homes delivers us back to ourselves in a stunning alternative history that is both terrifyingly prescient, deeply tender, and devastatingly funny. The Big Guy loves his family, money, and country. Undone by the results of the 2008 presidential election, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life not lived, while his 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, begins to realize that her favorite subject — history — is not exactly what her father taught her. In a story that is as much…

Free

PSU Lit Mic

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

PSU Lit Mic is always lit. Hosted by the delightful and compelling duo Jordan and Grace. You don’t need to be affiliated with PSU to participate. You wrote it, you read it.

Free

Writing the Ensemble Cast

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

In this generative workshop, students will work on creating artful characters focusing on plot, characterization and point of view. At the end of six weeks, students will created a 10-15 page manuscript of their work-in-progress and received detailed feedback from the instructor. This class is ideal for students at work on a novel or short story collection with several main characters. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves 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 writing class and Delve tuitions at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classes have at least one access…

$285

Portland Zine Symposium 2022

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

The 2022 Portland Zine Symposium will be September 17th and 18th! Tabling will be 11am-5pm with different tablers both days! We will also have virtual programming leading up to the fest: Monday 9/12 Zine librarian meetup 🔗 Wednesday 9/14 Zinefest organizer meetup 🔗 Friday 9/16 Zine distro meetup 🔗 All of the programming is from 6-7:30pm PST, and sign-ups are available at the 🔗s. More info on the in-person tabling event and virtual programming ! Be sure to check out our Safe Space and Covid Health and Safety Protocols as well. The 2022 Portland Zine Symposium will be at the Smith Memorial Student Union in the Ballroom at Portland State University (1825 SW Broadway). PZS will be free and open to the public from 11am…

Free

IPRC at Portland Zine Symposium 2022

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

The Portland Zine Symposium is happening this year as a hybrid event on Sept 17 & 18! The IPRC will be tabling in person both days at the Smith Ballroom at Portland State University. Remote programming will be taking place the same weekend. Visit https://www.instagram.com/pdx_zines/ for more info!

Free

Hanif Abdurraqib, Kaveh Akbar, and Leslie Jamison

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

The Alano Club of Portland’s Artists in Recovery series and Literary Arts are thrilled to welcome Hanif Abdurraqib, Kaveh Akbar, and Leslie Jamison to Portland for a reading and conversation about the intersections of mental health and substance use recovery, creativity, and building community. The discussion will be moderated by Kasey Anderson. This event is free and open to the public but space is limited so reserving a ticket on Eventbrite is recommended. This event is sponsored by Third Eye Books, Tin House, and the Willamette University/PNCA Low Residency Creative Writing MFA Program. In-Person Event Note: This event meets in-person at Literary Arts, 925 SW Washington. Literary Arts will require proof of full COVID-19 vaccination, or a negative test result (within 72 hours) from a…

Free

Reading: Paul Haeder

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

Paul Haeder has been a journalist since he was 17. He writes a column for Street Roots called Finding Fringe. Haeder crisscrossed Latin America, Europe and Vietnam. He eventually landed in the Pacific Northwest, now residing on Oregon's Central Coast. He is a social worker for veterans, foster youths, adults with developmental disabilities and those in homeless circumstances, and others battling addiction and recently released from prison. Haeder is a prolific writer of poetry, short fiction, memoir and environmental polemics. He is also the site director in Lincoln and Jefferson counties for an anti-poverty initiative through Family Independence Initiative. His latest book, Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam, is a collection of intertwined short fiction based on his own work in Vietnam 25 years ago.

Free