A resource for the PDX literary community. Produced by Old Pal.
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!
Join the editors of Oregon Humanities magazine for an evening of readings by recent magazine contributors. We'll hear essays and poems by Sallie Tisdale, Daniela Molnar, Paul Susi, and Laura Gibson. The event is copresented with Literary Arts as part of the Cover to Cover series and sponsored by Lyceum Agency. No RSVP is required.
Stay tuned for a special podcast-only Portland Book Festival episode of Literary Arts’ The Archive Project! This podcast will explore the myths and realities of raising children while writing; whether the desire for motherhood is a creative desire, and how intersectional identities impact both motherhood and creativity. Featuring a stellar line-up novelists, poets and memoir authors and witches: Kendra DeColo (Enchantments), Kaitlyn Greenidge (Libertie), Mya Spalter (I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers From the World), and Michelle Tea (Knocking Myself Up). This event is podcast only, and will be released on The Archive Project wherever you get your podcasts as part of the 2022 Portland Book Festival. Kaitlyn Greenidge Kaitlyn Greenidge's debut novel is We Love You, Charlie Freeman (Algonquin Books), one of the…
There is a great temptation to airbrush ourselves on the page, to fill in the pockmarks of our flaws—and yet this leaves us not only less trustworthy, but less interesting. Students will explore how the contradictions in their personalities—the gaps between dirty laundry and grace—are the most interesting spaces for both readers and writers. Together, we’ll discuss how craft choices around persona and structure can help us harness this charge and write into our gorgeous, complex selves. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and Delve tuitions at a reduced rate. The access program for…
Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms This workshop is virtual, PST Register here Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms In this 6-week class, we will experiment with short form creative writing. Our focus—whether it’s flash fiction, lyric essay, prose poetry, or hybrid—will be on the art of compression. Each week, participants will be given a writing exercise, a short reading, and two workshop submissions from their peers. Class time will include workshop as well as discussion of readings and craft. Our workshop will be guided by observations, questions, and possibilities. We will be thinking less about how to “fix” a piece of writing and more about what we see, our curiosities, and how to recognize hidden opportunities. Each participant will receive feedback from…
Stay tuned for a special podcast-only Portland Book Festival episode of Literary Arts’ The Archive Project! Acclaimed, award-winning cookbook author Naomi Duguid discusses her new book, Taste of Persia: A Cook’s Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan with Liz Crain (Dumplings Equal Love). This event is podcast only, and will be released on The Archive Project wherever you get your podcasts as part of the 2022 Portland Book Festival. Liz Crain Liz Crain is the author of Food Lover’s Guide to Portland, and coauthor of the cookbooks Toro Bravo and Hello! My Name Is Tasty, as well as Grow Your Own: Understanding, Cultivating, and Enjoying Cannabis. Her latest is the cookbook Dumplings Equal Love. She is a longtime writer on Pacific Northwest food and drink, and her writing has appeared in Lucky Peach, Food…
How do the big questions of our time–from climate change to racism–inhabit the stories of our lives? And what does it look like on the page to tell exquisitely personal stories in ways that gesture toward larger concerns? In this 2-hour workshop, writers will uncover some of the big questions buried in their own narratives, identify research paths that might amplify the intersection between the Self and the World, connect with their own potentially-transformative obsessions, and explore how the stories we choose to tell can change us. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and…
Hilary Plum (she/her) is the author of several books, including the essay collection Hole Studies (Fonograf Editions, 2022), the novel Strawberry Fields (Fence, 2018), and the work of nonfiction Watchfires (Rescue Press, 2016), which won the GLCA New Writers Award. A collection of poetry, Excisions, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2023. She teaches at Cleveland State University and is associate director of the CSU Poetry Center. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press. Recent work has appeared in Granta, Astra, American Poetry Review, College Literature, and elsewhere.
Beat the crowds! Get early access to our exhibitor fair the night before Portland Book Festival. Click here to view this year’s full author lineup. Day-of Festival schedule will be released in October. Simplify your Portland Book Festival experience by purchasing an all-inclusive Umbrella Pass. The Umbrella Pass includes: General Admission Festival Pass (which includes a $5 book fair voucher and entry into Portland Art Museum), Friday Night Book Market entry, premium reserved seats to the Taylor Jenkins Reid and Selma Blair events (and signed copies of their books) as well as an exclusive Portland Book Festival tote bag. Already have your General Admission Festival Pass? Add on a Friday Night Book Market event ticket here. Portland Book Festival COVID policy: At this time, proof…
In 2019, Mason took a road trip around the country to 50 independent bookstores in 50 days. His goal was to promote his self-published novel, 2084, but his conversations with booksellers shifted his focus. On a second trip, he brought a cameraman along and asked booksellers a simple question: why should we shop indie? The resultant documentary, “The Bookstour”, premiered on public television this spring. Mason works on his books--and bookish films--in Los Angeles. Screening at 8:00, panel discussion at 8:30.
John D’Agata describes memoir as “an agitation of memory,” which suggests memory-based writing as not just the expression of memory but volatile, vital consideration of memory. In this workshop, participants will look at examples of prose memoir in which the writer uses the poet’s tools of meditation, dream, and lyricism, and then do their own memory-based writing. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and Delve tuitions at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available. Please apply…