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!

Matt Saincome & Bill Conway

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

Since 2014, The Hard Times has been at the forefront of music journalism, delivering hard-hitting reports and in-depth investigations into the punk and hardcore scene. From their scathing takedown of Kim Jong-un after he appointed himself the new singer of Black Flag to their incisive coverage of a healthy Lars Ulrich being replaced by a hologram, the site has become a trusted source for all things counterculture. In The Hard Times: The First 40 Years (Mariner), Matt Saincome and Bill Conway reveal their humble roots, documenting The Hard Times’ ascension alongside the rise of punk.

Free

Richard Louv

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

Richard Louv’s landmark book, Last Child in the Woods, inspired an international movement to connect children and nature. Now Louv redefines the future of human-animal coexistence. Our Wild Calling (Algonquin) explores these powerful and mysterious bonds and how they can transform our mental, physical, and spiritual lives, serve as an antidote to the growing epidemic of human loneliness, and help us tap into the empathy required to preserve life on Earth. Our Wild Calling makes the case for protecting, promoting, and creating a sustainable and shared habitat for all creatures – not out of fear, but out of love. Transformative and inspiring, this book points us toward what we all long for in the age of technology: real connection.

Free

David Oates

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

We welcome David Oates to read from his new book The Mountains of Paris, published by Oregon State University Press. Writing in the present tense about the seasons he spent living in Paris, waking each morning to a view of Notre Dame, Oates is led to revise his life story from one of trudging and occasional woe into one punctuated by nourishing and sometimes unsettling brilliance. It is a rare opportunity to consider what it means to be human, through time-stopping moments with music, art, and deep history. The book offers memories that intrude into the bustle of Paris life: a Billy Graham crusade at age thirteen, a mountain pass, a love, a loss. In long years of mountaineering, Oates fought the self-loathing which had…

Free

Stories My Mother and Father Told Me

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

Diana Lo Mei Hing My Childhood in Canton City on the eve of the Cultural Revolution Thursday November 14th 5:30-7:00 PM This event is part of our ongoing series Stories My Mother and Father Told Me, featuring artists, writers, and community elders. The series is sponsored in part by a grant from Oregon Humanities.* Tickets: $15/General; $10/Members

$10 – $15

The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last

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

We have lost the war on cancer. We spend $150 billion each year treating it, yet – a few innovations notwithstanding – a patient with cancer is as likely to die of it as one was 50 years ago. Most new drugs add mere months to one's life, at agonizing physical and financial cost. In The First Cell (Basic), oncologist Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treat cancer, how we can do better, and why we must. A lyrical journey from hope to despair and back again, The First Cell explores cancer from every angle: medical, scientific, cultural, and personal.

Free

Endangered Orcas: The Story of the Southern Residents

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

The critically endangered Southern Resident killer whales are the most watched and studied whales in the world, yet they struggle for survival in the waters of Washington State and British Columbia. These urban orcas, a Pacific Northwest icon, are at the center of human politics as we attempt to learn from the past and find a sustainable future. Our relationship to these whales, complicated by both the positive attachments and negative politics we have created around them, has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. With more challenges on the horizon, one question looms: Can we still create a sustainable future for humans and orcas in the Salish Sea? Monika Wieland Shields’s Endangered Orcas (Orca Watcher) is the story of the Southern Resident killer whales.

Free

English Alumni Reading: Fiction and Nonfiction

William Aime (’15) David Kroman (’11) return to campus reading from the work they’ve done since graduation. Both Aime and Kroman have had some success – in different ways – in the writing world. They will talk about paying the bills, being newly graduated, and keeping the writing flame going, long after the spark of undergraduate classes has dimmed away. Location: Miller Hall, Room 102

Free

Reading: Drunk In China

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

Derek Sandhaus will launch his new book about Chinese alcohol and drinking culture, and discuss what it will take for the world to finally clink glasses with the Middle Kingdom.

Free

Danny Fingeroth in Conversation With Brian Michael Bendis

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

The definitive biography of the beloved – often controversial – cocreator of many legendary superheroes, Danny Fingeroth’s A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee (St. Martin’s) presents the origin of "Stan the Man," who spun a storytelling web of comic book heroic adventures into a pop culture phenomenon: the Marvel Universe. Fingeroth, himself a longtime writer and editor at Marvel Comics, and now a lauded pop culture critic and historian, knew and worked with Lee for over four decades. Fingeroth will be joined in conversation by Eisner Award-winning comic book writer and artist Brian Michael Bendis.

Free

Amy Rigby plus special guest Scott The Hoople!

Turn! Turn! Turn! 8 NE Killingsworth St, Portland, OR, United States

We are ever so pleased to host the great Amy Rigby! Amy has a new book out - Girl to City - and will be playing songs and reading from her book. Very special guest Scott The Hoople (Scott McCaughey) opens. Don't miss! 21+// $10// 8pm Amy Rigby’s long-awaited memoir will be published in October 2019. Girl To City: describes Amy’s progression from Elton John fan in the Pittsburgh suburbs to Manhattan art student, CBGB habitué and fledgling musician, to critically acclaimed singer-songwriter. Set in a twentieth century New York world of homemade clubs and bands — through love affairs, temp jobs and motherhood — the challenge of balancing art and real life gave Rigby the themes that define her work as a songwriter and…

$10