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

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Choose Your Own Adventure Spies: Mata Hari

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

YOU are young Margaretha Zelle, a world-famous dancer from the Netherlands. You have just arrived in Bali with your dance troupe when your best friend Althea goes missing. As a master of tongues and disguises, who better to save her? But if you leave now, you will miss your chance to audition for the performance of a lifetime. Katherine Factor’s Choose Your Own Adventure Spies: Mata Hari (Chooseco) stars you as a real-life historical spy in an interactive, multiple-ending book.

Free

STRAY Record Release Party

Nationale 3360 SE Division, Portland, OR, United States

Saturday, May 18, 3pm at NATIONALE, Fonograf Editions presents a record release celebration for Shannon Ebner’s STRAY: A Graphic Tone. Ebner’s project collates poems by Susan Howe and Nathaniel Mackey, exploring the experiments and politics of poetic form. Portland poets John Beer and Endi Bogue Hartigan will each read from Howe’s and/or Mackey’s works as well as from their own. Additional reader(s) TBA. Nationale (est. 2008) is an art space dedicated to the promotion of culture through exhibitions, performances, and a small selection of various publications. Located at 3360 SE Division, Portland, OR. John Beer is the author of Lucinda & The Waste Land and Other Poems, and the editor of Poems (1962-1997) by Robert Lax. He teaches at Portland State University. Endi Bogue Hartigan…

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Free

Wordlights: Saturday Poetry Evenings

Rocking Frog Cafe 2511 SE Belmont St, Portland, OR, United States

Wordlights Saturday poetry evenings presented by Nova PDX, Rocking Frog Cafe and hosted by Igor Brezhnev. On Saturday May 18th, we'll have a feature from Julia Gaskill and a long set poetry open mic! OUR FEATURE: Julia Gaskill is a professional daydreamer hailing from Portland, Oregon. When she’s not hosting Slamlandia, she can be found performing on the Portland Poetry Slam stage, exploring the Pacific Northwest, or walking your dog. Julia has competed in IWPS, WOWPS, and NPS throughout 2016 - 2018, and she was the Portland Poetry Slam rep at WOWPS 2018 in Dallas, TX. Her work has been featured on FreezeRay Poetry, Ink&Nebula, Slam Find, Write About Now, Rising Phoenix Review, and Voicemail Poems. It goes without saying that she loves Muppets more…

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Free

Amena Brown LIVE: An Evening of Poetry, Music, and Storytelling

Sunnyside United Methodist Church 3520 SE Yamhill Street, Portland, OR, United States

Music, poetry, and storytelling vibrantly infused with laughter, lament, and dance. Amena Brown and her husband DJ Opdiggy are bringing their unique style of music, poetry and event curation to Portland, Oregon in partnership with UMC NW! Spoken word poet and author, Amena Brown, will perform a night of poetry and storytelling, including a reading from her latest non-fiction book, How to Fix a Broken Record. DJ Opdiggy will spin amazing tunes which may even cause a dance party after the show. From learning to love her big feet and natural hair, to bad dating stories and learning how to properly adult, Amena's performance will speak of home, surrender and searching for the groove while leaving the audience room to laugh, lament, and dance as…

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$5 – $25

Filament’s May Reading

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

Join us at Mother Foucault's for our last official Filament reading of the year! We'll have food, drinks, and really wonderful writing from students in the MFA program. See you on the 18th!

Free

Tess Gallagher in Conversation With Greg Simon & Danielle Vermette

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

Tess Gallagher’s new poems are suspended between contradiction and beauty. Is, Is Not (Graywolf) upends our notions of linear time, evokes the spirit and sanctity of place, and hovers daringly at the threshold of what language can nearly deliver while offering alternative corollaries as gifts of its failures. Gallagher will be joined in conversation by poet Greg Simon and writer Danielle Vermette.

Free

Choose Your Own Adventure SPIES Mata Hari Book Release Party

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for a special, spy-themed Book Release Party with Rose City Book Pub "faculty member" author Katherine Factor. WW1-the Belle Epoque food & drinks for all ages will be served. Spy gear and dress-up encouraged! WARNING!!! This author event is different from other author events…. Join us for a very special reading of CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE SPIES: MATA HARI by Katherine Factor— an interactive middle grade story from the perspective of the young Margaretha Zelle, an icon of the glamorous Belle Epoque a century ago. Katherine will read from the beginning until YOU decide what happens next in the story. There will be a Q&A after the reading and book-signing. Books will be available for sale there.

Free

Lilla Lit Launches on May 19!

Leach Botanical Garden 6704 SE 122nd Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Join Lilla Lit for our inaugural event on May 19, 4-6pm, and enjoy food, drink, books, nature, culture, community and readings from Portland writers.

Free – $10

WTAW Portland Presents Exile and Return

Portland Northwest Hostel Cafe 1810 NW Glisan St, Portland, OR, United States

Join Why There Are Words – Portland (WTAW-PDX) for “Exile and Return” May 19, from 4 to 6 pm at the Portland Northwest Hostel Cafe, our fabulous new venue. We’ll have an amazing afternoon with the following amazing feature. Kate Gray’s passion stems from teaching, coaching writers, and volunteering as a writing facilitator with women inmates. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, one full-length collection, Another Sunset We Survive, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and a newly-released collection, For Every Girl: New & Selected Poems published by Widow & Orphan House. Her first novel, Carry the Sky stares at bullying without blinking. Now she is writing through Sylvia Plath in a novel-in-progress, narrating what led to The Bell Jar and her suicide…

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Free

Reading with Jason Christie and jayy dodd

The Stacks Coffeehouse 1831 N. Killingsworth St, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for an evening of poetry with Jason Christie and jayy dodd. What happens to identity when we're obsessed with self-surveillance and devalued words? Now that we've sold ourselves to ourselves, shuffling letters and sounds around to hide the pain, how do we represent the uncanny valley in which we've set up shop? In lèse-majesté, Jason Christie recoils in horror at the thoroughness of his self, then begins to write toward a new understanding brokered between all the things that define him and who he thinks he should be and interrogates how we reduce people to words, especially online, turning them into objects. Jason Christie is the author of Canada Post, i-ROBOT, Unknown Actor, and a coeditor of Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry.…

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Free
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