A resource for the PDX literary community. Produced by Old Pal.
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 first OPP of 2023! Come recite someone else’s poem by heart, or just listen. There is an event directly afterwards so we will start at 7 sharp.
It’s a family affair: Christopher Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, and Angelo Luna will be joining us for the return of our First Friday Poetry Series! Christopher Luna, co-host of Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic and co-founder of Printed Matter Vancouver, will be launching his new poetry collection, VORACITY, from Lightship Press, and will be joined by his wife Toni Lumbrazo Luna, co-founder of Printed Matter Vancouver and local poetry powerhouse, and his son Angelo Luna, who co-authored the father-son poetry collection EXCHANGING WISDOM. 7pm Friday, January 6 Birdhouse Books 1001 Main Street Basement Vancouver, WA 98660 Voracity, featuring poetry and collages by Christopher Luna, is now available from Lightship Press or the author: https://www.lightshippress.com/books/p/voracity-by-christopher-luna Voracity by Christopher Luna $18.00 "Brutally honest confessional poetry, Christopher Luna's…
Long-time Portland poet, performer editor and reading host dan raphael will be reading from In the Wordshed, his 26th book, just published this December. Poet and designer Ash Good will read from Us Clumsy Gods, which came out in October.
Cultivating a Sustainable Writing Practice Instructor: Alissa Hattman This workshop is offered via Zoom PST Register here Class Meetings: 1 Saturday, Jan. 7th; 1-4pm $15 – $75 sliding scale *6 no-cost spots available; BIPOC & 2S prioritized Our practice—how we labor as writers—is highly personal. When we create a writing habit, it helps to consider our individual creative processes, life priorities, writing goals, and all the ways that we get in the way of our own writing. How we labor is also bound up in cultural notions of productivity and success that can often kill the creative drive. It can be hard to consistently carve out time in order to cultivate the type of patient, inner stillness required to write, but it is possible. Necessary,…
Annie Bloom's welcomes Oregon poets Leanne Grabel and Elaine S. Nussbaum for an in-store reading from their new collections, all published by local press The Poetry Box. Unfortunately, Rachel Barton, who was originally scheduled to participate, is no longer able to join the event. About My Husband's Eyebrows: My Husband's Eyebrows is a humorous examination and honest celebration of Grabel's long marriage—its good, its bad, its ugly—told through a collection of prose poems and poetry, punctuated by the author's richly colored, exuberant, exaggerated illustrations. Leanne Grabel is a writer, illustrator, and performer in love with mixing genres. Her first collaboration was with a bongo player and sax player in the mid-70s and her most recent collaborations were with filmmaker Penny Allen and dancer/choreographer Gregg Bielemeier.…
The 16th season of the Milwaukie Poetry Series continues on January 11 at 6pm with a live reading at the library by poet Wendy Willis. Seating limited to 50. Wendy Willis has published two books of poems, a book of essays, and a textbook. Her last two books, These are Strange Times, My Dear, and A Long Late Pledge were finalists for the Oregon Book Award. Wendy is also the founder and director of Oregon's Kitchen Table, a statewide community engagement program housed at Portland State University. She lives in Southeast Portland with her family. Room Location: Community Room
Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms This workshop is virtual, PST Register here Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms In this 6-week class, we will experiment with short form creative writing. Our focus—whether it’s flash fiction, lyric essay, prose poetry, or hybrid—will be on the art of compression. Each week, participants will be given a writing exercise, a short reading, and two workshop submissions from their peers. Class time will include workshop as well as discussion of readings and craft. Our workshop will be guided by observations, questions, and possibilities. We will be thinking less about how to “fix” a piece of writing and more about what we see, our curiosities, and how to recognize hidden opportunities. Each participant will receive feedback from…
Ghost Town Poetry is an open mic that goes down on the second Thursday of every month at Art at the Cave. More information can be found on the Printed Matter Vancouver website: https://printedmattervancouver.com/tag/ghost-town-poetry-open-mic/
Annie Bloom's welcomes local poets Bill Siverly and Penelope Scambly Schott for readings from their latest collections. About Starry Night: "Employing a mirrored parallelism for both individual poems and this entire collection, Bill Siverly takes us on a journey that encompasses Germany, his childhood in Idaho, the pandemic, and the drought. Although Starry Night celebrates the balm of the natural world and the joys of a passionate marriage, the gravitas of the tone here is clear: These poems implicate us fully in the destruction we've wrought on our world. Siverly's lyric voice demands we acknowledge 'how in one lifetime we've greased the skids / of our human demise.'" -Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita, author of One Small Sun Bill Siverly was born and grew…