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!

Livestream Reading: Dana Haynes

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes back Portland author Dana Haynes for a livestream reading from his new thriller, Sirocco, the follow-up to St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking. Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0kd-mpqTIiH9R4GMM8StOiJAhRmWykKj14 About Sirocco: A serial bomber is wreaking havoc throughout Europe. Former New York City cop Michael Finnigan and former Spanish assassin Katalin Fiero––the brains behind St. Nicholas Salvage & Wrecking, a covert bounty-hunting operation based in Cyprus––may be the only ones who can stop the carnage. The partners have a reputation for tracking down the worst of the worst in international crime, all while staying firmly under the radar. But as they draw ever closer to the bombers, and as the terrorism sweeps up Katalin's own family, Finnigan and Fiero have to decide if they can continue…

Free

Portland Arts & Lectures 2020/21 Season

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Literary Arts is pleased to announce the author line-up for the 2020/21 Season of Portland Arts & Lectures. Subscriptions start at just $90 for the series. Subscribe today! At this time, all lectures through the end of the 2020/21 season are scheduled to take place online through a virtual platform. Please contact our Box Office at la@literary-arts.org, if you have questions. OCTOBER 13, 2020, 6 p.m. Pacific Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator, naturalist, and historian of science. Her best-selling memoir H is for Hawk won the Samuel Johnson Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her forthcoming essay collection, Vesper Flights, explores the human relationship to the natural world. JANUARY 28, 2021, 6 p.m. Pacific Madeline Miller is the author of The Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2018).…

$90 – $355

Deadline: Special Award Nominations Due

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

As part of the Oregon Book Awards, Literary Arts offers three awards that recognize significant contributions to Oregon’s literary culture: The Charles Erskine Scott Wood Distinguished Writer Award is presented to an Oregon author in recognition of an enduring, substantial literary career. Past recipients include George Hitchcock, Ken Kesey, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Barry Lopez. The Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award is presented to a person or organization in recognition of significant contributions that have enriched Oregon’s literary community. Past recipients include José González, Kim Stafford, Barbara LaMorticella, David Milholland, Marlene Howard, and John Laursen. The Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award is presented to a person or organization in recognition of significant contributions that have enriched Oregon’s young readers. Past recipients…

Free

Submission Deadline: The Gravity of the Thing: Winter 2021

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Our Winter 2021 reading period is open from December 1st to January 31st. We accept defamiliarized works in the following general categories: Short: tell us a story in 3,000 words or less; we are interested in fiction, creative nonfiction, self-contained excerpts, and genre-bending forms. Flash: a fiction, creative nonfiction, or genre-bending story under 500 words. Poetry: share one or more poems, prose poems, or multimedia works for a combined count of 500 words or less. Six Words: a story in six words; you may share up to five stories per submission, but only one will be chosen. Baring the Device: essays about literary defamiliarization—or defamiliarized essays about craft, storytelling, or publishing—for our Baring the Device column; click here to learn more. The Gravity of the Thing publishes work on a rolling basis throughout its quarterly reading periods. A majority of submissions…

Free

Attic Institute: WINTER Online: The Letter as a Literary Form w Wendy Willis | Feb 1 – Feb 22

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

We will explore the role of the letter in literature--letters from writers; letters between writers; letters as poems and novels and essays. We will investigate how a letter can  clarify and distill both voice and audience and how writing a letter might break open a project at just the right point or kickstart writing that has stalled. This is a generative workshop across genres. 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 the instructor. Click the link...follow the simple directions about the settings for your microphone and…

$215 – $242

An Appointment with Emily and Your Chair: Free Writing Session

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writing, even on a good day, is hard. So how do we do it on the not-good days, on the days when it feels like the world is upside-down? “Butt in chair” is the simple answer. We make ourselves sit down, and we don’t get up until we’ve gotten a few sentences down at the very least. But sometimes it feels impossible to even get to the chair. We’d honestly rather throw the chair out the window than sit in it. But what if we made an appointment with the chair? And we knew that other interesting people were doing it too, at the exact same time? This free Zoom meeting is that appointment. We’ll say hello, and then we’ll work from a writing prompt.…

Free

Delve Readers Seminar: A Different Sort of Gilead: Marilynne Robinson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1982. In 2005, she was awarded the Pulitzer for her second novel, Gilead. In this seminar we will read both novels; a subsequent seminar will focus on Robinson’s third and fourth novels, which take up and expand upon the story told in Gilead. All novels are concerned with questions of family, home, memory, and the often fraught nature of human relationships. In Housekeeping, two sisters struggle towards maturity amidst tragic and complicated family circumstances. Set in a hauntingly atmospheric Idaho town, Robinson’s lyrical story blends the mundane and the mythical and confronts us with both the beauty and the difficulty of love. Gilead takes the form of journal entries, written by…

$240

WITS Reading: Parkrose High School

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writers in the Schools (WITS) has served public high school students with creative writing residencies in Portland, and more recently Gresham, since 1996. Published local writers collaborate with classroom teachers to lead an immersive semester-long workshop series designed to further class themes, curricula, and student interests. Each residency culminates with a public reading, ordinarily held in a local café or bookstore. With distance learning, we look forward to hosting our reading on Zoom and invite you to join us in celebrating these students and their work. This end-of-residency reading will feature students who worked with WITS writers Carolina Goméz-Montoya, Matt Smith, and WITS apprentice CJ Wiggan. Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAldeChrDksH9yeN1iWNV6EdY4e9eBe_qFU After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining…

Free

Virtual Writers Group

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join fellow writers the first Wednesday of the month for a friendly critique. The goal is to support one another with constructive feedback and participate in writing exercises. All experience levels welcome! Books Around the Corner is inviting you to participate in Writers Group by phone or email until further notice. The Meeting ID will not change monthly for the Writers Group. Join Online https://zoom.us/j/230496085 Meeting ID: 230 496 085 Join by Phone HERE +1 301 715 8592 US Meeting ID: 230 496 085

Free