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!

Friending: Creating Meaningful, Lasting Adult Friendships

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

Friendship is one of the most important, yet most underrated necessities of life. But making and keeping friends becomes increasingly difficult when we become adults with busy careers, family responsibilities, and dispersed locations. Keeping in touch through social media isn't fulfilling. Developing true, deep, lasting bonds of friendship is. In Gina Handley Schmitt’s Friending: Creating Meaningful, Lasting Adult Friendships (Microcosm), you'll learn how to choose and make friends, support them and let them support you, maintain friendships even when your life paths diverge, repair friendships after a conflict, decide to break up a friendship, and much more.

Free

7th Annual Portland Cookbook & Artisan Marketplace

The Heathman Hotel 1001 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Join your favorite local cookbook and culinary guidebook authors for a holiday book signing at Headwaters at The Heathman Hotel. (Hint, hint: a signed book makes a great holiday gift.) Authors will be on hand to sign and sell their latest and greatest titles as well as offer small bites and beverages for the crowd. Local makers will be selling their artisan treats and we'll have exciting raffle prizes. Free to attend! Before the marketplace, Join Portlanders John Becker and Megan Scott, authors of the new Joy of Cooking, in conversation with cookbook author and PCA President Diane Morgan. Morgan will lead a Q&A with Becker, the great-grandson of the original author, Irma Rombauer, and his wife, Megan Scott. Tickets for the Joy of Cooking author talk from 11-noon…

Free

Joy of Cooking

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

In the nearly 90 years since Irma S. Rombauer self-published the first 3,000 copies of Joy of Cooking in 1931, it has become the kitchen bible, with more than 20 million copies in print. The new 2019 edition of Joy of Cooking (Scribner) has been thoroughly revised and expanded by Irma's great-grandson John Becker and his wife, Megan Scott. Becker and Scott developed more than 600 new recipes for this edition, tested and tweaked thousands of classic recipes, and updated every section of every chapter to reflect the latest ingredients and techniques available to today's home cooks.

Free

Story Party Portland | True Dating Stories

Curious Comedy Theater 5225 NE MLK Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

At Story Party you will hear true dating stories that will make you feel better because, let’s be honest, it could be worse. Story Party has played to sold out audiences in over 65 countries because the dating struggle is real worldwide! You'll hear stories from our professional storytellers and some brave audience members. We are in town for a short time only so grab your tickets. You’ve had enough coffee dates to master the art of fake laughing now come to our show and laugh for real! — — — Wanna share your story? — — — If you're dying to share your story write it down anonymously on our confession slips on the night and we will read them out loud so you…

$25

Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World

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

From social theorist and psychotherapist Michael Lerner comes a strategy for a new socialism built on love, kindness, and compassion. Revolutionary Love (University of California) proposes a method to replace what Lerner terms the “capitalist globalization of selfishness” with a globalization of generosity, prophetic empathy, and environmental sanity. Lerner details how a civilization infused with love could put an end to global poverty, homelessness, and hunger, while democratizing the economy, shifting to a 28-hour work week, and saving the life-support system of Earth.

Free

Lise Funderburg With Sallie Tisdale, Kate Carroll de Gutes & Mat Johnson

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

It happens to us all: we think we’ve settled into an identity, a self, and then out of nowhere and with great force, the traces of our parents appear to us, in us – in mirrors, in gestures, in reaction and reactivity, at weddings and funerals, and in troubled thoughts that crouch in dark corners of our minds. In Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents (University of Nebraska), edited by Lise Funderburg, 25 writers deftly explore a trait they’ve inherited from a parent, reflecting on how it affects the lives they lead today – and how it shifts their relationship to that parent (sometimes posthumously) and to their sense of self. Funderburg will be joined in conversation by contributors Sallie Tisdale, Kate Carroll de Gutes,…

Free

Don Waters

Powell's Books on Hawthorne 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

In 2010, Don Waters set out to write a magazine story about a surfing icon who had known his absentee father. He didn’t imagine that it would become a years-long quest to understand a man who left behind almost nothing except for a self-absorbed autobiography for his abandoned son. These Boys and Their Fathers (University of Iowa) is a wildly original book blending memoir, investigative reporting, and fiction to sort out aspects of family, masculinity, and what it means to be a father.

Free

Defenders of the Faith: The Heavy Metal Photography of Peter Beste

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

The religious ferocity of heavy metal fandom is one of the most fervent in the history of subculture. The display of this fervor has been channeled and distilled throughout time into one sacred object: the battle vest. Often referred to as the Kutten (German for monk’s robe), the battle vest serves a multitude of purposes: as a musical CV, a badge of authenticity, a creative practice of identity, and a fashion statement. Photographer Peter Beste’s Defenders of the Faith (Sacred Bones) documents the timeless and universal concept of fandom through the elevation of the battle vest.

Free

The Moth: StorySLAM: Traditions

Holocene 1001 SE Morrison St, Portland, OR, United States

TRADITIONS: Prepare a five-minute story about birthrights and rituals, customs and lore from those who went before. Friday night football or family FaceTime each Sunday. Chinese food on Christmas day or a New Year's leap into the ocean. Bat mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, first piercings or tattoos. Rites of passage that are dreaded or real comforts. Sometimes traditions are both! This venue is 21+ *Tickets for this event are available one week before the show, at 12pm PT / 3pm ET. *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 Additional Information About the Venue This venue is 21+.

$15

Westside Writing Group

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

A group for anyone writing nonfiction or memoir who would like company, support, and, most of all, accountability. Whether you’ve never written a word or you’re a published author, join us!

Free