LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.

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Red Ink Series: Ambition

The Corporeal Writing Center 510 SW 3rd Ave #101, Portland

“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink….”–Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway Red Ink makes one think of vitality, blood, the monthly cycle, correcting history, and making a mark on the world. This dynamic series focuses on women writers, past and present, and is held four times a year at Books are Magic in Brooklyn. Join us for a special Portland edition. Featuring Gabby Rivera (Juliet Takes a Breath), Cari Luna (The Revolution of Every Day), and Meaghan O'Connell (And Now We Have Everything). Curated and moderated by Michele Filgate (What My Mother And I Don't Talk About). The topic is ambition.

Free

Zyzzyva Reading

Dorsa Brevia 625 NW Everett Street #103, Portland

Come join ZYZZYVA—San Francisco's revered literary journal, featuring some of the West Coast's best writers and poets since 1985—for a program of short readings by some of their past and most recent contributors. With a long tradition of publishing writers living in Oregon, ZYZZYVA happily returns to Portland for this showcase hosted by Editorial Assistant Zack Ravas. Readings by Robin Romm, Don Waters, Lydia Kiesling, and John Sibley Williams.

Free

LitCrawl 2019: Build Your Own Industrial-Strength Crap Detector

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland

HEY PORTLAND! Come out for my hilarious factchecking lecture during #LitCrawl2019! Are you ready for the 2020 Presidential campaign season? Do you know fact from fiction, fake news from real information? In this fun slideshow adapted from my new book, Street Journalist: Understand and Report the News in Your Community, I'm offering easy tools of critical analysis to help you navigate whatever the hell's gonna happen next.

Free

Lit Crawl Portland

N/A

Lit Crawl Portland is back, November 8. Hope you’re ready. Can you believe Lit Crawl Portland is FIVE YEARS OLD!? We are thrilled to be hitting the streets of Portland again with a full slate of madcap literary programming--a mix of genres, ages, voices, and formats within a walkable, downtown radius. RSVP here for updates, but each program will also make an event of its own, connected with the venues that generously agree to host us each year. It's time to shake out of your summer haze, and get ready for a festive fall. Lit Crawl PDX kicks off the Portland Book Festival (Nov 9) on November 8, 2019. It will all be here before we know it. See you soon!

Free

Anthologies of Women’s Rage / Burn It Down x All of Me x LitCrawl

The Corporeal Writing Center 510 SW 3rd Ave #101, Portland

Editors and contributors from two new anthologies about women’s anger—Burn It Down and All of Me—present short readings and an opportunity for audience participation to unleash our collective rage. With Lilly Dancyger, Dani Burlison, Ariel Gore, Marissa Korbel, G. Ravyn Stanfield, and Marisa Siegel. About the editors: Lilly Dancyger is a contributing editor and columnist at Catapult, and assistant editor at Barrelhouse Books. She's the editor of Burn It Down, an anthology of essays on women's anger from Seal Press, and the author of Negative Space, a reported and illustrated memoir forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project in 2021. Her writing has been published by Longreads, The Washington Post, Glamour, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. Lilly lives in New York City, and she spends way…

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Free

Bagley Wright Lecture Series presents Dorothea Laskey

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland

Dorothea Lasky will read selections from ANIMAL, her new book of poetry lectures (Wave Books, 2019). Constellating four central topics—ghosts, colors, animals, and bees—Lasky serves as an encouraging guide through the startling, sometimes dangerous, always exhilarating landscapes of feral poetic imagination. Dorothea Lasky is the author, most recently, of Animal, published in 2019 in the Bagley Wright Lecture Series. She is also the author of five full-length collections of poetry Milk (Wave Books, 2018), Rome (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2014), Thunderbird (Wave Books, 2012), Black Life (Wave Books, 2010), and AWE (Wave Books, 2007). She is the co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (McSweeney's, 2013), co-author of Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac (with Alex Dimitrov, Flatiron Books, 2019) and is…

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Free

Collaborative Reading/Performance by She Who Has No Master(s) and Counterpoint/Catapult

The Cleaners at Ace Hotel 403 SW 10th Ave, Portland

Counterpoint Press celebrates the reissue of multidisciplinary writer Dao Strom’s The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys, a collection of novellas centering the experiences of Vietnamese women in the contemporary landscape, with a lineup of three women writers of the Vietnamese diaspora—Strom, Amy Lam, and Jenny Chu—performing readings accompanied by visuals and multimedia. Bios: Jenny M. Chu was born and raised in Portland, Oregon by way of immigrant parents from Saigon and Hong Kong. She's an older sister to a little brother. In life, she is the Community Engagement Manager at Write Around Portland. In life, she thinks and writes. In life, her creative work is intermittently public. In life, her creativity is omnipresent. She often seeks the horizon on a clockless day. Amy Lam is a…

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Free

Cult of Orpheus / Rose City Art Song Project

Valentine's 232 SW Ankeny St, Portland

Readings by poets collaborating on the Rose City Arts Songs Project (Phase 3, Valentine's). It's a great variety, from the lyrical symbolist imagism of Coleman Stevenson to the surreal invocations of Jason Squamata. Cult of Orpheus presents the Rose City Art Song project, featuring works of Portland poets set to music. On the eve of Portland Book Festival and the night of LitCrawl! Join us at 7 pm for poetry readings by Mo McFeely, Jason Squamata, Coleman Stevenson and James Yeary. At 8 pm, Cult of Orpheus presents musical performances of eight poems, two from each poet. Our featured vocalists are tenor Eric Asakawa, soprano Jocelyn Claire Thomas, baritone Dan Gibbs, and mezzo-soprano Sadie Gregg. Music composed by Christopher Corbell, with music direction by Erica…

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Free

Literary BINGO with Lilla Lit

CENTRL Office Downtown 1155 SW Morrison St, Portland

Candy will be flung, prizes will be won: Come bingo with Lilla Lit! We’re back with more literary bingo madness courtesy an all-star lineup of Portland writers. Who will read a flashback? A sonnet? The word “panty”? Mark your cards and claim your prizes! Your bingolicious hosts: Lilla Lit coordinators Virginia Bellis Brandabur and Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet. This year's brave readers: Rebecca Claren (Kickdown), Kate Gray (For Every Girl), Apricot Irving (The Gospel of Trees), Missy Ladygo, Gigi Little (The Untold Gaze), Jessica Mehta (Savagery), Liz Scott (This Never Happened), and Natalie Serber (Community Chest). 7 PM • CENTRL Office Downtown • 1155 SW Morrison https://www.facebook.com/events/502956033891541/

Free

Powell’s Booksellers Reading

ILWU Local 5 Union Hall 920 West Burnside, Portland

Not only is Powell's the cultural center of Portland, it's also full of people making amazing literary art of their own. They may look like mild-mannered booksellers and cashiers, but you have no idea! Hosts Mark Savage and Kevin Sampsell introduce Melissa Amstutz, Ryan Hall, Cosima Bee Concordia, Mia Vicino, Ariel Kusby, Elizabeth Neal, Kyan Oliver Furlong, and Francesca DeMusz in this special Powell's employee/Local 5/Deep Overstock showcase. Come see us during your LitCrawl 2019 festivities.

Free

PSU MFA Program’s Filament Series

Dorsa Brevia 625 NW Everett Street #103, Portland

Presenting the exciting and innovative work of the graduates in Portland State University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program! Readers: Mary Haidri Ann Petroliunas Charity Yoro Fiction: Mary Haidri is the author of the play Every Path (La Jolla Playhouse). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Permafrost Magazine, Pigeon Pages, The Molotov Cocktail, Winter Tangerine, Portland Review, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She was the recipient of the 2017 Fairy Tale Review Poetry Award and the 2018 Shadow Award. She is a collaborator of Nettleworks, a theater collective. Find her work at maryhaidri.com Nonfiction: Ann Petroliunas is a current student in PSU’s creative nonfiction writing MFA program and a 2017 graduate of the prose certificate program at the Independent Publishing Resource…

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Free

OPP – Other People’s Poems!

Mother Foucault's Bookshop 523 SE Morrison St, Portland

Come recite someone else’s poem from memory, or just listen. First Fridays 7pm sharp

Free

Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices

Two Rivers Bookstore 8836 N Lombard Street, Portland

Join Michaela McCormick (she/her) and Sasha Strong (they/them) as they read from their chapters in the new anthology, Transcending.

Free

Creatives and Cocktails: FUBU

Kelly's Olympian 426 Southwest Washington St, Portland

Hey there! I’d like to invite everyone to an open mic that Stay Litt will be hosting on November 8th. We’ll begin with a reading, featuring Rachelle Dixon who has recently published Between Sweetness and Spice: A Vegan Culinary Journey Across the Continents. The book is about their family’s culinary roots across the continents. Rachelle will read a few food stories from Between Sweetness and Spice and a sample recipe will be shared. After their reading, other creatives are invited and encouraged to come up and share their work too! Come make new friends!

Free

The Rose City Art-Song Project

Valentine's 232 SW Ankeny St, Portland

Cult of Orpheus is Portland's only all-original art-song and opera troupe, founded by local lyrical-music composer Christopher Corbell. This year we've been focused on collaborations with local poets, and this performance will feature eight new musical compositions setting words by four Portland writers. Performers: Sadie Gregg, mezzo-soprano; Dan Gibbs, baritone; Eric Asakawa, tenor; Jocelyn Claire Thomas, soprano; Patrick McCulley, saxophone; Christopher Corbell, guitar; Laura Gershman, English horn; Erica Melton, music director; Kristi Gray Lovato, emcee.

Free

Poetry Karaoke: Celebrity Judge Edition

The Cleaners at Ace Hotel 403 SW 10th Ave, Portland

In the return of this Lit Crawl Portland favorite, audience members perform poems, and a spin of the wheel determines the musical style in which poems are read/performed. Corvallis-based band Mule on Fire will provide on-the-spot accompaniment for a range of poetic options. And again this year, celebrated authors from Portland and beyond will judge poetry karaoke performances. At the end of 45 minutes, a winner will be crowned Poetry Karaoke Champion for the year.

Free

Reply All: Portland Review Reading

CENTRL Office Downtown 1155 SW Morrison St, Portland

Original, borrowed, and found texts from Portland-based multidisciplinary artists and writers Anis Mojgani, Joni Renee Whitworth, and Jenny Vu. With live performances, and visual contributions that explore art, work, and collective attention -- and the communal possibilities for live literature. Hosted by Portland Review.

Free

Lit Crawl Portland: Our Words Are a Bridge

The Corporeal Writing Center 510 SW 3rd Ave #101, Portland

We proudly present our Lit Crawl Portland 2019 event, Our Words Are a Bridge: An Evening with The Rumpus, Corporeal Writing, and YesYes Books! Where: Coporeal Writing 510 SW 3rd Ave #101 Portland, OR 97204 With readings from Diannely Antigua, Jennine Capó Crucet, Steph Cha, Brandon Courtney, Ross Gay, Matt Hart, and T Kira Madden. This event is free and open to the public! Original event artwork by Lisa Lee Herrick. Join The Rumpus, Corporeal Writing, and YesYes Books for Our Words Are a Bridge! Featuring readings from Diannely Antigua, Jennine Capó Crucet, Steph Cha, Brandon Courtney, Ross Gay, Matt Hart, and T Kira Madden, and hosted by Rumpus Editor-in-Chief Marisa Siegel.

Free
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