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!

Melinda Gates Ticketed Event

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For the last 20 years, Melinda Gates has been on a mission. Her goal, as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been to find solutions for people with the most urgent needs, wherever they live. Throughout this journey, one thing has become increasingly clear to her: If you want to lift a society up, invest in women. In her candid and inspiring book, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World (Flatiron Books), Gates traces her awakening to the link between women's empowerment and the health of societies. She shows some of the tremendous opportunities that exist right now to “turbo-charge" change. And she provides simple and effective ways each one of us can make a difference. A personal statement…

$17.99

Delve Readers Seminar: Nigerian Authors: Abi Dare and Akwake Emezi

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This seminar focuses on two Nigerian authors who rely on the use of foreign languages in their work. In The Girl With the Louding Voice, Abi Dare’s pidgin (broken English) is used in the narrator’s voice throughout the story. Discussions will include topics around class, race and the roles of children as domestics in African culture. In The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwake Emezi, we will explore the story about the freedom of expressing one’s sexuality as it pertains to Nigerian culture through their eyes. Texts The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Dare The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwake Emezi Delve Access Program We want Delve seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our…

$240

Write A Book: Fiction & Creative Nonfiction Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Write A Book: Fiction & Creative Nonfiction IPRC Creative Workshops for Fall 2020 will be held online via zoom, PST. *Waitlist Instructor: Michael Heald Wednesdays, 6:30 – 8:30 Nine students maximum (ages 18+) Class meetings: 24 (8 per term) Cost: $825 *2 spots available at sliding scale, BIPOC prioritized; email hquinn@iprc.org *2 spots available at no cost, BIPOC prioritized; email hquinn@iprc.org October 7, 2020 – June 9, 2021 This workshop will consist of three eight-week terms. Writers currently working on memoirs, essay collections, novellas, novels, short story collections, oral histories, and long-form journalism are all strongly encouraged to apply. Hybrid forms welcome. Over the course of 24 sessions, writers will work towards a draft of a manuscript in a supportive workshop environment. We’ll explore non-linear…

$825

Incite: Queer Writers Read—January 2021

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for the first Incite of 2021! This time around, we'll be exploring the topic of relief with four fantastic queer authors: Clair Rudy Foster, Samson Syharath, Sarah A. Chavez, and Wayne Gregory. This is an online event. To register, use the link below: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIqc-ihpzooHtf-CI63Kbe7CghMaYWHaY72

Free

Attic Institute: WINTER Online: A Writer’s Toolkit: How to Get Started As A Writer w Wayne Gregory | Jan 14 – Feb. 11

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” ~ Pablo Picasso You have a story to tell, but you’re not sure how to get started. The Writer’s Toolkit is the class for you.  In this workshop, you will discover how to transform your ideas from imagination to a cohesive and compelling story that engages readers and keeps them turning the pages for more. You will learn some of the basic conventions for good writing that successful writers use: how to develop plot, how to create compelling characters, how to build dynamic scenes, and how to show rather than tell. You will learn by doing and will take away a wealth of writing tools and resources to keep honing your…

$215 – $242

Livestream Reading: Lori Tobias with Laura Stanfill

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Oregon author Lori Tobias for a livestream reading from her new book, Storm Beat: A Journalist Reports from the Oregon Coast. She will be in conversation with Portland writer and publisher Laura Stanfill, author of Sad House: Parenting, Grief, and Creativity in the Coronavirus Crisis. Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUsc-qhqT8pHNcWQ7O_ymBuNU0Fsu_x73yy About Storm Beat: Journalist Lori Tobias arrived on the Oregon coast in 2000. After freelancing from Newport for several years, she signed on with the Oregonian as a stringer covering the coast from Florence to Astoria; later she would be hired as a staff writer responsible for the entire coast—one person for more than three hundred miles. The job meant long hours, being called out for storms in the middle of the night in…

Free

Intersections of Identity and Experience

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this webinar, open to prose writers and poets of all ages and backgrounds, participants will use freewriting, revision, and in-depth feedback as tools to create work that can spark new writing possibilities or build on an existing project. The class will address these types of questions: How do we synthesize our experiences and histories with acts of imagination? How do we break silences and heal from trauma through storytelling? How do we write about intersections between race, gender, sexuality, disability, and other aspects of our identities in effective and nuanced ways? Participants will be encouraged to draw from personal, family, and cultural histories, in a supportive yet critically constructive writing environment. Please register using “ticket” link below. Brian Komei Dempster’s debut book of poetry,…

$40

Attic Institute: WINTER Online: Art of Personal Essay and Memoir w Lee Montgomery | Jan 16 – Mar 20

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Personal Essays and memoir represent some of the most adventurous writing today. Pushing narrative boundaries, utilizing traditional and nontraditional forms, this type of writing explores individuality and the minutiae of life unlike any other form. This workshop will help students explore the world of memoir and personal essay writing and understand both traditional and nontraditional narrative strategies available to them. Though the class will be run as a classic workshop, where students will submit their work to be reviewed in class, it will also combine craft lectures, outside reading, and in-class exercises. Students are expected to workshop twice. This will include their original essay submitted to class plus a revision. | Maximum: 12 writers Register for this workshop NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering…

$538 – $569

Portland Storytellers’ Guild: PSG !Extra! Strange Things Done in the Midnight Sun

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join the Portland Storytellers' Guild as we welcome Ingrid Nixon with Alaska Tales Real and Imaged The poet Robert Service coined the famous phrase that describes the oddities of life in the north country. Storyteller Ingrid Nixon comes to us from Alaska, where she deals with those strange things first hand. Join her for stories that celebrate the quirks and wonders of the mythical land of the midnight sun. The virtual event can be enjoyed right in the comfort of your home; tickets are just $10 for a log in that can be watched by more than one person on your screen. The Portland Storytellers' Guild continues its "virtual" season on Saturday, January 16 at 5:00 pm (PST) via Zoom.  Click Here to Register. AND...…

$10

Social Justice Book Club

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

TO ATTEND: 1) Purchase the book club book to support our shop. If you already own the book you may purchase a gift certificate or sponsor a stack for $15 or $25 dollars depending on if the book club book is paperback or hardcover. 2) Email us after your purchase that you plan on attending and we'll provide the password. Join us Saturday January 16th at 6:30pm for Social Justice Book Club. We will meet third Saturdays every other month. Books will focus on inequality and injustice including but not limited to race, gender, immigration, poverty, criminal justice issues in the U.S. and around the world. Nonfiction, novels, comics, and memoirs. We will discuss Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. About the…

$15 – $25