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!

Longreads Club: LGBTI Asylum Seekers in Africa

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

READ THE ARTICLE: https://longreads.com/2019/06/11/caught-between-borders/ "Caught Between Borders" by Malia Politzer and Annie Hylton Illustration by Eric Chow This "yearlong investigation into the plight of African LGBTI asylum seekers — for which we interviewed dozens of African LGBTI-identified asylum seekers, lawyers, and human rights activists on three different continents — reveal that systemic gaps in the asylum process mean that members of this particularly vulnerable population often fall through the cracks. If you’re African and LGBTI, true safety is often unachievable." 6,991 words. Est. reading time: 25 min. If you prefer to listen to the article, you can create a Text-To-Speech mp3 here: http://www.fromtexttospeech.com. The TTS is a robotic voice, but many people get used to it fairly quickly. Join the Longreads Club where we discuss…

Free

Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

We welcome Kate Carroll De Gutes, Mat Johnson, and Sallie Tisdale to the store at 7 pm on Wednesday, September 4th, to read from the newly published anthology Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents, edited by Lise Funderburg and published by the University of Nebraska Press. In this new collection, twenty-five authors – including Ann Patchett, Daniel Mendelsohn, Jane Hamilton, and S. Bear Bergman – deftly explore a trait they’ve inherited from a parent, reflecting on how it affects the lives they lead today and how it shifts their relationship to that parent (sometimes posthumously) and to their sense of self. Together, their essays form a prismatic meditation on how we make fresh sense of ourselves and our parents when we see the pieces of…

Free

Lisa Congdon

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

Author, artist, and illustrator Lisa Congdon brings her expertise to Find Your Artistic Voice (Chronicle), a guide to the process of artistic self-discovery. Featuring advice from Congdon herself and interviews with a roster of established artists, illustrators, and creatives, her one-of-a-kind book will show readers how to identify and nurture their own visual identities, navigate the influence of artists they admire, push through fear and insecurity, and appreciate the value of their personal journeys.

Free

Chronicles of a Blessed Man – Paul Haber

Another Read Through 3932 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for a reading from Chronicles of a Blessed Man, a memoir by Paul Haber. Paul Haber is a former career soldier- a Marine, then Special Forces (Green Beret) and Ranger. After retiring from the service, he held several jobs, including security officer, bodyguard, and martial arts instructor, before “finding his niche” with the Arizona Department of Corrections; progressing from Officer to Sergeant, to a type of counselor called Corrections Officer III, before taking an early retirement. His personal life was not quite as successful. Ten years after a marriage to a woman he barely knew, he became divorced and hurried into another, against the advice of his parents and friends. He didn’t realize at the time that he was, in great measure, the cause…

Free

Westside Writing Group

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

A group for anyone writing nonfiction or memoir who would like company, support, and, most of all, accountability. Whether you’ve never written a word or you’re a published author, join us!

Free

Ganesh Sitaraman

Powell's Books on Hawthorne 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

Whenever you go to your local public library, send mail via the post office, or visit Yosemite, you are taking advantage of a longstanding American tradition: the public option. Some of the most useful and beloved institutions in American life are public options – yet they are seldom celebrated as such. Ganesh Sitaraman’s The Public Option (Harvard) (cowritten with Anne Alstott) challenges decades of received wisdom about the proper role of government and considers the improvements that could come from the expansion of public options.

Free

Fall 2019: Memoir Accountability

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

September 7, 2019 and the first Saturday of the month through May 2, 2019. (no meeting in March) Saturdays, 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. (8 meetings) Instructor: Jay Ponteri Prerequisites: • Previously enrolled in 18/19 nine month memoir intensive with Jay Ponteri, OR instructor permission. This class meets once a month from September to May. This will be your monthly dose of accountability for students who are continuing to work on their memoir. Each writer will have the opportunity to workshop pages of their manuscript in progress. About the instructor: Jay Ponteri is the author of the memoir Wedlocked (Hawthorne Books), winner of an Oregon Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Jay directs the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing at Pacific Northwest College of Art  …

$350

Submission Deadline: Creative Nonfiction (CNF) Studio | Sep 26 – Dec 19

The Internet 001 SE Cyberspace Lane, Portland, OR, United States

The Creative Nonfiction (CNF) Studio is based on the idea that inspiration, accountability, and community are essential to every writer’s growth. The CNF Studio meets weekly for multi-month sessions, and its curriculum is designed to help you deepen your writing through a keener understanding of both literary craft and your own voice. The CNF Studio is open to applications from all writers, and members often return for multiple sessions. This creates the Studio’s special experience: a consistent, deep, and supportive study of your writing in the company of other writers. Each weekly session includes a close-reading and discussion of a selected work of creative nonfiction, a roundtable reading of take-home prompts, and in-depth critique of several works-in-progress. Over the course of their time in the CNF Studio,…

$582 – $604

Portland — Weird. Wonderful. Bizarre.

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

Many of the images in Donald R. Nelson’s Portland – Weird. Wonderful. Bizarre.: The Changing City (Don Nelson) illustrate the weirdness of both Portland’s past and present. Over the years, progress and ingenuity have brought about transformations in Portland. Some good, others that make one wonder, What were they thinking? Nelson’s new book is for those who want to learn and discover the Rose City as it was and what it has become – in a weird, wonderful, and bizarre way.

Free

Randall Munroe

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

How To (Riverhead) is the world’s most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from Randall Munroe, the brilliant mind behind xkcd, the wildly popular webcomic. For any task you might want to do, there’s a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach, full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole. As he did in What If?, the bestselling author and cartoonist invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible.

Free