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!

Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter Virtual Discussion

Online N/A, Portland

When you think “call and response,” you may think of protest chants like “Whose streets?” “Our streets!”— groups of voices joining together to form a powerful rallying cry. Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter, published by Versify/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on August 17, is an essential history of Black Lives Matter centered on those voices, beginning with the movement's founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. Author Veronica Chambers of The New York Times documents the pivotal moments that galvanized Black Lives Matter, featuring stories and quotes from the activists that built upon a vision to stand up for racial justice. Nearly 100 striking New York Times photographs accompany the text, setting Call and Response apart as a visual narrative of the…

Free

Sallie Tisdale in Conversation With Bernard Cooper

Online N/A, Portland

Sallie Tisdale, author of the acclaimed Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them) brings “her singular sensibility, her genius for language, her love of our deeply imperfect world” (Karen Karbo) to The Lie About the Truck: Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze (Gallery), an insightful exploration of reality TV and the shifting definitions of truth in America. What is the truth? In a world of fake news and rampant conspiracy theories, the nature of truth has increasingly blurry borders. In her clever and timely cultural commentary, Tisdale tackles this issue by framing it in a familiar way — reality TV, particularly the long-running CBS show Survivor. With humor and in-depth superfan analysis, Tisdale explores the distinction between suspended disbelief and true authenticity,…

Free

Premise Course: Do we have the ability to make ourselves free? de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity & Kafka’s The Metamorphosis

Online N/A, Portland

(Learn about Premise classes here: https://www.premiseinstitute.com/premisefaq) In her book The Ethics of Ambiguity, the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir asks us to consider what it means to exercise individual freedom and to live in community with others. Where does our individual freedom begin and end? Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Ethics of Ambiguity in 1947, in the wake of Nazi atrocities and totalitarianism. She questions and seeks to define personal ethics and freedom and claims that such freedom can be manifest only when we “will others free.” How do we create a life where we protect our individual freedom and work toward the freedom of our neighbor? Can both forms of freedom truly exist? At first glance, Franz Kafka may seem an odd pairing with Simone…

$150

HOCUS Live Reading: TALISMANS

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland

Join Portland's best-publicized literary secret society for an evening of community, prose and poetry, and arcane rituals. This event is BYOT.* *Bring Your Own Talisman.

Free