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!

Maia Kobabe: Gender Queer Reading & Signing

Books with Pictures 1401 SE Division Street, Portland, OR, United States

Come meet Maia and join us for a short reading, then signing, snacks, and hangouts. It's gonna be great! In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender…

Free

Debra Gwartney in Conversation With Apricot Irving

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

Part history, part memoir, Debra Gwartney’s I Am a Stranger Here Myself (University of New Mexico) taps dimensions of human yearning: the need to belong, the snarl of family history, and embracing womanhood in the patriarchal American West. Gwartney becomes fascinated with the missionary Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, the first Caucasian woman to cross the Rocky Mountains and one of 14 people killed at the Whitman Mission in 1847 by Cayuse Indians. Whitman's role as a white woman drawn in to "settle" the West reflects the tough-as-nails women in Gwartney's own family. Arranged in four sections as a series of interlocking explorations and ruminations, Gwartney uses Whitman as a touchstone to spin a tightly woven narrative about identity, the power of womanhood, and coming to peace…

Free

Tiffany Jenkins: This Show is Awkward AF

Revolution Hall 1300 SE Stark St, Portland, OR, United States

Be among the first to receive the newest edition of Tiffany’s book with exclusive signed book packages available! Tiffany Jenkins is a wife, mother, author, content creator and recovering addict. Although best known for her funny viral Facebook videos, Tiffany speaks shamelessly, openly and honestly about her past and addiction, as well as her struggles with depression and anxiety. Tiffany’s story of hope has had such an overwhelming response from her supporters that she is ready to tackle her next life goal - travel the globe, meet her fans and make as many people laugh and feel inspired as possible. Tiffany Jenkins: This Show Is Awkward AF is the opportunity to spend quality time with Tiffany as she shares stories not-previously covered in her book…

$30 – $89

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

Bryan Denson

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

The Unabomber was a lone-wolf terrorist who carried out 14 bombings that left 3 people dead and another 23 injured. A cunning genius, he dodged his FBI pursuers for nearly two decades, terrifying Americans from coast to coast. Agent Kathy Puckett, a spy hunter and highly trained psychologist, served as the turning point in the FBI's efforts to understand the mind of the faceless killer. Her insights helped send more than a hundred agents to a remote cabin in the mountains of western Montana on April 3, 1996. There the FBI captured Theodore J. Kaczynski, engineer of the most notorious bombing spree in U.S. history. Bryan Denson’s The Unabomber (Roaring Brook) is the story of the FBI's investigation of the Unabomber and the agent who…

Free

PNCA Low-Res MFA in CW Talks: Reema Zaman: More than a Memoir; a Movement

Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) 511 Northwest Broadway St, Portland, OR, United States

Reema Zaman More than a Memoir; a Movement, 4:30pm In Room 601 The Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is pleased to announce the launch of the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing with its first residential intensive. In the low-residency model, students will attend two 14-day campus residencies then, beyond residencies, work one-on-one with mentors. Most of the programming during this residency is free and open to the public. From July 28 through August 3, PNCA offers talks, discussions, and readings by acclaimed writers as part of the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program. Every event is free and open to the public. This innovative creative writing program is distinguished by its being situated within a school of…

Free

PNCA Low-Res MFA in CW Readings: Reema Zaman

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

Reema Zaman, 8pm at Literary Arts The Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is pleased to announce the launch of the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing with its first residential intensive. In the low-residency model, students will attend two 14-day campus residencies then, beyond residencies, work one-on-one with mentors. Most of the programming during this residency is free and open to the public. From July 28 through August 3, PNCA offers talks, discussions, and readings by acclaimed writers as part of the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program. Every event is free and open to the public. This innovative creative writing program is distinguished by its being situated within a school of art and design as well as…

Free

Terese Marie Mailhot – Writing Trauma, Making Art: August 3

The Corporeal Writing Center 510 SW 3rd Ave #101, Portland, OR, United States

When: August 3rd, 2019:: 10:00 - 4:00 Where: The Corporeal Center; 510 SW 3rd Ave, Portland, OR 97210 Cost: $300 Creating art from lived experience is difficult. There are pitfalls, but there's a windfall to be had, where a person can look back and within to see the right narrative, and the right art worth making, or worth sacrificing for. I'd like to help people avoid the pitfalls, and encourage writers to find the narrative structure within their own lives. Finding the story is half the work. Someone told me it's like trying to make the music we hear in our heads, and I like that. I'd like to help people find the right song, and learn practical tips on how to execute a story. We'll discuss shame,…

$300

A reading with NYT Bestselling author, Terese Mailhot

The Corporeal Writing Center 510 SW 3rd Ave #101, Portland, OR, United States

Join us in downtown Portland for a reading by beloved NYT Bestselling author, Terese Mailhot. This reading is free and open to the public. TERESE MARIE MAILHOT is from Seabird Island Band. Her work has been featured in Granta, Guernica, Mother Jones, and elsewhere. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Heart Berries: A Memoir. She is a winner of the 2019 Whiting Award, a SWAIA Fellowship, and the inaugural Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature. She teaches writing at Purdue University.

Free

Longreads Club: Viktor Orbán’s War on Intellect

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

READ THE ARTICLE: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/george-soros-viktor-orban-ceu/588070/ As the Hungarian prime minister systematically undermined his own country’s education system, one institution stood defiant: a university in the heart of Budapest, founded by George Soros. Join the Longreads Club where we explore a long-form article focused on global topics. No membership or registration required. Just read the article, show up, and join the discussion!

Free