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

The Break with Kaveh Akbar

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, “The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though many of the activities and discussions orbit or are inflected by recovery themes (Akbar has been in active recovery for eight years), participants are not required to self-identify as being in recovery to participate.” Register at: https://www.portlandalano.org/the-break Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar is a poet, teacher and the poetry editor for The Nation. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Paris Review, Poetry, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. His newest book, Pilgrim Bell, was published by Graywolf in 2021; he is also the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James,…

Continue readingThe Break with Kaveh Akbar
Free

Rinker Buck

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

Seven years ago, readers around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules and propelled his book about the trip, The Oregon Trail, to ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. A modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river on the flatboat Patience, accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, Buck steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo…

Continue readingRinker Buck
Free

Satya Doyle Byock

Mother Foucault's Bookshop 523 SE Morrison St, Portland, OR, United States

Portland author Satya Doyle Byock will read from Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood (Random House, July 2022). Satya is a psychotherapist, the founder and director of The Salome Institute, and a former Delve guide at Literary Arts who has been a part of the PDX literary scene for 15 years. Her first book, which Publisher’s Weekly called a “perceptive debut” seeks to fill a longstanding gap in soulful psychology books available for people in the first half of adulthood. Through clinical storytelling from her practice as well as a look into history and literature, Quarterlife offers people between the ages of 16-36 insight on how “to find and create one’s own life and purpose in a complex and deeply fraught world.” New York Times…

Continue readingSatya Doyle Byock
Free

Now Here We Are Thirty Years Later: A Memoir in Mountain Goats Songs

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

Richard O'Brien puts together new writing and photography from a month exploring John Darnielle's Portland. Also featuring: Try My Tiny Song: Mountain Goats Open Mic. Know a tMG cover or two? Come on in and share them with other fans! Now Here We Are Thirty Years Later: A Memoir in Mountain Goats Songs Want to cover a @mountaingoatsmusic song and hear about my month exploring John Darnielle's Portland? Come down to @turnturnturnpdx at 7pm on September 5th to sing one for the old times, and stay for new writing, photography and choice cuts from the Mountain Goats live archive. All part of the first book about this beloved cult band, an experimental music memoir, which I'm currently writing for @unbounders.

Free

Kristin Ohlson in Conversation With Lee van der Voo

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

What if Nature is more cooperative, and less competitive, than we think? In the follow-up to her previous book, The Soil Will Save Us, Kristin Ohlson’s Sweet in Tooth and Claw (Patagonia) extends the concept of cooperation in nature to the life-affirming connections among microbes, plants, fungi, insects, birds, and animals — including humans — in ecosystems around the globe. For centuries, people have debated whether nature is mostly competitive — as Darwin theorized and the poet Tennyson described as “red in tooth and claw” — or innately cooperative, as many ancient and indigenous peoples believed. In the last 100 or so years, a growing gang of scientists have studied the mutually beneficial interactions that are believed to benefit every species on earth. Sweet in…

Continue readingKristin Ohlson in Conversation With Lee van der Voo
Free

One Page Wednesday – September

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

One Page Wednesday is back in-person at our downtown center! Here is an opportunity to share or listen to one page of work in progress from talented writers from everywhere. Come with a single page of work and sign up to read – or come to listen and prepare to be inspired. Our host this month is the one and only, Emme Lund, with a featured reading by Elanor Broker. Please review our Covid-19 guidelines. Be prepared to show proof of vaccination or a negative PCR Test at the door. Masks are not required but encouraged. If you have any questions, contact Jessica at jessica@literary-arts.org. Emme Lund Emme Lund is an author living and writing in Portland, Oregon. She has an MFA from Mills College. Her work has…

Continue readingOne Page Wednesday – September
Free

Madeline Ostrander in Conversation With Michelle Nijhuis

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

How do we find a sense of home and rootedness in a time of unprecedented upheaval? What happens when the seasons and rhythms in which we have built our lives go off-kilter? Once a distant forecast, climate change is now reaching into the familiar, threatening our basic safety and forcing us to reexamine who we are and how we live. In At Home on an Unruly Planet (Henry Holt), science journalist Madeline Ostrander reflects on this crisis not as an abstract scientific or political problem but as a palpable force that is now affecting all of us at home. She offers vivid accounts of people fighting to protect places they love from increasingly dangerous circumstances. A firefighter works to rebuild her town after catastrophic western…

Continue readingMadeline Ostrander in Conversation With Michelle Nijhuis
Free

Mike Duncan

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

From Mike Duncan, author of The Storm Before the Storm and host of the Revolutions podcast, comes Hero of Two Worlds (PublicAffairs), the thrilling story of the Marquis de Lafayette’s lifelong quest to defend the principles of liberty and equality. Few in history can match the revolutionary career of the Marquis de Lafayette. Over 50 incredible years at the heart of the Age of Revolution, he fought courageously on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a soldier, statesman, idealist, philanthropist, and abolitionist. As a teenager, Lafayette ran away from France to join the American Revolution. Returning home a national hero, he helped launch the French Revolution, eventually spending five years locked in dungeon prisons. After his release, Lafayette sparred with Napoleon, joined an underground…

Continue readingMike Duncan
Free

Deadline: Oregon Book Award Submission Deadline

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Friday, September 9, is the deadline for submission to the 2023 Oregon Book Awards and Special Awards. Books published between September 1, 2021 and August 31, 2022 are eligible. Complete Oregon Book Awards guidelines are here, and guidelines for the Special Awards are here.  

Free

Highgate: The One-on-One Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Each year, Attic Institute founder David Biespiel accepts 2-4 writers into Highgate, a private, one-on-one workshop for writers interested close, in-depth feedback. Highgate consists of guidance, instruction, and mentoring based on the idea that accountability, ambition, and tailored goals lead to acheivement, growth and joy as a writer. Learn more Teacher: David BiespielTime: Scheduled each month.Location: In-person or Zoom

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