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!

The Quaking of America Tour w/ Resmaa Menakem

Alberta House 5131 NE 23rd Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Join us to celebrate the new book The Quaking of America with NYT bestselling Author Resmaa Menakem We are delighted to welcome Resmaa Menakem to the Rose City and be part of his book tour and to celebrate his new book with him in person. June 29th 2022 6pm:  Alberta House 5131 NE 23rd Ave Doors open at 5pm "Resmaa Menakem is one of our country's most gifted racial healers. His brilliant new book could not be more timely—a volume our country, our bodies, and our humanity desperately need."—Michael Eric Dyson, author of Entertaining Race and Long Time Coming In The Quaking of America, therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem takes readers through somatic processes addressing the growing threat of white-supremacist political violence. Through the coordinated…

Free

Kim Kelly in Conversation With Shane Burley

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

Fight Like Hell (Atria/One Signal) is a revelatory and inclusive history of the American labor movement, from independent journalist and Teen Vogue labor columnist Kim Kelly. Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America’s civil rights movement. These are only some of the working-class heroes who propelled American labor’s relentless push for fairness and equal protection under the law. The names and faces of countless silenced, misrepresented, or forgotten leaders have been erased by time as a privileged few decide which stories…

Free

Melissa Febos in Conversation With Genevieve Hudson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Winner of the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award, Melissa Febos’s Girlhood (Bloomsbury) examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them. When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defenses she’d developed over years of trying to meet others’ expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or…

Free

Livestream Reading: Travis Williams and Marina Richie

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Oregon authors Travis Williams and Marina Richie for a livestream presentation of their new books from OSU Press. Please register in advance for this Zoom event: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkce6vrzIvGdZxcalzZtaiZDtzZlM3d0bQ About Willamette River Greenways: Travis Williams, executive director of Willamette Riverkeeper, has spent countless hours paddling the Willamette, becoming familiar with its flora, fauna, and human neighbors. In Willamette River Greenways, he combines personal narrative about his experiences on the river with nuanced consideration of the controversies and challenges of the Greenway Program. Williams sheds light on current land stewardship practices, revealing the institutional and leadership failures that endanger the river’s water quality and habitat, and looks to the program’s future. He also takes readers with him onto the water, sharing what it's like to…

Free

BIPOC Reading Series- June

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This bimonthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color. Come listen to our featured readers, or sign up to share your work in our open mic. Readings will be followed by a short community discussion. The theme for June is “Roots & Branches.” Our featured reader is Jessica Tyner Mehta. Click here to register for this event. This event is open to everyone, but only people who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color will be invited to read. If you have any questions, please contact our host Jessica at  jessica@literary-arts.org. Jessica (Tyner) Mehta Jessica (Tyner) Mehta is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, interdisciplinary artist, multi-award-winning poet, and author of several books.…

Free

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…

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…

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…

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…

$145