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!

Liz Prato in Conversation with Jacqueline Keeler

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland

We welcome Liz Prato, author of Volcanoes, Palm Trees, and Privilege: Essays on Hawaiʻi, in conversation with Jacqueline Keeler at 7 pm on Thursday, September 12th. Volcanoes, Palm Trees, and Privilege, published by Overcup Press, explores what it means to be a white tourist in a seeming paradise that has been formed – and largely destroyed – by white outsiders. Hawaiian history, pop culture, and contemporary affairs are woven with personal narrative in fifteen essays that examine how the touristic ideal of Hawai’i came to be. In the book, Prato examines her multi-layered relationship with Hawai’i and her soul connection with this group of islands. Author Lidia Yuknavitch describes the book as “a love letter to the land and people of Hawai’i.” Prato will read…

Free

Echo of Distant Water – JB Fisher

Another Read Through 3932 N Mississippi Ave, Portland

Join us for a reading of Echo of Distant Water: The 1958 Disappearance of Portland’s Martin Family by JB Fisher! Echo of Distant Water tells the true and largely forgotten story of Ken Martin, his wife Barbara, and their three young daughters—who vanished while hunting Christmas greens in the Columbia River Gorge on December 7, 1958. Despite one of the largest missing persons searches in Oregon history, the case remains perplexingly unsolved to this day. After discovering a stack of old newspaper articles about the case in his McMinnville garage, author JB Fisher obtained a wealth of first-hand and never-before publicized information including an intriguing trail left in the personal notebooks and papers of Multnomah County criminal detective Walter E. Graven. These provide fascinating insight…

Free

Author Event, Dr. Erica Elliott, Medicine and Miracles

Two Rivers Bookstore 8836 N Lombard Street, Portland

Author, adventurer, & speaker, Dr. Erica Elliott, M.D. stops by the Two Rivers Bookstore to talk about her life experiences and her new book, Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert. Join us as Dr. Erica Elliott shares her experiences living among the Navajo.

Free

THIS IS NOT A RUSSIAN PLOT: A “Readings for Now” Seminar

Mother Foucault's Bookshop 523 SE Morrison St, Portland

The Oregon Institute for Creative Research presents: THIS IS NOT A RUSSIAN PLOT: A “Readings for Now” Seminar This is not a Russian plot, despite articles to the contrary by Mr. William J. Broad, science journalist, senior writer, and DuPont fellow at the New York Times, which, a month prior, had established in its main newsroom a "5G Journalism Lab" in partnership with telecom giant Verizon so that readers of the country's newspaper of record can see "more detailed, lifelike versions" of David Bowie's new red shoes. A "Readings For Now" seminar & group discussion on fifth generation wireless technologies.

Free

Raymond Caballero in Conversation With Barbara Dudley

Powell's Books on Hawthorne 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland

Clinton Jencks, a decorated war hero, adopted as his own the Mexican American fight for equal rights in New Mexico’s mining industry. In 1950, he led a local of the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers in the famed Empire Zinc strike, but three years after, Jencks was arrested and charged with falsely denying that he was a Communist and was sentenced to five years in prison. In McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks (University of Oklahoma), Raymond Caballero reveals for the first time that the FBI and the prosecution knew all along that Jencks was innocent. The tale of Jencks’s quest for justice provides a glimpse into the McCarthy era’s oppression. Caballero will be joined in conversation by Barbara Dudley, Senior Fellow at the…

Free

Hangdog Days: Conflict, Change, and the Race for 5.14

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

Hangdog Days (Mountaineers) vividly chronicles the era when rock climbing exploded in popularity, attracting a new generation of talented climbers eager to reach new heights via harder routes and faster ascents. This contentious, often entertaining period gave rise to sport climbing, climbing gyms, and competitive climbing – indelibly transforming the sport. Jeff Smoot was one of those brash young climbers, and here he traces the development of traditional climbing “rules,” enforced first through peer pressure, then later through intimidation and sabotage. In his lively, fast-paced history, Smoot deftly brings to life the characters and events of this raucous, revolutionary time in rock climbing.

Free