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!

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…

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…

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…

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