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!

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…

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…

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

Write Around Portland: Bi-Monthly BIPOC Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

I love being witnessed, and I absolutely love witnessing the words of everyone else in the group. It’s our own kind of magic.” —BIPOC Online Workshop Participant 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. Workshops are held via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Registration opens the 1st of the month every month and closes when filled or at 12noon the day before the workshop. Pre-register for our 2nd Friday workshop here. Pre-register for our 4th Friday workshop here.  Click here for more workshop details. 

Free

Flea Market at Kindred Homestead Supply

Birdhouse Books 1001 Main Street, Vancouver, WA, United States

All day we’ll be down at Kindred Homestead Supply (606 Main St in Downtown Vancouver, WA) peddling our wares and having a wondrous time! We’ll be bringing a bunch of modern and vintage books from our backstock to the market so come snag some great finds before they make their way to the shelves. For more information, head to kindredhomesteadsupply.com.

Free

Manufactured Spaces: Setting

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

In this four-week generative class, we’ll visit one of the basic elements of storytelling – setting –and immerse ourselves in how we craft these spaces. How do we choose which details to include? What can we borrow from cinematographers? From composers? From artists? How do we choreograph complicated scenes? What can we leave out and what can we heighten? What about a character’s interior setting? What can we learn from science writers? Journalists? The classes will involve visualizations, writing inside and outside of our meetings, sharing our work in an exploratory way, movement, and discussion of setting, voice, and tone in works by Tommy Orange, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Barry Lopez, Hanif Abdurraqib, Louise Erdrich, and others. We’ll also look at crowd scenes and landscape…

$200

Sidewalk Sale: I’m Having Top Surgery

IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) 318 SE Main Street #175, Portland, OR, United States

In June, IPRC member Rimona Eskayo published their first book, I’m Having Top Surgery: An Illustrated Guide For You And Me. ⭐️ Part-essay, part-handbook, and full-on love poem to my community, this 96-page risographed book draws upon my experiences of top surgery alongside the knowledge of trans scholars, healthcare experts, and friends. A special thanks to Regional Arts & Culture Counsel for their funding and belief in this project. Come by the IPRC on Saturday, September 10th for an outdoor sidewalk sale (where our garage door is on Main St.) between 2 and 5 pm. Book pre-oders can be placed through Rimona’s online shop HERE.

Free

Wendy Red Star in Conversation With Will Matsuda

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

Delegation (Aperture) is the first comprehensive monograph by Apsáalooke/Crow artist Wendy Red Star, whose photography recasts historical narratives with wit, candor, and a feminist, Indigenous perspective. Red Star centers Native American life and material culture through imaginative self-portraiture, vivid collages, archival interventions, and site-specific installations. Whether referencing 19th-century Crow leaders or 1980s pulp fiction, museum collections or family pictures, she constantly questions the role of the photographer in shaping Indigenous representation. Including a dynamic array of Red Star’s lens-based works from 2006 to the present, and a range of essays, stories, and poems, Delegation is a spirited testament to an influential artist’s singular vision. Red Star will be joined in conversation by writer and photographer Will Matsuda. Preorder a Signed Edition

Free

The Moth: StorySLAM: Crossroads

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

CROSSROADS: Prepare a five-minute story about a turning point in your life. Do or die, now or never. Saying or doing something you can never take back. Turning down the job, saying yes to the tattoo, breaking up with not-the-one. Opportunities, decisions or indecision. Am I this stray dog's forever home? Taking the high road or the low road. Right, left or full steam ahead... COVID Requirements: See The Old Church's COVID Policy for details. We will not be selling any tickets at the door. This venue is 16+ *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