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!

Virtual Event: Elle Marr, Author of Lies We Bury, In Conversation with Georgina Cross

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Oregon author Elle Marr celebrates the release of her second book, LIES WE BURY - a psychological thriller set in Portland and drawing on the "twisted history, shadowy passages, and trap doors" of the Shanghai Tunnels under Portland's Chinatown. She is joined in conversation by Georgina Cross, author of The Stepdaughter. Elle Marr Originally from Sacramento, Elle Marr graduated from UC San Diego before moving to France, where she earned a master's degree from the Sorbonne University in Paris. She now lives and writes in Oregon, with her husband, son, and one very demanding feline. Her debut thriller, The Missing Sister, was the #24 Best Selling eBook of 2020 on Amazon, a #1 Amazon Best Seller, #1 in the Kindle Store, featured in Woman's World,…

Free

Alumni Showcase Reading: Chelsea Bieker, Susan Leslie Moore, & Candace Opper

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Chelsea Bieker is the author of the novel Godshot and the forthcoming story collection Cowboys and Angels (2022). Her writing has been published in The Paris Review, Granta, The Cut, McSweeney’s, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award and a MacDowell fellowship. Originally from California’s Central Valley, she now lives and teaches in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children. She is a graduate of the Portland State MFA program. Susan Leslie Moore’s poetry has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2019 Juniper Prize in Poetry and her first full-length collection, That Place Where You Opened Your Hands, was published by University of Massachusetts Press in 2020. Her poem “Night of the Living” appears in The Best American Poetry…

Free

Write Around Portland: Bi-Monthly BIPOC Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For people who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC). 2nd & 4th Friday of every month from 4 to 5:30 pm (Pacific Time), Free. (No workshop 12/25.) Workshops are held via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Registration opens the 1st of the month every month. Pre-register for our 2nd Friday workshop here. Pre-register for our 4th Friday workshop here. Click here for more workshop details.

Free

Jeff VanderMeer in Convo with Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The San Antonio Book Festival and Portland Book Festival present Jeff VanderMeer in Convo with Silvia Moreno-Garcia.  REGISTER HERE We’ve gathered two of America’s most visionary writers for this event. Jeff VanderMeer moves from fantasy to noir in his new novel, Hummingbird Salamander, in which security consultant “Jane Smith” receives an envelope with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and clues leading her to a taxidermied salamander. Silvina, the dead woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of an Argentine industrialist. By taking the hummingbird from the storage unit, Jane sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin beyond her control. And in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s bestelling novel Mexican Gothic, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a…

$32

Attic Institute: SPRING Online: Story Building Workshop w Joanna Rose

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Stories have component parts, and they interact. Starting with the basic building block of scene we’ll start with character and move step by step through the micro-levels of sentences, concrete detail, cause and effect, narration, and structure. Each week includes a close read of an excerpt of a published work and a discussion of specific craft elements. Participants will be invited to turn in work each week and can expect to develop a language of non-judgmental critique that will lead to a supportive, in-depth conversation about each other’s work. We’ll look deeply into what it takes to build a prose narrative, real or imagined, long or short. | Maximum: 12 writers Register for this workshop NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering our workshops via Zoom.…

$430 – $458

Contents Under Pressure: Using Constraints to Stretch Your Creativity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

for BIPOC writers only Putting constraints on our writing can feel like a challenge, but sometimes a little pressure is what’s needed to push our writing in a new direction or to find language for what seems unsayable. We’ll draw on Oulipian constraints like the lipogram and the Beatiful Outlaw, as well as visual constraints such as erasures and collage, to radically depart from our typical writing habits. We’ll also invent our own extreme constraints to discover what happens when we challenge ourselves to write our way out of seemingly impossible restrictions. Access Program We want our writing classes 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…

$240

Willy Vlautin, author of “The Night Always Comes,” with Maria Semple

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Novelist and musician Willy Vlautin, author of "The Night Always Comes" appears in conversation with Maria Semple About this Event An appearance by Willy Vlautin is always a special occasion for us, and, like you, we've been looking forward to his new novel, The Night Always Comes (Harper). He'll appear in conversation with Seattle writer, Maria Semple. Award-winning author Willy Vlautin explores the impact of trickle-down greed and opportunism of gentrification on ordinary lives in this scorching novel that captures the plight of a young woman pushed to the edge as she fights to secure a stable future for herself and her family. Barely thirty, Lynette is exhausted. Saddled with bad credit and juggling multiple jobs, some illegally, she’s been diligently working to buy the…

Free – $30

Jeff VanderMeer in Conversation With Karen Russell

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Software manager Jane Smith receives an envelope containing a list of animals along with a key to a storage unit that holds a taxidermied hummingbird and salamander. The list is signed “Love, Silvina.” Jane does not know a Silvina, and she wants nothing to do with the taxidermied animals. The hummingbird and the salamander are, it turns out, two of the most endangered species in the world. Silvina Vilcapampa, the woman who left the note, is a reputed ecoterrorist and the daughter of a recently deceased Argentine industrialist. By removing the hummingbird and the salamander from the storage unit, Jane has set in motion a series of events over which she has no control. Instantly, Jane and her family are in danger, and she finds…

Free

Books Around the Corner: Fantasy Book Club (Remote)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

When a banished witch falls in love with the legendary trickster Loki, she risks the wrath of the gods in this moving, subversive debut novel that reimagines Norse mythology. Angrboda's story begins where most witches' tales end: with a burning. A punishment from Odin for refusing to provide him with knowledge of the future, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the farthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be Loki, and her initial distrust of him transforms into a deep and abiding love. Their union produces three unusual children, each with a secret destiny, who Angrboda is keen to raise at the edge of the world, safely hidden from Odin's…

$26

Submission Deadline: Portland Review: TRANSIT / TRANSITION / TRANSLATION

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Themed submissions will open for 24 hours on April 14. Languages and change, buses and trains, the tracks of planets—for our series on transit, transition, and translation, we’re looking for stories, poems, and nonfiction that deal with change and movement in under 1000 words. We can't wait to read your work! Submissions will open at 12 a.m. PDT on April 14 and close at 11:59 p.m. ABOUT US: For over sixty years, Portland Review has published the works of emerging writers and artists alongside the works of well-established authors. We warmly encourage previously unpublished writers and artists to submit, and we aim to support work by those often marginalized in the artistic conversation, including (though certainly not limited to) people of color, women, disabled people,…

Free