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!

Comic reading with Jul Gordon

Floating World Comics 1223 Lloyd Center, Portland, OR, United States

German comics artist Jul Gordon is coming to Floating World for a special book reading and signing. She will read an excerpt from her new book, still in progress, Route Will Be Recalculated and from her book The Parc. She will bring her zines Contactcenter, Emigrant P., Do you tend to cry?, Flat Nr. 10, 001,  and her book Candie Coloured Clown. Jul Gordon, born 1982, studied illustration at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, Germany, where she still lives. Besides her activities as a comics artist, she organizes readings and exhibitions and holds comic workshops for kids in a social center in Hamburg St. Pauli. She has recently exhibited her work at the Festival International de la Bande dessinée in Angouleme, France, at the…

Free

ONE PAGE Wednesday: November

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

Writers, escape the solitude of your desk. Readers, come hear great fresh work. Here 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! November's One Page Wednesday is hosted by Natalie Serber. November’s featured readers are Emilly Prado, Sallie Tisdale and Don Waters. The reading begins at 7:00. Doors open around 6:30 p.m. Potential readers can sign up to read and after the list is full, they can add their name to the fishbowl and Natalie will draw as many additional names to read as we have time for before 8:30 p.m. One Page =…

Free

Reading: Jackie Shannon Hollis: This Particular Happiness

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes local author Jackie Shannon Hollis to read from her memoir, This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story. She'll be joined in conversation with her husband, Bill Hollis. Knowing where your scars come from doesn't make them go away. When Jackie Shannon Hollis marries Bill, a man who does not want children, she joyfully commits to a childless life. But soon after the wedding, she returns to the family ranch in rural Oregon and holds her newborn niece. Jackie falls deep into baby love and longing and begins to question her decision. As she navigates the overlapping roles of wife, daughter, aunt, sister, survivor, counselor, and friend, she explores what it really means to choose a different path. This Particular Happiness delves into…

Free

Nathan Langston: I Need You to Tell Me Everything

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

What Even is This? It’s a book. Or similar to a book. Johannes Gutenberg would have tripped out that this is what counts for a book now. A synopsis: This is a pseudo-surrealistic autobiography about childhood sexual abuse in a spiritual setting and a new therapeutic approach that puts the broken pieces back in place. Neuroscience, religion, philosophy, time distortion, shape-shifting, rock & roll, legal proceedings, the hope of achieving transcendence. About the Author Nathan Langston is a software designer living in Seattle. Once, he dressed up as a bar of soap to pass out coupons in Union Square, Manhattan. Once, he composed scores for an indie ballet company. Once, he wandered the passageways of the Alhambra in Spain and the Ellora Caves in India.…

Free

Heather Christle in Conversation With Zachary Schomburg

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

Heather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and now must reckon with her own depression and the birth of her first child. As she faces her grief and impending parenthood, she decides to research the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it. Honest, intelligent, rapturous, and surprising, Christle’s investigations look through a mosaic of science, history, and her own lived experience to find new ways of understanding life, loss, and mental illness. The Crying Book (Catapult) is a deeply personal tribute to the fascinating strangeness of tears and the unexpected resilience of joy. Christle will be joined in conversation by Zachary Schomburg, Octopus Books publisher and author of Pulver Maar.

Free

Visiting Writers Series: Hilary Plum

Reed College - Eliot Hall Chapel 3203 SE Woodstock, Portland, OR, United States

Hilary Plum is the author of the novel Strawberry Fields, winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose (2018); the work of nonfiction Watchfires (2016), winner of the 2018 GLCA New Writers Award; and the novel They Dragged Them Through the Streets (2013). She has worked for a number of years as an editor of international literature, history, and politics. She teaches at Cleveland State University and in the NEOMFA program and is associate director of the CSU Poetry Center. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press.

Free

Windfall: Poetry of Place

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

Broadway Books celebrates the Fall 2019 issue of Windfall magazine with a reading on Thursday, November 7th, at 7 pm by four northwest writers represented in the current issue. Poets Melody Leming-Wilson, Melissa Madenski, Lex Runciman and Mark Thalman will read, along with Windfall’s co-editors Michael McDowell and Bill Siverly. Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place features poetry that captures the spirit of place as part of the essence of the poem. The journal particularly emphasizes poetry written in the Pacific Northwest that is attentive to the relationships between people and the landscapes in which we live. It has been published since 2002.

Free

Reading: A. B. Paulson: BigFoot Moon: formerly The American Quarterly Review: a Portland Novel

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland author A. B. Paulson to read from his novel, BigFoot Moon: formerly The American Quarterly Review: a Portland Novel. When beatnik sailor Bill Caxton waded ashore near Manzanita in 1958, he encountered an extraordinary local woman. 40 years later, he's searching for the son they conceived. But the eccentric detective he's hired must also solve a murder. Given these distractions, Caxton hands over the operation of his literary magazine--The American Quarterly Review--to two newcomers, and they argue about how to revamp the magazine. Their next issue becomes this novel. Readers fond of puzzles will find that piecing together the plot--veiled in a web of short stories, articles, and serial fiction--presents an intriguing challenge. Look for treatments of Sylvia Plath's mother, William…

Free

P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast

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

The Nerd Herd returns in Forgotten (Blackstone), the next thrilling adventure in the House of Night Other World series by authors P. C. and Kristin Cast. What happens when worlds clash and powers that should be left alone are awakened? Can Other Kevin and his world heal from the wounds Neferet continues to inflict? Can Old Magick ever truly be harnessed and used for good? Or will Darkness extinguish Light and leave our heroes broken, hopeless, and as forgotten as Kalona of the Silver Wings? Don't miss this second to last volume in the House of Night Other World saga!

Free

Johanna Stoberock & Elizabeth Earley in Conversation With Monica Drake

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

In the tradition of Lord of the Flies, Johanna Stoberock’s Pigs (Red Hen) is an exquisitely wrought fable about the excesses of the contemporary world – asking questions about community, environmental responsibility, and the possibility of innocence. Both a philosophical novel and a coming-of-age story, Elizabeth Earley’s Like Wings, Your Hands (Red Hen) explores a mother-son relationship in the context of disability and interdependence, while also raising questions about the nature of time and space and the limitless capacities of the human mind. Stoberock and Earley will be joined in conversation by Monica Drake, author of The Folly of Loving Life.

Free