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!

Black Poets Society: Sisters & Soulfood

Imago Dei Community Loft 1302 Southeast Ankeny Street, Portland, OR, United States

Blackness, whiteness and otherness: words, when strung together, that may cause discomfort and awkwardness. Join us in that discomfort this August as we meditate on the voice of the Black Woman. The poetry and the spoken word African-American Women will guide us in dialogue to hear from our community differently, to know one another differently, to see reconciliation differently. Format: Black Poets Society is a two session series with readers sharing a broad range of historic and modern poetry and spoken word by Black Women. Attendees will have a chance to respond in writing, discuss and unpack in table conversations and participate in a larger group conversation. Each part is a standalone event, but will weave together thematically. You should come to these events if…

Free

The Prose Poem

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

The Prose Poem: This workshop is in person: Masks + Proof of Vaccination Required Register here How can we create poems when we no longer rely upon (or when we free ourselves from) one of poetry’s most powerful tools: the line? In this class, we’ll dive into this question, drawing inspiration from a diverse array of writers as we investigate how to heighten language to create the intensity of a poem within the short space of a paragraph. We’ll also examine writing that defies conventional genre classification, straddling the lines between poetry, fiction and essay. Through in-class exercises, weekly prompts, and supportive discussion of one another’s work, we’ll immerse ourselves in our creative processes, generating our own prose poems and pieces of writing that push…

$65 – $185

August Poetry Practice Space

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

Join us monthly on zoom, on the third Thursday of the month for prompts and sharing. Register here, and we’ll send the zoom link on the day of the event. Poetry Practice Space is a monthly gathering for poets and writers. Writing materials, readings and prompts for generative writing will be provided. Come share a space to talk about your writing practice, and current writing projects, bemoan rejections, celebrate acceptances, share writing resources— and write together! Consider Poetry Practice Space the calisthenics for your poetics. Suggested donation, no one turned away for lack of funds Free for members

Free

Writing Workshop with Stephen Altschuler

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

The next Vancouver Writers Guild generative workshop will be August 18th at 6:30 PM! Seven-time author and self-publisher Stephen Altschuler will be leading the workshop, giving prompts and encouragement as we all embark on the writing journey together. There will be snacks.

Free

Slamlandia – ft. Valerie Yvette Peterson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community. [Featuring: Valerie Yvette Peterson Valerie Yvette Peterson; Poet, Playwright, native and current resident of Portland, Oregon, has been writing for over 35 years, performing her work across the country. Her Poetic work has been performed for many organizations and festivals, including Juneteenth of Oregon, World Arts Foundation Inc.’s Annual MLK Jr. Tribute (The 2nd Largest Celebration in the Nation for Dr. King), the G.A.R.E. (Government Alliance on Race…

Free

PSU Lit Mic

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

Summer | Write from Life w David Biespiel | Aug 20-21 | In-Person + Online (2 SPOTS OPEN FOR IN PERSON; OTHERS ON ZOOM)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Praise for Writing from Life: "I left the weekend with an agenda and a plan and realistic expectations." ~ Pat Brim-Williams This popular tune-up workshop will be run twice this summer, in July and August. It's the kind of study every writer needs, an opportunity to write from studying your own portrait and then seeing what subjects that leads you to. The supportive approach emphasizes observation as the route to achieve new material, new possibilities, and new pieces, whether you are writing fiction, memoir, or poems. The approach teaches you new skills that you can use for all your future writing, as well as how to transfer your observations into clear notes, jottings, studies, and pieces of new writing. This method of writing is one of the foundational skill sets that all writers should…

$215 – $244

Black Poets Society: Sisters & Soulfood

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Blackness, whiteness and otherness: words, when strung together, that may cause discomfort and awkwardness. Join us in that discomfort this August as we meditate on the voice of the Black Woman. The poetry and the spoken word African-American Women will guide us in dialogue to hear from our community differently, to know one another differently, to see reconciliation differently. Format: Black Poets Society is a two session series with readers sharing a broad range of historic and modern poetry and spoken word by Black Women. Attendees will have a chance to respond in writing, discuss and unpack in table conversations and participate in a larger group conversation. Each part is a standalone event, but will weave together thematically. You should come to these events if…

Free

Black Poets Society: Sisters & Soulfood

Imago Dei Community Loft 1302 Southeast Ankeny Street, Portland, OR, United States

Blackness, whiteness and otherness: words, when strung together, that may cause discomfort and awkwardness. Join us in that discomfort this August as we meditate on the voice of the Black Woman. The poetry and the spoken word African-American Women will guide us in dialogue to hear from our community differently, to know one another differently, to see reconciliation differently. Format: Black Poets Society is a two session series with readers sharing a broad range of historic and modern poetry and spoken word by Black Women. Attendees will have a chance to respond in writing, discuss and unpack in table conversations and participate in a larger group conversation. Each part is a standalone event, but will weave together thematically. You should come to these events if…

Free

Delve Readers Seminar: “First – Poets – Then the Sun”: Emily Dickinson’s Craft, Life, and Legacy

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

Emily Dickinson has achieved the rarest of distinctions for a nineteenth-century poet (and a female one at that): lasting, evolving fame. Having escaped the confines of academic study and school syllabi, Dickinson has become a popular figure beloved by a wide and varied readership and the subject of films, television programs, and fan clubs. She is acknowledged not only as an important American poet, but as one of the greatest poets of any time and place. Dickinson understands the power and the magic of words and knows how to breathe life into metaphor. Her writing is associative and allusive, frequently enigmatic or ambiguous, and always peculiarly original. Poetry was for her not just a craft or a vocation (though it was certainly both of these),…

$340