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!

Write Around Portland: Bi-Weekly Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writing is often thought of as something done in isolation; we know there is immense power when writing is done in community. Join us for 90 minutes of creativity and community-building, with generative writing exercises, sharing and strengths-based feedback. Our workshop model, refined over 22 years, is proven for people of all writing levels: from the budding writer to the published author. Workshops are held via Zoom. Weekly registration opens 5 days before each session and closes one hour before the workshop. Click here for more info. Mondays from 3 to 4:30 pm (Pacific Time) Sliding Scale Registration $5-$30. Register here. $0 registration available for past Write Around Portland participants at a social service agency and people experiencing financial hardship. Register here. Thursdays from 11 am to…

$5 – $30

Reading of the Names

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Every year on Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance, communities around the world uphold the memory of victims of the Holocaust through the Reading of the Names, a public recitation of Holocaust victims’ names, ages, and birthplaces. The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education will once again sponsor the Reading of the Names. While the event is normally held at Pioneer Courthouse Square, this year a selection of community members, elected officials, and Holocaust survivors will be reading at the Oregon Holocaust Memorial in Washington Park and the names read will be those written on the Memorial, which recognizes the lost families and friends of local Holocaust survivors. The Reading of the Names will be a virtual event and will be recorded. “The…

Free

Everybody Reads 2021: Ross Gay

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The selection for Multnomah County Library’s 19th annual community reading project, Everybody Reads, is acclaimed author and poet Ross Gay and his collection of essays, The Book of Delights. Each year, Literary Arts presents the culminating event of the program—an author lecture. This year, the event will be held virtually on Thursday, April 8, at 6:00 p.m (PDT) and will feature an approximately 30-minute talk from Ross Gay, followed by an approximately 40-minute interview with local bestselling author, Lidia Yuknavitch. We are pleased to offer free registration for community members suffering financial hardship, as well as a range of tickets rates, to ensure this event can be accessible to all. Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of…

Free – $100

Illuminated Manuscripts :: A decoration of story w/ Katie Collins-Guinn

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHAT: A five-week online collaboration where we’ll explore the beauty of decorated writings, and create our own versions. WITH: Katie Collins-Guinn WHEN: Thursday, April 8th @6:30pm PT Wednesday, April 14th @6:30pm PT, Thursday, April 22nd @6:30pm PT, Thursday, April 29th @6:30pm PT & Thursday, May 6th @6:30pm PT. WHERE: ZOOM (But of course.) Meeting ID will be provided each morning of meet days. HOW MUCH: $230, with a capacity of twelve writers/artists. Payment plans are available, contact Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com SCHOLARSHIPS: Click here to apply. In this five week collaboration we will explore the histories and variations of this story-telling artform, while using what we discover as direct inspiration for our own versions. Historically, artists and scribes would create their own pigments, hides and…

$230

Alumni Showcase Reading: Chelsea Bieker, Susan Leslie Moore, & Candace Opper

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Chelsea Bieker is the author of the novel Godshot and the forthcoming story collection Cowboys and Angels (2022). Her writing has been published in The Paris Review, Granta, The Cut, McSweeney’s, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award and a MacDowell fellowship. Originally from California’s Central Valley, she now lives and teaches in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children. She is a graduate of the Portland State MFA program. Susan Leslie Moore’s poetry has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2019 Juniper Prize in Poetry and her first full-length collection, That Place Where You Opened Your Hands, was published by University of Massachusetts Press in 2020. Her poem “Night of the Living” appears in The Best American Poetry…

Free

Write Around Portland: Bi-Monthly BIPOC Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For people who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC). 2nd & 4th Friday of every month from 4 to 5:30 pm (Pacific Time), Free. (No workshop 12/25.) Workshops are held via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Registration opens the 1st of the month every month. Pre-register for our 2nd Friday workshop here. Pre-register for our 4th Friday workshop here. Click here for more workshop details.

Free

Attic Institute: SPRING Online: Art of Personal Essay and Memoir w Lee Montgomery

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

Submission Deadline: Oregon Humanities: Features for “Climate”

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For the summer issue of Oregon Humanities magazine, we want to hear stories and ideas about what global climate change means for the people and land of this place. Tell us about how climate change and its myriad consequences affect your work, or how you choose what work to do; how you raise your children, or whether you decide to have them; how you vote; where you live; what you eat. How are Oregonians adapting to climate change personally and politically? Who are building visionary communities in these rapidly changing climates? What possibilities does climate change provide, and what does it foreclose? What about other kinds of climate—political winds, social ambiance, architecture and infrastructure, work environment, and other prevailing conditions? We’re looking particularly for stories…

Free

Contents Under Pressure: Using Constraints to Stretch Your Creativity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

for BIPOC writers only Putting constraints on our writing can feel like a challenge, but sometimes a little pressure is what’s needed to push our writing in a new direction or to find language for what seems unsayable. We’ll draw on Oulipian constraints like the lipogram and the Beatiful Outlaw, as well as visual constraints such as erasures and collage, to radically depart from our typical writing habits. We’ll also invent our own extreme constraints to discover what happens when we challenge ourselves to write our way out of seemingly impossible restrictions. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers…

$240