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!

Delve Readers Seminar: Little Things: A Study of Literary Compression

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“It’s the little things that count”; “Good things come in small packages”; “Brevity is the soul of wit”; “The Devil’s in the details”… We’ll put these aphorisms to the test in this Delve Seminar exploring short poems, prose poetry, and short/micro fiction. These compressed forms aren’t lacking for content in their brevity, and we will explore ways of extracting their compressed contents like we would with zip files, expanding them like dry sponges in water, receiving the full communications of their code like expert cryptographers. We’ll also try writing a few small pieces of our own to learn through direct experience just what makes them tick. Authors we’ll read include Emily Dickinson, Russell Edson, Lucille Clifton, William Carlos Williams, Matsuo Bashō, and many more. Access…

$240

Oregon Literary Fellowship Reading

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

A reading featuring the 2023 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients.  

Free

Reading: Jessica E. Johnson and Kesha Ajose-Fisher

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland writers Jessica E. Johnson and Kesha Ajose-Fisher for readings and conversation. Jessica E. Johnson's new poetry collection is Metabolics. Kesha Ajose-Fisher's short story collection, No God Like the Mother, is newly reissued by Portland's own Forest Avenue Press. Signed and personalized copies of both authors' books are available for order! Please, please, please include the name for personalization in the order notes; all orders without a name specified in the order notes will be signed only. About Metabolics: In this debut poetry collection, a single speaker tries to control her body and negotiate her time with digital devices, all the while navigating identities, impulses, and relationships that are often in tension. Metabolics, a book-length poem, borrows the movements of metabolic pathways…

Free

Smallpresspalooza

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

After a four-year absence, Smallpresspalooza is back! Powell's presents this marathon reading of authors published by local and national small presses for the twelfth time. This year's lineup features Marcelle Heath, Sam Rose Preminger, Nicholas Yandell & Timothy Arliss O'Brien, Craig Buchner, Benjamin Kessler, Marialicia González, Eric Tran, Alyssa Giannini, Ashley Yang-Thompson, Quinn Gancedo, X.C. Atkins, and April Alexis Hernandez. Hosted by Powell's small-press champion and publisher of Future Tense Books, Kevin Sampsell. A full Smallpresspalooza schedule is available here. Preorder a Signed Edition (Heath) Preorder a Signed Edition (Preminger) Preorder a Signed Edition (Yandell & O’Brien) Preorder a Signed Edition (Buchner) Preorder a Signed Edition (Kessler) Preorder a Signed Edition (González) Preorder a Signed Edition (Tran) Preorder a Signed Edition (Giannini) Preorder a Signed…

Free

BIPOC Reading Series- April

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 April is “Transformation.” Our featured reader is Brandt Maina. Brandt Maina (he/they) – RIOA wa RIOE —is an abstRact and absuRdist artist, performer and writer from Nairobi, Kenya. In the month of the year of our Lard, May 2020, they graduated with a BFA in Acting and Vocal Performance from Taylor University, a small conservative Christian University in rural Indiana. Simply stated, with a background in the arts, and fresh memories of being homeless…

Free

The Break with Kaveh Akbar

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, “The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though many of the activities and discussions orbit or are inflected by recovery themes (Akbar has been in active recovery for eight years), participants are not required to self-identify as being in recovery to participate.” Register at: https://www.portlandalano.org/the-break Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American poet and scholar, and the author of Pilgrim Bell, published by Graywolf Press; Calling a Wolf a Wolf, published by Alice James Books in the US and Penguin Books in the UK; and the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic, published by Sibling Rivalry Press. In 2014, he founded the poetry interview…

Free

Constellation #5: Ajose-Fisher, Mayer, Minto

Tin House 2617 NW Thurman Street, Portland, OR, United States

April's event was a stunner, and we're thrilled to announce a stellar local lineup for our fifth Constellation on May18th, along with some exciting changes. Changes first: the reading space has been transformed into a beautiful independent bookstore! Bishop & Wilde will be open before the event. Feel free to arrive early and shop. And now, this month's readers: Kesha Ajose-Fisher (she/her) is the author of the award-winning collection of stories, No God Like the Mother, which focuses on the lives and realities of women who have been tasked with holding up the sky, all while the world whispers “you’re doing it wrong.” She has also earned a number of prestigious awards for other essays and stories she has written over the years, including The…

Free

Submission Deadline: Old Pal Mag: Issue 7

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Old Pal is currently open for submissions until May 20, 2023! We publish poetry, fiction, criticism, excerpts, audio, mixed media, and various mediums of art. We encourage artists from all experience levels and communities to submit. Contributors are compensated $50 upon publication. We ask that submissions are limited as follows: Up to 10 pages of poetry Up to 15 pages of prose Up to 10 images or visual artworks Up to five minutes of audio or video Simultaneous submissions are welcome; we just ask that you notify us to withdraw works if accepted elsewhere. We do not accept previously published work; however, works previously posted to social media will still be considered. There is no submission fee or subscription required to submit. All rights revert…

Free

Chris Daniels, Tom De Beauchamp, & Flavia Rocha (Spare Room Reading)

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

Spare Room and Passages Bookshop present a reading by CHRIS DANIELS TOM DE BEAUCHAMP FLAVIA ROCHA   Wednesday, April 3 7:30 pm   Free admission Doors open at 7:00 pm; no late entry Passages Bookshop 1801 NW Upshur, Suite 660 Portland, OR 97209 info@passagesbookshop.com 503-388-7665 ============================================================== Upcoming Event at Passages April 7       Marathon reading: Keats Endymion & Boone Century of Clouds ============================================================== Chris Daniels is a self-taught, feral translator of global Lusophone poetry. Tom DeBeauchamp is a fiction writer living in Portland, Oregon. His work has been published in DIAGRAM, Full-Stop, Smokelong Quarterly, and other publications. He is currently working on a novel, The Not-Vampire, about country music, industrial design, various creatures of the night, love, and family drama. Flavia Rocha is the author of four books of poems…

Free

Constellation #14 (4/11): Kiesling, Patel, Wong

Tin House 2617 NW Thurman Street, Portland, OR, United States

After an amazing and special BIPOC Adoptee showcase at the Armory in March, we're back to our regularly scheduled programming at Tin House/Bishop&Wilde (NW 26th and Thurman)! On Thursday April 11th, we're excited to host local luminaries Lydia Kiesling and Ami Patel and welcome Jane Wong who is traveling from Seattle to be with us.  Lydia Kiesling (she/her) is a novelist and culture writer. Her first novel, The Golden State, was a 2018 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree and a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her second novel, Mobility, a national bestseller, was named a best book of 2023 by Vulture, Time, and NPR, among others. It is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her essays and nonfiction have…

Free