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!

Nonfiction

  1. Events
  2. Nonfiction

Events Search and Views Navigation

Event Views Navigation

Today

Portland Audubon’s Wild Arts Festival

Pure Space 1315 NW Overton Street, Portland, OR, United States

Join us at the 2019 Wild Arts Festival, the premier show that celebrates art and nature in the Pacific Northwest! With artists and authors presenting their work, plus more art, trips, outdoor gear and experiences available in our silent auction, Festival shopping is a delight. And, it's right in time for the holiday season. Proceeds benefit Portland Audubon’s work to inspire all people to love and protect the natural world. Get to know some of the best local and regional authors specializing in nature, birds, hiking, history, books for kids, and books that illuminate living in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest! You’ll have the chance to purchase books and get them signed by the author both days of the festival from noon to 4 p.m. Join…

Continue readingPortland Audubon’s Wild Arts Festival
$10

American Spirit- a reading

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

Rob struggles to straddle his Japanese father’s religious traditions and the indulgent lifestyle of his new boarding school friends. Then his mind really explodes when upon marrying his Brazilian wife, Latin, Asian, and American cultures collide. This heartfelt, laugh-out-loud journey of self-discovery explores the challenge of expressing truth and love.

Free

Tiffany Midge in Conversation With Jacqueline Keeler

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

Why is there no Native woman David Sedaris? Or Native Anne Lamott? Humor categories in publishing are packed with books by funny women and humorous sociocultural-political commentary – but no Native women. There are presumably more important concerns in Indian Country. More important than humor? Among the Diné/Navajo, a ceremony is held in honor of a baby’s first laugh. While the context is different, it nonetheless reminds us that laughter is precious, even sacred. Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (Bison) is a powerful and compelling collection of Tiffany Midge’s musings on life, politics, and identity as a Native woman in America. Artfully blending sly humor, social commentary, and meditations on love and loss, Midge weaves short, standalone musings into a memoir that stares…

Continue readingTiffany Midge in Conversation With Jacqueline Keeler
Free

7DS: Pants On Fire!

White Eagle 836 N Russell St, Portland, OR, United States

Pants On Fire! features seven storytellers telling the most insane, outrageous, hard-to-believe stories from their own lives. The catch? One of those seven will actually be telling a bald-faced lie -- a whopper that never actually happened. Think you can spot which of our seven storytellers is the liar? If you can, you might win a stay at McMenamin's Edgefield Hotel on us. Not sure you can which is guess the liar? No worries! There will be other ways to win valuable prizes throughout the evening, including a chance to take on one of your fellow audience members in our Two Truths & A Lie Mano-y-Mano Cage Match. Even if you don't win, you'll walk away having heard seven of the most wild, outrageous, hard-to-believe…

Continue reading7DS: Pants On Fire!
$10

Grief Rites Readers Series ~ December 2

American Legion Post 134 2104 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR, United States

A monthly storytelling showcase about grief, loss and love. Gather in community with others who share grief in all forms and manifestations. Come ready to cry, laugh, listen and hold space for yourself and others. *Trigger warning, because Grief. Content not edited for language or topic. Mature audience. *Venue is accessible; gender-neutral restrooms on premises Readings begin promptly at 7pm. Come early, grab a drink (full bar) and find your seat. Please consider bringing canned goods or cold weather clothing/blankets to donate to the Post 134 food & clothing pantry, which serves local veterans, houseless and anyone in need. ***This month's event will include an open mic, in addition to our curated readers. If you have words to share about your grief, we welcome you.***…

Continue readingGrief Rites Readers Series ~ December 2
Free

Ramesh Srinivasan

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

In his new book, Beyond the Valley: How Innovators Around the World Are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow (MIT), Ramesh Srinivasan describes the Internet as both an enabler of frictionless efficiency and a dirty tangle of politics, economics, and other inefficient, inharmonious human activities. To make a better Internet, Srinivasan says, we need a new ethic of diversity, openness, and inclusivity, empowering those now excluded from decisions about how technologies are designed, who profits from them, and who are surveilled and exploited by them.

Free

The Moth: StorySLAM: Family

The Old Church Concert Hall 1422 SW 11th Ave, Portland, OR, United States

FAMILY: Prepare a five-minute story about your kin, your clan, the people that made you. Awkward Thanksgiving dinners back home and last minute Friendsgivings in your cramped apartment. A chip off the old block or your neighbor down the block. Whether chosen or by blood, the folks that make you slam doors, pull your hair out, and feel like you belong. This venue is 21+. *Tickets for this event are available one week before the show, at 12pm PT / 3pm ET. *Seating is not guaranteed and is available on a first-come, first-served basis. Please be sure to arrive at least 10 minutes before the show. Admission is not guaranteed for late arrivals. All sales final. Media Sponsors: OPB and Literary Arts

$15

Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It

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

In Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It (W. W. Norton), James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns are the highest form of wit. Adopting a different style for each chapter – from dramatic dialogue to sermon, heroic couplets to a barroom monologue – Geary embodies wit in all its forms. Wit’s End agilely balances psychology, folktale, visual art, and literary history with lighthearted humor and acute insight, demonstrating that wit and wisdom are really the same thing.

Free

Reading: Christine Light

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

Christine will read from her book Crisis of Character: Finding Our Moral Compass in a Trumped Up World.

Free

The Pacific Northwest Seafood Cookbook

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

For thousands of years, the abundance of fish and shellfish in the Pacific Northwest created a seafood paradise for the Indigenous peoples hunting and gathering along the region’s pristine waterways, and, later, for the Chinese, Scandinavian, Filipino, and Japanese immigrants (along with many others) who have made this region home. Drawing on these diverse influences, the region fostered a cuisine that is as varied as its people, yet which remains specifically Northwestern. In The Pacific Northwest Seafood Cookbook (Countryman), food writer Naomi Tomky leads readers through an exploration of this cuisine.

Free
Click a category label below to view the calendar with only events in that specific category.