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 Nib “Empire” Magazine Issue Release Party

Books with Pictures 1401 SE Division Street, Portland, OR, United States

On May Day, we're celebrating the celebrate the release of The Nib's new quarterly print issue, Empire! The Nib, America’s most-read daily comics publication, is inviting the Portland community to come celebrate the launch of the magazine with drinks, giveaways, and live readings! Come out to see the new issue, plus meet The Nib's editors, pick up some free Nib swag, and hear the behind-the-scenes of how the comics in the issue were made. The Empire issue delves into the chaotic governmental practices shattering civilizations across the world and the lasting impact globalization has played on cultures, communities and marginalized peoples. Some noteworthy contributors to this issue include Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post Ann Telnaes, critically acclaimed cartoonist Rob Rogers who was…

Free

One Page Wednesday

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

Writers, escape the solitude of your desk. Readers, come hear great fresh work. One Page Wednesday is an opportunity to share or listen to one page of work in progress from talented Portland writers. Come with a single page of work and sign up to read  – or come to listen and prepare to be inspired!  Please, no reading from electronic devices. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Featured Readers for May: Justin Taylor is the author of the story collections Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and Flings, and the novel The Gospel of Anarchy. Riding With the Ghost, a memoir, will be published in 2020. He lives in Portland and is the 2018-2019 Mark and Melody Teppola Presidential Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Willamette…

Free

Plonk presents Daniel H. Wilson and Stevan Allred

Corkscrew Wine Bar 1665 SE Bybee Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

It's Plonk's last reading before our summer break, and we're ending the season with two master world builders. Daniel H. Wilson, is the author of Robopocalypse and myriad other novels. Stevan Allred is currently on his world tour with The Alehouse at the End of the World. They'll read from their work, and talk craft with a special guest interviewer*. Celebrate Spring with Plonk. (*That would be Bruce Barrow)

Free

Michele Filgate With Lidia Yuknavitch, Nayomi Munaweera & Rene Denfeld

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

As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize what she was actually trying to write: how this affected her relationship with her mother. In What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About (Simon & Schuster), 15 writers explore what we don’t talk to our mothers about, and how it affects us, for better or for worse. Filgate will be joined in conversation at the event by Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan, Nayomi Munaweera, author of What Lies Between Us, and Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder.

Free

Chelsea Biondolillo in conversation with Justin Hocking

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Chelsea Biondolillo joins us to read from her new collection of essays, The Skinned Bird, published by Kernpunkt Press. Chelsea will be joined in conversation this evening by Justin Hocking, author of (most recently) The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld. The Skinned Bird is about all the ways we break our own hearts. In lyric, fragmented essays -- full of geological, ornithological and photographic interventions, with landscapes, loss, and longing -- Biondolillo travels the terrain of leaving and finding home while keeping her sights fixed firm on the natural world around her. The collection includes "How to Skin a Bird," winner of the Carter Prize for the Essay, and the Best American Essays 2014 notable essay, "Phrenology." Lidia Yuknavitch describes the collection as "nothing short…

Free

Tehlor Kay Mejia in Conversation With Michelle Ruiz Keil

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

In Tehlor Kay Mejia’s daring and romantic fantasy debut novel for teens, society-wife-in-training Dani has a great awakening after being recruited by rebel spies and falling for her biggest rival. The first in a sizzling fantasy duology, Mejia’s We Set the Dark on Fire (Katherine Tegen Books) is a boldly feminist look at freedom, family, and fighting the power. Mejia will be joined in conversation by Michelle Ruiz Keil, author of the forthcoming YA fantasy novel, All of Us With Wings. This event is being held in conjunction with Children’s Book Week.

Free

The Widmer Way – Jeff Alworth

Another Read Through 3932 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Portland, Oregon, didn’t always have a wildly successful craft brew scene. Someone had to be daring enough to innovate, and the Widmer brothers were just the men for the job. Written by Portland beer guru Jeff Alworth (The Beer Bible, Beer Tasting Tool Kit), The Widmer Way: How Two Brothers Led Portland’s Craft Beer Revolution chronicles Kurt and Rob Widmer’s journey from humble homebrewers to craft beer pioneers and purveyors of the iconic Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen. Alworth also dives deep into Portland’s history, setting the scene for Widmer’s rise in the city now known for its exquisite beer. Drawing from hours of interviews with Kurt and Rob, close family and friends, and big names in the beer industry, The Widmer Way offers an exclusive look…

Free

Chapbook launch: obsequies by manuel arturo abreu

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

Join us on May 2 at 7 pm to celebrate the launch of manuel arturo abreu’s new chapbook, obsequies. Reading alongside abreu are Laura Camila Medina and Bogosi Sekhukhuni. abreu will also play some piano.  Laura Camila Medina is an interdisciplinary artist born in Bogota, Colombia and raised in Orlando, FL. She bases her practice around uprooting and migration as a response to personal, cultural, and historical research. Medina is constantly inspired by her memories of home, her mother’s arepas, and her father’s soundtracks. She earned a BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and is currently based in Portland, OR. Bogosi Sekhukhuni (b. 1991, Johannesburg) describes himself as a ‘lightworker’. He studied at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He has exhibited at…

Free

Foucault in California

Powell's Books on Hawthorne 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

In 1975, iconic French philosopher Michel Foucault spent a weekend in Southern California at the invitation of Simeon Wade. Led by Wade and his partner, Michael Stoneman, Foucault experimented with psychotropic drugs for the first time; by morning he was crying and proclaiming that he knew Truth. Foucault in California (Heyday) is Wade's firsthand account of that long weekend. Presenting his late brother’s book is David Wade, as well as Heather Dundas, author of the book’s foreword.

Free

Spare Room reading: Julian Talamantez Brolaski, Phoebe Wayne, & Trevino Brings Plenty

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

Trevino L. Brings Plenty is a poet and musician who lives, works, and writes in Portland, OR. He is singer/songwriter/guitarist for the musical ensemble Ballads of Larry Drake. He has read/performed his work at poetry festivals as far away as Amman, Jordan and close to his home base at Portland's Wordstock Festival. In college, Trevino worked with Primus St. John and Henry Carlile for this poetry work, studied with Tomas Svoboda for music composition, and Jerry Hahn for Jazz guitar. Trevino is an American and Native American; a Lakota Indian born on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, South Dakota, USA. Some of his work explores the American Indian identity in American culture and how it has through genealogical history affected indigenous peoples in the 21st…

Free – $5