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!

BitchReads: Anita Hill in Conversation with Renee Bracey Sherman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Friends! For this month's BitchReads Book Club, we are thrilled to be hosting a conversation between Renee Bracey Sherman and the illustrious Anita Hill about her latest book, Believing: Our Thirty Year Journey to End Gender Violence. Join us for the must-watch BitchReads interview next Thursday, September 30 at 2pm PST/5pm EST. Just RSVP today to get a reminder for the live stream next week. RSVP for the BitchReads Interview>> Anita Hill is University Professor of Social Policy, Law, and Women's and Gender Studies at Brandeis University. After the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, Hill became a leading figure in the fight for women's rights and against gender-based violence. She has written for the New York Times and Newsweek, and is a sought-after speaker. Renee Bracey Sherman is a…

Free

Hunter Shobe & David Banis

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

From Hunter Shobe and David Banis, the team that brought you Portlandness, comes Upper Left Cities (Sasquatch), a new book which compares and contrasts San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle through 150 innovative infographic maps that blend traditional cartography with modern graphic design. Upper Left Cities goes into uncharted territory to create a narrative about three great cities through informative and detailed infographic maps, exploring and comparing wildlife and city trails, voting records, commutes, marathon routes, food and drink patterns, and more. The result is a perfect blend of form and function, with each map meticulously and ingeniously designed. Register for the Zoom event  /  Buy the Book

Free

Writing And/As the Mother with Amanda Montei

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writers, artists, and theorists have long used the figure of The Mother to make sense of what we seek in writing, art, and politics. Today, The Mother remains a receptacle for all our cultural anxieties and longings. And yet, the work of taking care, cleaning up, and maintaining life—which someone must do to make space for creative practice— is too often rendered invisible. How have the body and labor of The Mother shaped our ideas of comfort, home, work, and novelty? How does caring for others, big and small, teach us to care on the page? Should the book be a space in which we are held, or perhaps something else entirely? In this 4-week course, we will discuss the cultural and political influences that…

$350

2021 Tin House Virtual Craft Intensive: Writing Care, with Brian Trapp

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this class, we’ll explore the potential and peril of writing creative nonfiction about caregiving. We’ll discuss the importance of representing the often beautiful and complex dynamic between caregiver and caretaker as well as ways in which caregivers have engaged in problematic representations of disability. We’ll discuss powerful portrayals of caregiving in creative nonfiction by Danielle Cadena Deulen and Heather Lanier and write compelling care narratives of our own through generative writing prompts. Participants will leave with new writing as well as a greater understanding of the powerful care dynamic. Tin House is proud to announce our latest virtual Craft Intensives Series. A series of 3-hour-long masterclasses lead by  Tin House Residents and Tin House Books Authors, these Intensives combine close reading, discussion, and in-class…

$75

Thor Hanson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid (Basic), beloved natural historian and biologist Thor Hanson — author of Buzz, The Triumph of Seeds, and Feathers — tells the remarkable story of how plants and animals are responding to climate change: adjusting, evolving, and sometimes dying out. Anole lizards have grown larger toe pads, to grip more tightly in frequent hurricanes. Warm waters have caused the development of Humboldt squid to alter so dramatically that fishermen mistake them for different species. Brown pelicans move north, and long-spined sea urchins south, to find cooler homes. And when coral reefs sicken, they leave no territory worth fighting for, so aggressive butterfly fish transform instantly into pacifists. A story of hope, resilience, and risk, Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid is natural…

Free

The Stacks Coffeehouse: October 2021 Writing Class

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Generative, Drop-in Writing Class @ The Stacks Coffeehouse $20 for 4 weeks Buy now This class will be focused exclusively on creating new work, with prompts sent out every Friday morning via email (starting October 1st) and live student readings via Zoom every Thursday at 7pm PST, where everyone will be encouraged to share their works-in-progress in answer to the prompt (The last class reading will be October 28th). All levels are welcome. Prompts are geared toward flash fiction, but we love nonfiction and poetry too. Generative: This class is generative, which means we’ll be focused on generating new work rather than polishing existing work. Prompts will be emailed on Fridays, and the class with meet live every Thursday at 7pm to share work. Unlike…

$20

Writing Beyond Stereotypes of Disability

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Characters with disabilities have been around as long as there have been stories, but often those characters are based on stereotypes that serve as plot shortcuts and end up being harmful to real people with disabilities. Disability is one of humanity’s most shared traits. It is inevitable that to write characters you will write disability. This class will use model texts and generative writing exercises to explore how to go beyond stereotypes such as the one-handed villain, the pitiable cripple, and the inspirational athlete, to write nuanced characters that honor human diversity on the page. Because we live in an able world, discussions and exercises will also touch on writing disabled worlds and how to reveal the often invisible expectations of ablism in our current…

$95

2021 Tin House Virtual Craft Intensive: Turning Words into Magic, with Keeonna Harris

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

*Saturday is sold out, join waitlist by emailing workshop@gmail.com or purchase Sunday below* Many of us get stuck writing; searching for that grandiose word rather than write words that we use every day and that reflect our lives. Sometimes, the magic of the word is in the mundane. This craft intensive is for writers who are feeling discouraged and unable to find the perfect word/and or words to convey the nuance and depth we want our readers to feel. We will be exploring excerpts from Heavy by Kiese Laymon and The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw. Participants will leave this intensive with a set of practical strategies on choosing a word that “fits” the ongoing themes of their work. We will do writing exercises in which I will push you to…

$75

Savage Love From A to Z

Mississippi Studios 3939 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR, United States

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Savage Love column, Dan Savage takes on edgier-than-ever sex-positive topics with his signature candor in his first illustrated collection of adults-only essays. Dan Savage has been talking frankly about sex and relationships since 1991, when his column first appeared in The Stranger. Through his column and podcast, Savage Lovecast, he's since built an international following thanks to his explicit, pragmatic, and humorous advice. Now comes Savage Love from A to Z, an illustrated collection of 26 never-before-published essays that distill Savage's accumulated wisdom down to 26 key concepts: B Is for Boredom, G Is for GGG, M Is for Monogamish, amongst many others. Savage Love from A to Z is for anyone who's had sex, is currently having sex, or hopes to…

$35.85

Eno/Ono: Jumping into Risk through Cross-Genre Explorations w/ Alex Behr

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Do we need holes? What wouldn’t you do? Use fewer notes —Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, Oblique Strategies cards TAPE PIECE III Snow Piece Take a tape of the sound of snow falling. This should be done in the evening. Do not listen to the tape. Cut it and use it as string to tie gifts with. Make a gift wrapper, if you wish, using the same process with a phonosheet. 1963 autumn —Yoko Ono, Grapefruit WHAT: A four-part online generative workshop. WHERE: The Corporeal Writing Zoom Room. WHEN: Saturdays, October 2nd, 16th, 23rd & 30th—@1-3PT Note: No meeting October 9th. STRUCTURE: Participants will write during our meetings and in-between, sending in work and explorations to share. We’ll be generating poetry and micro-memoir pieces and…

$225