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!

Coffee Talk #30

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Come here these 5 wonderful people read their work around grief. Your Jan 6th self will thank you. Its a heart balm. Readings are about an hour and start at 7 PM Pacific on zoom. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83156663544?pwd=dml2Ymd1eEhnNEVVQXhtOG44SzF3UT09 Meeting ID: 831 5666 3544 Passcode: 103969

Free

Exchanging Wisdom Book Launch

Birdhouse Books 1001 Main Street, Vancouver, WA, United States

Book Launch for Exchanging Wisdom: A Guide for Parents of the Autonomous by Christopher Luna and Angelo at Birdhouse Books January 7, 2021 5-9pm Friday, January 7 Birdhouse Books 1001 Main Street Basement Vancouver, WA 98660 (360) 602-1098 Located downstairs from The Rosemary Cafe Join us during the First Friday art walk for an evening of poetry celebrating the release of Exchanging Wisdom: A Guide for Parents of the Autonomous, a new book by Christopher Luna and his son Angelo published by The Poetry Box. The poems in the book trace their relationship from the time Angelo was a toddler through age 21. Christopher and Angelo will read from the book at the top of the hour from 5-8pm and will be available to sign…

Free

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Emmett Wheatfall

Art At The Cave 108 E Evergreen Blvd, Vancouver, WA, United States

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Emmett Wheatfall Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004 7 pm Thursday, January 13 Art at the Cave 108 E Evergreen Blvd Vancouver, WA 98660 https://artatthecave.com/ $5 Suggested donation Emmett Wheatfall lives in Portland, Oregon where he writes, records, publishes, and performs poetry. Fernwood Press, an imprint of Barclay Press, has published two books of Emmett's poetry. His collection titled As Clean as a Bone was published in May 2018 through Fernwood Press. As Clean as a Bone was a 2019 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist as well as a da Vinci Eye award finalist. Our Scarlet Blue Wounds is his latest collection and was published in November 2019. Our…

Free

Douglas Kearney Reading

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Register here for the Douglas Kearney reading. You will receive a Zoom link upon registration. Douglas Kearney has published seven collections, including the National Book Award finalist Sho (Wave Books, 2021), Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and California Book Award silver medalist (Poetry). M. NourbeSe Philip calls Kearney’s collection of libretti, Someone Took They Tongues (Subito, 2016), “a seismic, polyphonic mash-up.” Kearney’s Mess and Mess and (Noemi Press, 2015), was a Small Press Distribution Handpicked Selection that Publisher’s Weekly called “an extraordinary book.” WIRE magazine calls Fodder (Fonograf Editions, 2021), a live album featuring Kearney and frequent collaborator, Val-Inc., “Brilliant.” Kearney is the 2021 recipient of OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, created and generously funded by librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell.…

Free

Submissions Open!

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

neverland (ne-vər-land): 1.) an unreal, imaginary, or ideal state, condition, place 2.) any remote, isolated, barren, or sparsely settled region Send us your stories and poems of pipe dreams, utopias, and Shangri-Las! HOCUS accepts prose, poetry, and creative nonfiction of up to 2,000 words. We welcome literary fiction and poetry submissions from everyone regardless of race, class, gender, sexuality, geography, religious or cultural background. Our programming is in English. We especially invite Black, Indigenous, and other people of color to take part. We recognize all genders. The reading will be on Friday, March 11th from 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. at the Rose City Book Pub in NE Portland. Please be aware that the Book Pub is currently requiring proof of vaccination. We are keeping in…

Free

BOOKLOVER’S BURLESQUE: Cozy Classics

Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR, United States

“We would be together and have our books, and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright.” -Ernest Hemingway It’s time to get warm and cozy with us as Lacy Productions and The Alberta Rose Theatre present BOOKLOVER’S BURLESQUE: Cozy Classics Booklover’s Burlesque is the world’s sexiest literary salon which matches titillating, inspiring, and empowering book readings with burlesque, boylesque, and draglesque performances all in one show! Professional readers, actors, and/or local authors & writers read aloud a piece of poetry, fiction (from any genre), memoir, non-fiction, etc, which is then followed by a burlesque performance inspired by the piece. Join us as we bring the sensual heat of words and wantonness rivaling the warmth of a fireplace…

$20 – $30

Buckman Journal Poetry Prize

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The award-winning Buckman Journal is pleased to open submissions for the Buckman Journal Poetry Award, February 14 - 27, 2022. One poet will receive $300.00, and their work featured in Buckman Journal. The prize is open to Oregon and SW Washington residents only. There is no entry fee. Please send no more than five pages of unpublished poems. Simultaneous submissions are fine if noted in the cover letter. All styles are welcome, however Buckmxn favors the brave. Poets who use a word in an unexpected manner, lyrical without heavy handed and multiple adjectives, employ a joy working the sound and rhythm of words, strike Buckmxn most. Buckmxn also notes that there a lot of poems written solidly, squarely in the 1st person. Consider this if…

Free

HOCUS: Submissions Open!

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

neverland (ne-vər-land): 1.) an unreal, imaginary, or ideal state, condition, place 2.) any remote, isolated, barren, or sparsely settled region Send us your stories and poems of pipe dreams, utopias, and Shangri-Las! HOCUS accepts prose, poetry, and creative nonfiction of up to 2,000 words. We welcome literary fiction and poetry submissions from everyone regardless of race, class, gender, sexuality, geography, religious or cultural background. Our programming is in English. We especially invite Black, Indigenous, and other people of color to take part. We recognize all genders. The reading will be on Friday, March 11th from 7:30 - 9:00 p.m. at the Rose City Book Pub in NE Portland. Please be aware that the Book Pub is currently requiring proof of vaccination. We are keeping in…

Free

A Poetry Reading by Nikky Finney

Lewis & Clark College 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR, United States

Finney has authored four books of poetry: Head Off & Split (2011); The World Is Round (2003); Rice (1995); and On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). The John H. Bennett, Jr. Chair in Southern Letters and Literature at the University of South Carolina, Finney also authored Heartwood (1997), edited The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007), and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. Finney’s fourth book of poetry, Head Off & Split was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for poetry. Nikky Finney was born in South Carolina, within listening distance of the sea.  A child of activists, she came of age during the civil rights and Black Arts Movements. At Talladega College, nurtured by Hale Woodruff’s Amista murals, Finney began to understand the powerful synergy…

Free

Dao Strom Reading

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Dao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of the poetry collection, Instrument (Fonograf Editions), and its musical companion, Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (Hanoi: AJAR Press); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (Counterpoint Press) and Grass Roof, Tin Roof (Mariner Books). Her work has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, NEA, and others. She was a 2020 Oregon Literary Arts Career Fellowship recipient. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California and lives in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder and director…

Free