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!

Free Range Poetry: Phil Meehan, Penelope Scambly Schott, Betsy Fogelman Tighe

Multnomah County Library 2300 NW Thurman Street, Portland

Free Range Poetry presents Phil Meehan, Penelope Scambly Schott, Betsy Fogelman Tighe Monday, July 1, 2019 Northwest Library 2300 NW Thurman Street Portland An open mic will precede featured poets. Open mic readers limited to two pages of material. Sign up for open mic at 5:45 pm. Reading 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm. PHIL MEEHAN has worked for 40 years as a chef in the Portland area. He retired in 2015 and spends his time writing, dancing and watching the city change with every season. His chapbook 2016 Beached was based on photographs left by his uncle. It celebrates life on the Oregon Coast during the 1910’s. PENELOPE SCAMBLY SCHOTT’S most recent book is November Quilt. She is known to hang out on the east…

Free

Lauren Kate

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton

The Orphan’s Song (G. P. Putnam’s Sons) is the adult debut novel by author Lauren Kate (the Fallen series), a sweeping love story about family and music — and the secrets each hold — that follows the intertwined fates of two Venetian orphans. Venice, 1736. When fate brings Violetta and Mino together on the roof of the Hospital of the Incurables, they form a connection that will change their lives forever. Both are orphans at the Incurables, dreaming of escape. But when the resident Maestro notices Violetta’s voice, she is selected for the Incurables’ world-famous coro, and must sign an oath never to sing beyond its church doors. After a declaration of love ends in heartbreak, Mino flees the Incurables in search of his family.…

Free

Reading: Heidi Diehl: Lifelines

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland

Annie Bloom's welcomes Brooklyn, New York, author Heidi Diehl to read from her novel Lifelines. She'll be joined in conversation with Portland author Sara Jaffe (Dryland). For fans of Meg Wolitzer and Maggie Shipstead: a sweeping debut novel following an American artist who returns to Germany—where she fell in love and had a child decades earlier—to confront her past at her former mother-in-law’s funeral. It’s 1971 when Louise leaves Oregon for Düsseldorf, a city grappling with its nation’s horrific recent history, to study art. Soon she’s embroiled in a scene dramatically different from the one at home, thanks in large part to Dieter, a mercurial musician. Their romance ignites quickly, but life gets in the way: an unplanned pregnancy, hasty marriage, the tense balance of…

Free

Joshua A. Douglas

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

In contrast to the anxiety surrounding our voting system, with stories about voter suppression and manipulation, there are actually quite a few positive initiatives toward voting rights reform. Professor Joshua A. Douglas, an expert on our electoral system, examines these encouraging developments in his inspiring new book about how regular Americans are working to take back their democracy, one community at a time. Told through the narratives of those working on positive voting rights reforms, Vote for US (Prometheus) includes chapters on expanding voter eligibility, easing voter registration rules, making voting more convenient, enhancing accessibility at the polls, providing voters with more choices, finding ways to comply with voter ID rules, giving redistricting back to the voters, pushing back on big money through local and…

Free

Translators Bruce Fulton & Ju-Chan Fulton

Powell's Books on Hawthorne 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland

In this shocking English debut, Mina (Two Lines), award-winning Korean author Kim Sagwa delivers an astonishingly complex portrait of modern-day adolescence. With pitch-perfect dialogue and a precise eye for detail, Kim creates a piercingly real teen protagonist — at once powerful, vulnerable, and utterly confused. As one bad decision leads to another, this promising life spirals to a devastating climax. Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades at her cram school. She’s also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her mp3s, and fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. Her nonstop frenzy never quite manages the one thing that might calm her down: opening up about the pressures that are driving her to the edge. She certainly hasn’t talked with…

Free