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!

Nonfiction

  1. Events
  2. Nonfiction

Events Search and Views Navigation

Event Views Navigation

Today

Rick Emerson in Conversation With Chelsea Cain

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous. But Alice was only the beginning. In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist, Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis — adolescent suicide — to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and…

Continue readingRick Emerson in Conversation With Chelsea Cain
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

Books & Prints by Ian van Coller

Passages Bookshop 1801 NW Upshur, Suite 660, Portland, OR, United States

Passages Bookshop is excited to announce our summer exhibition •••• BOOKS & PRINTS BY IAN VAN COLLER •••• July 8 – August 20, 2022 Covid precautions: Proof of vaccination and masks required ================================================ For the past decade, Ian van Coller has traveled the globe in pursuit of images that communicate the realities of climate change and deep time. He has photographed disappearing glaciers, endangered and threatened birds, the oldest trees on earth, and the oldest ice yet discovered, traveling to Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda, the cloud forest of Colombia, Svalbard in the high Norwegian Arctic, and Glacier, Great Basin, and Rocky Mountain National Parks in the Western United States. He has accompanied climate scientists on expeditions to remote glaciers on…

Continue readingBooks & Prints by Ian van Coller
Free

Ledger Editions Reading Series

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

*This event is in-person. Masks + Proof of Vaccination Required. See more about the IPRC’s COVID Policy here. July 9th 7-9pm Register here Please join the IPRC for the first reading of our Ledger Editions Readings. We’ll be joined by poets & writers Warren C. Longmire, Jeff Alessandrelli and Janice Lee. This event is made possible with support from the Kinsman Foundation. Warren C. Longmire is a poet, artist, software engineer, and an educator from the bad part of  North Philadelphia. He is a former co-editor of Apiary Magazine, a board member for Blue  Stoop and teaches when he can at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He’s been  published in journals including Prolit, American Poetry Review, Cartridge Lit and The  Painted Bride Quarterly…

Continue readingLedger Editions Reading Series
Free

Spring Forward, Fall Back: Time in Prose Writing

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

How to handle time can be challenging to master when writing in any genre. When should we slow down and dwell in a scene? When should we summarize and move rapidly through weeks, years, or even decades? Should we go back in time to unpack and understand a character’s motivation? How does the manipulation of time, the unfolding of events, work in a short story, a novel, or in memoir? This workshop will explore how writers bend time to create different narrative effects. We will read work by Tessa Hadley, Rachel Cusk, Sally Rooney, Toni Morrison, John Cheever and others, as well as look at examples from TV shows and films such as Ted Lasso, Atlanta, and The Lost Daughter. After the discussion, we’ll work…

Continue readingSpring Forward, Fall Back: Time in Prose Writing
$145

The Dandelions Are Prophesizing: A Writing Workshop Through Plant & Mycelial Encounters with Janice Lee —begins July 10th

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The Dandelions Are Prophesizing: A Writing Workshop Through Plant & Mycelial Encounters July 10 - August 6, 2022 (Synchronous Zoom sessions Mondays 7/11, 7/18, 7/25, 8/1) ***SOLD OUT! Email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com to add your name to the waitlist*** “The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. It is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature.” – Thich Nhat Hanh  “If we are interested in livability, impermanence, and…

Continue readingThe Dandelions Are Prophesizing: A Writing Workshop Through Plant & Mycelial Encounters with Janice Lee —begins July 10th
$50

2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Megan Giddings, Anis Mojgani, Lidia Yuknavitch

Reed College - Cerf Amphitheater 3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

We are excited to once again be offering in-person readings as part of our 2022 Summer Workshop programming. Starting at 7:30 pm, these events will take place in Reed College’s Cerf Amphitheater and are free and open to the public. Faculty books will be available for purchase at the Reed Bookstore, with authors signing after the event. Masks are not required in the outdoor amphitheater. Megan Giddings has degrees from University of Michigan and Indiana University. She is a senior features editor at The Rumpus. In 2018, she was a recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial fund grant for feminist fiction. Her novel, Lakewood, was published by Amistad in 2020. It was one of New York Magazine’s 10 best books of 2020, one of NPR’s…

Continue reading2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Megan Giddings, Anis Mojgani, Lidia Yuknavitch
Free

VALID: a literary therapy session

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

Join us for VALID :: a literary therapy session. Where your feelings are valid. Come and listen to stories of mental health.

Free

2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Casey Plett, T Kira Madden, Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Reed College - Cerf Amphitheater 3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

We are excited to once again be offering in-person readings as part of our 2022 Summer Workshop programming. Starting at 7:30 pm, these events will take place in Reed College’s Cerf Amphitheater and are free and open to the public. Faculty books will be available for purchase at the Reed Bookstore, with authors signing after the event. Masks are not required in the outdoor amphitheater. Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, A Safe Girl to Love, the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers, and the Publisher at LittlePuss Press. She has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. A winner of the Amazon First Novel Award, the…

Continue reading2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Casey Plett, T Kira Madden, Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Free

Forest Bathing and Writing: Hoyt Arboretum

Hoyt Arboretum 4000 SW Fairview Blvd., Portland, OR, United States

This class, held outdoors at Hoyt Arboretum, will guide you in practicing skills associated with shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing—a gentle, meditative approach to being with nature. The class will include several invitations to explore your senses and your relationship with nature, time for written reflection, and opportunities to share your observations and your writing, if you wish. In each class, you’ll learn approaches to writing and to being with nature that you can use in your everyday life to help promote a sense of relaxation, connection, and wonder. No prior experience with writing is required. All forest bathing and writing prompts may be practiced seated, standing, or walking, depending on your comfort, ability, and interest. Classes will be held rain or shine, so please dress…

Continue readingForest Bathing and Writing: Hoyt Arboretum
$75
Click a category label below to view the calendar with only events in that specific category.