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!

Delve Readers Seminar: New York City: Paul Auster and Jonathan Safran Foer

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Paul Auster and Jonathan Safran Foer are two contemporary authors who have explored New York City not only as a space where a person works, transits, and lives, but more as a symbolic space at a certain time that interacts with the fictional characters as if the city were also one of them—a living entity that actively affects the fates and actions of every person that inhabits it. Memory, chance, the double, and disobedience as a way to dig into the self are the literary elements that trigger the plots constructed by these two authors. In this Delve seminar we’ll discuss Auster’s Leviathan (1992), and Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005). We will compare how each author recreates New York as a fictional place,…

$240

Submission Deadline: The Gravity of the Thing: Spring 2021

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Our Spring 2021 reading period is open from March 1st to April 30th. 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 defamiliarization—or defamiliarized essays about storytelling, literary craft, or publishing—for our Baring the Device column and resources; click here to learn more. The Gravity of the Thing publishes work on a rolling basis throughout its quarterly reading periods. A…

Free

Looking Back to Look Forward: A Daily Writing Practice

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This class will help you adopt crucial creative habits using your memory of the past to build a practice for the future. Using a series of daily in-class and at-home prompts that focus on ideas of home, trek childhood, and position memory as present, you will generate new work and use research-based ways to bring a sustainable practice into your life. Everyone will have opportunities to give and receive generous feedback on the development of your practice, as well as on your writing. We will pay particular attention to the voice and structure of new work and engage with the common themes that arise out of these prompts: the grief of all families, the complicated solipsism of children, and the way language gives new meaning…

$240

Oregon Book Awards Show: The Archive Project

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The 2021 Oregon Book Award winners will be announced on May 2, 2021, on a special episode of The Archive Project, airing on OPB Radio at 7:00 p.m. The hour-long show will be hosted by Omar El Akkad and Elena Passarello, and will feature readings from Oregon Book Awards winners, archival audio from previous Oregon Book Awards ceremonies, and an interview with CES Wood recipient Molly Gloss. Omar El Akkad was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in Doha, Qatar until he moved to Canada with his family. He is an award-winning journalist and author who has traveled around the world to cover many of the most important news stories of the last decade. His reporting includes dispatches from the NATO-led war in Afghanistan,…

Free

Books Around the Corner: Remote 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! Join Online Meeting ID: 230 496 085

Free

Write A Book: Fiction & Creative Nonfiction Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Write A Book: Fiction & Creative Nonfiction IPRC Creative Workshops for Fall 2020 will be held online via zoom, PST. *Waitlist Instructor: Michael Heald Wednesdays, 6:30 – 8:30 Nine students maximum (ages 18+) Class meetings: 24 (8 per term) Cost: $825 *2 spots available at sliding scale, BIPOC prioritized; email hquinn@iprc.org *2 spots available at no cost, BIPOC prioritized; email hquinn@iprc.org October 7, 2020 – June 9, 2021 This workshop will consist of three eight-week terms. Writers currently working on memoirs, essay collections, novellas, novels, short story llections, oral histories, and long-form journalism are all strongly encouraged to apply. Hybrid forms welcome. Over the course of 24 sessions, writers will work towards a draft of a manuscript in a supportive workshop environment. We’ll explore non-linear…

$825

Coffee Talk #22

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Come hear 5 wonderful writers read their hearts on subjects around grief. The online reading will be around 1 hour long on zoom. Come listen. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87892128304?pwd=RGtiT3JiRGJNUU9FRmxrTFJiaHBMdz09 Meeting ID: 878 9212 8304 Passcode: 413895

Free

Wordplay Festival: Intercontinental Series featuring Helen Oyeyemi

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Helen Oyeyemi, bestselling author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, crafts a mesmerizing portrayal of two lovers forever changed by an unusual train journey in her new novel Peaces. As Otto and Xavier Shin depart on what appears to be a train constructed by their wildest imaginations, we discover that the past is never truly behind us—and could possibly be sitting right next to us. The Loft’s Virtual Wordplay is presented by St. Catherine University and Star Tribune. In partnership with Literary Arts (Portland, OR), The Loft (Minneapolis, MN), Black Mountain Institute (Las Vegas, NV), and Wisconsin Book Festival (Madison, WI). More info and register here.  

Free

The Strange Case of Nick M.

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A cocky podcaster unearths a box of old audio tapes belonging to a psychotherapist revealing a risky experiment with an amnesiac patient. Imago marks their foray into radio drama with The Strange Case of Nick M. by Drew Pisarra. Purchase a ticket and you will receive a link and password on May 6 so you can listen to this original radio play beginning May 7. Your ticket gives you access to stream the piece anytime from May 7 12pm PT until May 15 12am PT. Only one ticket is required per household. If you have any questions, email us at imagotheatre@gmail.com. The Strange Case of Nick M. is Imago's trippy audio journey into the fragmentary world of Nick M. a severe amnesiac. Narrated by a…

$10

Quarantine Book Club: ‘Mrs. Dalloway’

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A classic novel of early summer, Mrs. Dalloway takes place over the course of a single day in London. It tells the story of Clarissa Dalloway as she gets ready for a party, and also the story of a war veteran with PTSD. Mrs. Dalloway is generally considered the first of Virginia Woolf's masterpieces, and is ranked by Time magazine as one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. We will read it over four weeks, gathering on Zoom on Saturday mornings to discuss it as we go. Each session begins with a talk by Christopher Frizzelle, followed by open discussion. Meetings will last 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on how lively the discussion gets. If you miss any of the meetings, no problem: A recording…

$75 – $200