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!

2023 Oregon Book Awards

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for an evening honoring our state’s most accomplished writers in the categories of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, young readers, and drama. Finalists in all categories will be announced in January, 2023.  Luke Burbank Luke Burbank is the host of Live Wire, a public radio variety show taped monthly in front of a live audience in Portland. He grew up as one of seven kids, learning early on how to vie for attention. Those profound childhood issues have propelled him to various media projects including “This American Life,” “Wait Wait Don't Tell Me,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” and the daily podcast “Too Beautiful To Live.” Luke’s uniquely charming, quick-witted, and refreshingly vulnerable interview style is a winner with Live Wire guests and listeners alike.

$65

National Poetry Month: FREE Movie Night! The Last Poets

The Headwaters Theatre 55 Northeast Farragut Street #9, Portland, OR, United States

April is National Poetry Month! Come enjoy a free movie and stay for the open mic! Tonight's film will highlight the groundbreakers and trailblazers of what is today's hip-hop and spoken word--The Last Poets! A little about The Last Poets: The Last Poets are several groups of poets and musicians who arose from the late 1960s African-American civil rights movement's black nationalism. The name is taken from a poem by the South African revolutionary poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who believed he was in the last era of poetry before guns would take over. The original users of that name were the trio of Abiodun Oyewole, Gylan Kain, and David Nelson. The versions of the group led by Jalaluddin Mansur Nuriddin and Umar Bin Hassan had the…

$10

One Page Wednesday – April

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

Here is an opportunity to share or listen to one page of work in progress from talented writers from everywhere. Come with a single page of work and sign up to read – or come to listen and prepare to be inspired. Our host is the one and only, Emme Lund. Our featured reader is JZL JMZ.  Please review our Covid-19 guidelines.  Masks are not required but encouraged. If you have any questions, contact Jessica at jessica@literary-arts.org. Emme LundJZL JMZ (FKA JAYY DODD) Emme Lund is an author living and writing in Portland, Oregon. She has an MFA from Mills College. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Time, The Rumpus, Autostraddle, and many more. In 2019, she was awarded an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship in Fiction. The Boy with a…

Free

Slamlandia

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

Slamlandia is a poetry open mic that meets every first Thursday of the month inside of Guilder Cafe. 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.

Free

Kit Schluter, Tatiana Lipkes, & Joshua Pollock

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

Spare Room and Passages Bookshop present a reading by KIT SCHLUTER TATIANA LIPKES JOSHUA POLLOCK Friday, April 7 Doors open at 7:00 pm; reading at 7:30 pm Admission free; no late entry Passages Bookshop 1801 NW Upshur, Suite 660 Portland, OR 97209 503-388-7665 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Kit Schluter is a poet, translator, and bookmaker. Among his books are the poetry collection, Pierrot’s Fingernails (Canarium Books), the book of stories 5 Cartoons (Juan Malasuerte Editores), and the recent chapbook Erosion — Thousand Flies of Unadulterated Bliss (Cryptid Editions). He has…

Free

OPP April

Mother Foucault's Bookshop 523 SE Morrison St, Portland, OR, United States
Free

Poetry Workshop: An Afternoon of Deep Music w John Morrison | Apr 8 | In-person

Attic Institute 4232 SE Hawthorne, Portland, OR, United States

“Poetry is speech with song in it, the song made by words made to dance." ~ Robert Nye Prosody in the poems of Terrance Hayes, Mary Szybist, Diane Seuss, and others In this afternoon gathering, we will step into several poems by highly-accomplished poets and see what techniques they use to achieve their superior poems. More exploration than lecture, together we’ll discover the formal strategies and deep music in the work of Terrance Hayes, Mary Szybist, and Diane Seuss, among others. While this exploration can be seen as a follow up to January’s Deep Music of Poetry session on prosody, all are welcome for this fresh adventure. Be ready to read and collaborate in a full afternoon of discovery, and plan to carry home inspiration for…

$99 – $119

Abel, Ashby, Ready, & Safdie

Soliloquy Fine Arts 2232 SE Clinton Street, Suite B, Portland, OR, United States

Soliloquy Fine Arts is hosting poetry readings on Saturdays in April, in connection with the exhibition Expanse, which features abstract atmospheric paintings and a large-scale mobile by Julie Rall and Ruth Meijer. Soliloquy Fine Arts 2232 SE Clinton Street, Suite B (back of bldg) Gallery hours on Saturdays: 1:00-4:00 pm Readings take place at intervals from 1:30 to 3:00 pm each day. See below for the schedule of readers. April 8: David Abel, Chris Ashby, Meg Ready, Joe Safdie April 15: Marina Lazzara, Jennifer Pons, Michelle Ruiz Keil April 22: Stephanie Baker, David Booth, Monica Regan April 29: Sarah Ellen Sims, Chanel Wiggan, James Yeary The April readings at Soliloquy have been curated by Elizabeth Costello.

Free

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