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!

Garden+ Lecture Series: Balazs and Botond Bognar

Portland Japanese Garden 611 SW Kingston Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Balazs and Botond Bognar present a public lecture at the Garden to mark the launch of their new book, Kengo Kuma: Portland Japanese Garden (Rizzoli, 2019). Come join us on the Garden’s beautiful Overlook to hear the story of the creation of the Garden’s Cultural Village and the inspiration it took from Japan’s monzen-machi, the small settlements built in front of gates or shrines. The conversation will touch on the Japanese tradition of dwelling in harmony with nature, the Garden’s evolution into a world-renowned Japanese cultural organization, and the bold vision shared across the Pacific that moved the project forward to fruition. The evening will be a chance to learn firsthand about the elements and features in the Cultural Village and their ancient lineage in…

$15

Michael Pollan

Keller Auditorium 222 SW Clay St, Portland, OR, United States

The ARK Series presents author Michael Pollan in conversation with Nick Powers, PhD at the Portland'5 Keller Auditorium on Saturday, May 18, 2019 at 8pm. For the past 25 years, Michael Pollan, author of five New York Times bestsellers (including The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore’s Dilemma), has been writing about the places where nature and culture intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and, now, in the plants and fungi humans use to alter consciousness. Pollan’s unique and elegant blend of science, history, travel writing, and first person reportage has inspired millions of readers to look at familiar experiences in a whole new light while sparking vital national conversations about our relationship to the natural world. In a talk based on…

$45 – $150

Nineteenth Century Chinese Women Workers in the Northwest: Chuimei Ho

Portland Chinatown Museum 127 NW Third Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Dr. Chuimei Ho is an Art Historian and Archeologist who has written extensively on the Chinese in SE and East Asia and North America. She is co-editor, with Dr. Bennet Bronson, of CINARC, the website of the Chinese Northwest American Research Committee, and co-author of Coming Home in Gold Brocade: Chinese in Early Northwest America (2015) and Three Chinese Temples in California: Marysville, Oroville, Weaverville (2016). *Dr. Ho’s lecture is part of our ongoing series of lectures and workshops about nineteenth century Chinese workers in Oregon and the Northwest.

$10 – $12

Future Prairie: Becoming

The Hallowed Halls 4420 SE 64th Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Please join the artists of Future Prairie for our summer solstice show on the theme of "becoming"! Musical performances by Lucy & La Mer, Crystal Cortez, Cristina Cano, and Sage Fisher Drag performance by Sarah Jo and Anna Swanson Video installation by Laura Camila Medina Spoken word by Anna Suarez and Bella Hall Guest lecture by Noah Schultz Our show is inspired by the chautauquas of the 19th and early 20th centuries, where people from all walks of life came together to experience education, entertainment, and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, and entertainers. BYOB Founded in January 2018 by Joni Renee Whitworth in Portland, Oregon, Future Prairie is a non-profit organization and artist collective led by women, femme, queer, transgender and…

$25

Tin House Summer Workshop Lectures: Patricia Smith, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Kaveh Akbar

Reed College 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

2:30 pm-3:20 pm, Vollum Lecture Hall Congratulations! You Are a Writer—Therefore, You Own the World, with Patricia Smith For as long as there have been Moleskins, #2 pencils, Bics, keyboards, and imagination, there has been a feverish, high-decibel debate about who has the right to tell what story. Can a white, middle-aged man from Vermont do justice to the story of a young woman in the antebellum South? Can a sighted storyteller have a blind protagonist? What “qualifications” do we need in order to write across lines of race, region, religion, history, and ability? 3:30 pm – 4:20 pm, Vollum Lecture Hall Revisiting Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, with Claire Vaye Watkins This lecture will reconsider Chopin’s classic novella through multiple critical lenses and wonder after…

$10

Tin House Summer Workshop Lectures: Mitchell S. Jackson, Laura van den Berg, and Maureen N. McLane

Reed College 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

2:30 pm-3:20 pm, Vollum Lecture Hall Voice as Comp, with Mitchell Jackson Writers with a distinctive literary voice have a greater chance to, as Susan Sontag says, “preserve the works of the mind against oblivion.” Voice consists of qualities that include diction, syntactical usage, sound, and visual logic. At its best, voice is as singular as one’s thumbprint. This craft lecture will present philosophies on voice and some of the rhetorical tools used to compose—yes, it’s an act of composition—a remarkable one. We will read passages from the work of master prose stylists—a list that includes John Edgar Wideman, Joan Didion, Grace Paley, and Denis Johnson—with an eye toward critiquing the elements that make their literary voice distinctive, compelling, enduring. 3:30 pm – 4:20 pm,…

$10

Tin House Summer Workshop Lectures: Nicole J. Georges, Rebecca Makkai, Lan Samantha Chang, and Terese Marie Mailhot

Reed College 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

9:00 am – 9:50 am, Vollum Lecture Hall Drawing A Line, with Nicole J. Georges Nicole will discuss her 20-year career as a self-taught artist, from zinester beginnings in suburban Kansas, to Sister Spit’s queer literary tour, the creation of award-winning graphic novels Calling Dr. Laura and Fetch.  This talk lays out the basics of empowerment through self-expression, the value of community in your practice, art as activism, forging a career & supporting yourself as a self-taught artist, discipline in cartooning, and what it takes to transform a life of experiences into a 300-page graphic memoir. 2:30 pm – 3:20 pm, Vollum Lecture Hall You Talkin’ to Me?: The “Ear” of the Story, with Rebecca Makkai We talk a lot about a story’s point of…

$10

Tin House Summer Workshop Lectures: Kristen Radtke, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Michelle Tea, and Jim Shepard

Reed College 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

9:00 am – 9:50 am, Vollum Lecture Hall Framing and Perspective in Graphic Storytelling, with Kristen Radtke We use framing and perspective all the time in prose writing, but we probably don’t think about them in the same way. We’ll look at how framing—from the simple way that illustrations are confined, to more complicated shapes—as well as pace, visual silence, visual argument, and interruption. Then we’ll talk about how these tools are employed beyond comics and into prose, poetry, and a myriad of visual storytelling forms. 2:30 pm – 3:20 pm, Vollum Lecture Hall Power and Audience: On Not Writing for White People, with Ingrid Rojas Contreras This lecture will look at the many ways we adopt speaking to address majority cultures, how those corners…

$10

Rob Bell – An Introduction To Joy

Revolution Hall 1300 SE Stark St, Portland, OR, United States

Rob Bell is the New York Times best selling author of Love Wins, What We Talk About When We Talk About God, The Zimzum of Love, How To Be Here and What is the Bible?. His podcast, called the RobCast, is the #1 spirituality podcast and iTunes named it Best of 2015. He’s been profiled in the New Yorker, toured with Oprah, and in 2011 Time Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. He has a regular show at Largo, the legendary comedy and music club in Los Angeles, where he lives with wife Kristen and their three children.

$25 – $75