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!

Angie Thomas in Conversation With Rosanne Parry

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

Superstar author Angie Thomas makes her middle grade debut with the launch of an inventive, hilarious, and suspenseful new contemporary fantasy trilogy inspired by African American history and folklore. It’s not easy being a Remarkable in the Unremarkable world. Some things are cool — like getting a pet hellhound for your twelfth birthday. Others, not so much — like not being trusted to learn magic because you might use it to take revenge on an annoying neighbor. All Nic Blake wants is to be a powerful Manifestor like her dad. But before she has a chance to convince him to teach her, a series of shocking revelations and terrifying events launch Nic and two friends on a hunt for a powerful magic tool she’s never…

Free

Kids’ Storytime With Stephanie Shaw

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

Hen insists on doing everything alone. When Fox comes calling, Hen's friends start to worry… but should they? Hen isn't a little chick anymore. She's spread her wings and can get a job done just the way she likes it! She can grow wheat herself, she can wheelbarrow it home by herself, and she can turn it into delicious bread all by herself. No need to bother offering Hen a helping hand of any sort, thank you. She's got it covered! But then comes Fox… and Fox loves to eat all kinds of tasty things. So when Pig, Horse, and Cow discover that Fox has paid Hen a visit, should they step in and offer assistance that Hen hasn't asked for? Stephanie Shaw’s All by…

Free

Smallpresspalooza

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

After a four-year absence, Smallpresspalooza is back! Powell's presents this marathon reading of authors published by local and national small presses for the twelfth time. This year's lineup features Marcelle Heath, Sam Rose Preminger, Nicholas Yandell & Timothy Arliss O'Brien, Craig Buchner, Benjamin Kessler, Marialicia González, Eric Tran, Alyssa Giannini, Ashley Yang-Thompson, Quinn Gancedo, X.C. Atkins, and April Alexis Hernandez. Hosted by Powell's small-press champion and publisher of Future Tense Books, Kevin Sampsell. A full Smallpresspalooza schedule is available here. Preorder a Signed Edition (Heath) Preorder a Signed Edition (Preminger) Preorder a Signed Edition (Yandell & O’Brien) Preorder a Signed Edition (Buchner) Preorder a Signed Edition (Kessler) Preorder a Signed Edition (González) Preorder a Signed Edition (Tran) Preorder a Signed Edition (Giannini) Preorder a Signed…

Free

Matt Ruff

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

Summer, 1957. Atticus Turner and his father, Montrose, travel to North Carolina, where they plan to mark the centennial of their ancestor’s escape from slavery by retracing the route he took into the Great Dismal Swamp. But an encounter with an old nemesis turns their historical reenactment into a real life-and-death pursuit. Back in Chicago, George Berry fights for his own life. Diagnosed with cancer, he strikes a devil’s bargain with the ghost of Hiram Winthrop, who promises a miracle cure — but to receive it, George will first have to bring Winthrop back from the dead. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Horace Berry, reeling from the killing of a close friend, joins his mother, Hippolyta, and her friend Letitia Dandridge on a research trip to Nevada for…

Free

Tobin Mitnick in Conversation With Casey Clapp & Alex Crowson

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

Tobin Mitnick, JewsLoveTrees creator and shameless tree lover, leads you, the tree-curious, through the wonderful world of North American trees with fact, opinion, and humor. In Must Love Trees (Rock Point), Mitnick invites you to share his deeply personal connection to our forest companions in ways that expand the storied genre of nature writing. From an imagined dialogue with the world’s oldest bristlecone pine, to the minutiae of tree huggability, to the emotional toll of taking up the practice of bonsai, this fresh take into the world of trees is divided into three equally humorous and insightful sections. The first section discusses Mitnick’s personal opinions and relationship with trees, while the second section describes the science behind trees (from tree botany to tree biology to…

Free

BIPOC Reading Series- April

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This bimonthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color. Come listen to our featured readers, or sign up to share your work in our open mic. Readings will be followed by a short community discussion. The theme for April is “Transformation.” Our featured reader is Brandt Maina. Brandt Maina (he/they) – RIOA wa RIOE —is an abstRact and absuRdist artist, performer and writer from Nairobi, Kenya. In the month of the year of our Lard, May 2020, they graduated with a BFA in Acting and Vocal Performance from Taylor University, a small conservative Christian University in rural Indiana. Simply stated, with a background in the arts, and fresh memories of being homeless…

Free

Don Winslow

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

Following the ambitious City on Fire, comes the dramatic second novel in an epic crime trilogy from Don Winslow, author of the Cartel trilogy (The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and The Border). Hollywood. The city where dreams are made. On the losing side of a bloody East Coast crime war, Danny Ryan is now on the run. The Mafia, the cops, the FBI all want him dead or in prison. With his little boy, his elderly father and the tattered remnants of his loyal crew of soldiers, he makes the classic American migration to California to start a new life. A quiet, peaceful existence. But the Feds track him down and want Danny to do them a favor that could make him a…

Free

Neal Shusterman & Eric Elfman

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

Eoin Colfer meets Rick Riordan — with a little Margaret Peterson Haddix sprinkled on top — in I Am the Walrus (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), the first book in a hilarious new sci-fi series from authors Neal Shusterman and Eric Elfman. When 14-year-old Noah falls from the trees on his classmate Sahara, he doesn’t understand how, or why, he would have been up there. It’s just one more in a string of strange things happening to Noah lately. Like when he keels over and every muscle in his body freezes when confronted by bullies. And when he vanishes into the background at a moment he doesn’t want to be noticed. And when he unexpectedly blasts Sahara with a bird shriek while flapping his…

Free

The Break with Kaveh Akbar

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, “The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though many of the activities and discussions orbit or are inflected by recovery themes (Akbar has been in active recovery for eight years), participants are not required to self-identify as being in recovery to participate.” Register at: https://www.portlandalano.org/the-break Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American poet and scholar, and the author of Pilgrim Bell, published by Graywolf Press; Calling a Wolf a Wolf, published by Alice James Books in the US and Penguin Books in the UK; and the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic, published by Sibling Rivalry Press. In 2014, he founded the poetry interview…

Free

Reading: Warren C. Easley: Fatal Flaw

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

Annie Bloom's welcomes back Oregon author Warren C. Easley for an in-store reading from his latest Cal Claxton mystery novel, Fatal Flaw. Signed and personalized copies are available for order! Please, please, please include the name for personalization in the order notes; all orders without a name specified in the order notes will be signed only. About Fatal Flaw: It's winter in the Oregon wine country, and small-town lawyer Cal Claxton deserves a respite after his last grueling case. But just as the world learns about a threatening new virus variant, a woman named Willow Daniels shows up at his office, asking Cal to represent her in the settlement of her uncle's estate. The uncle's death was ruled a suicide, but Willow isn't buying it.…

Free