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

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Kerri Arsenault in Conversation With Megan Labrise

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working-class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years, the community orbited around a paper mill that employed most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, moral, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.” In Mill Town (St. Martin’s), Arsenault undertakes an excavation of a collective past to present a portrait of a community that illuminates not only the ruin of her hometown and the collapse of the working-class of America, but also the hazards of both living in and leaving home, and the silences we are…

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Free

Natalie Bakopoulos with Valerie Laken – A Virtual Event

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Bakopolous chats about her captivating, transporting novel that's been named a Best Summer Read by The Daily Beast and Alma, which calls it "A novel where you can practically taste summer on its pages... a magnetic story." Bakopolous will be in conversation with Valerie Laken, Associate Professor of English at UWM. Register for this Zoom event here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAvde-trjMrGde8lD8tmGlAB1a16pmEaBJU And purchase you copy of Scorpionfish for 10% off list price here: https://www.boswellbooks.com/book/9781947793750

Free

Zephyr Teachout & E. J. Dionne, Jr.

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Every facet of American life is being overtaken by big platform monopolists like Facebook, Google, and Bayer (which has merged with the former agricultural giant Monsanto), resulting in a greater concentration of wealth and power than we've seen since the Gilded Age. Anti-corruption scholar and activist Zephyr Teachout’s Break ‘em Up (All Points Books) is a clarion call for liberals and leftists looking to find a common cause. Teachout makes a compelling case that monopolies are the root cause of many of the issues that today's progressives care about; they drive economic inequality, harm the planet, limit the political power of average citizens, and historically disenfranchised groups bear the brunt of their shameful and irresponsible business practices. Will progressives and moderates feud while America burns?…

Continue readingZephyr Teachout & E. J. Dionne, Jr.
Free

Online: BIPOC Reading Series – September

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This bimonthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color. The very first event of this series will be hosted by Jessica Meza-Torres, Program Assistant for Programs for Writers. Our featured readers, Armin Tolentino, Olufunke Grace Bankole, and Brianna Renae will share work on the theme of “Family.” There will be time for a few members of the audience to sign up and share their work. The readings will be followed by a short break and a community discussion. Click here to register for this event. You do not need a Zoom account to participate. This event is open to everyone, but only people who self-identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color…

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Free

Lawrence Roberts in Conversation With Barry Johnson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

They surged into Washington by the tens of thousands in the spring of 1971. Fiery radicals, flower children, and militant vets gathered for the most audacious act in a years-long movement to end America’s war in Vietnam: a blockade of the nation’s capital. And the White House, headed by an increasingly paranoid Richard Nixon, was determined to stop it. Washington journalist Lawrence Roberts, drawing on dozens of interviews, unexplored archives, and newfound White House transcripts, recreates these largely forgotten events through the eyes of dueling characters. Woven into the story too are now-familiar names including John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers. It began with a bombing inside the U.S. Capitol — a still-unsolved case to which Roberts brings new…

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Free

Kim Johnson in Conversation with Black Cultural Library Advocates

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Kim Johnson's debut novel, This Is My America, has been described as a cross between The Hate U Give and Just Mercy. Join Carla Davis and Ebonee Bell, members of Multnomah County Library’s Black Cultural Library Advocates team, as they chat with Ms. Johnson about first novels, love triangles, and how teens and young adults can advance antiracism and social justice. More about the book: This Is My America tells the story of 17-year-old Tracy Beaumont, who is in a race against time to prove her imprisoned father's innocence and save him from death row. Then the unthinkable happens and the police accuse Tracy's talented older brother, Jamal, of a horrible crime. Register for event via Zoom: https://multco-us.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwrceyupzsuHtPs75wBd5COqAEidcutsXms

Free

Livestream Reading: Catherine Hamilton: Victoria’s War

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland author Catherine Hamilton for a livestream reading from her novel, Victoria's War. Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwoc-uopjMqEtUnHOG9XUVMLsccFrsmkDLM Victoria's War is a work of historical fiction about 19-year-old Victoria Darski, a Polish Catholic woman sold into slavery during the Nazi occupation of Europe, and Etta Tod, the 20-year-old deaf daughter of a German baker who buys Victoria. Poland, 1939: Eager to study literature at the University of Warsaw, Victoria waits with bags packed. But Hitler invades Poland and classes are canceled. German officers burst into her family's home, and Victoria's world is turned upside down. She is ordered to work in a Nazi sewing factory. Making military shirts, Victoria sews a straight pin inside the collar in defiance. At a secret resistance meeting with…

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Free

Elisa Gabbert in Conversation With Samantha Irby & Sarah Rose Etter

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

We stare at our phones. We keep multiple tabs open. Our chats and conversations are full of the phrase “Did you see?” The feeling that we’re living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gotten — and each new catastrophe distracts us from the last. The Unreality of Memory (FSG) collects provocative, searching essays on disaster culture, climate anxiety, and our mounting collective sense of doom. In her new collection, acclaimed poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert explores our obsessions with disasters past and future, from the sinking of the Titanic to Chernobyl, from witch hunts to the plague. These deeply researched, prophetic meditations question how the world will end — if indeed it…

Continue readingElisa Gabbert in Conversation With Samantha Irby & Sarah Rose Etter
Free

PSU’s Filament Reading Series

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us this Friday as we kick off the 2021-21 Filament Reading Series, curated by Portland State MFA writers! 🌈☔️🔥 Featuring special alumni guest Sophia Shalmiyev (MOTHER WINTER) and current MFA students. 🌲❤️ 9/25 at 7pm Pacific. RSVP to ap9 pdx edu for the Zoom link.

Free

Allie Brosh Ticketed Event

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For the first time in seven years, Allie Brosh — beloved author and artist of the extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller Hyperbole and a Half — returns with a new collection of comedic, autobiographical, and illustrated essays. Solutions and Other Problems (Gallery Books) includes humorous stories from Brosh’s childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life. Solutions and Other Problems, featuring all-new material, marks the return of a beloved American humorist who has “the observational skills of a scientist, the creativity of an artist, and the wit of a comedian” (Bill Gates). Brosh will be joined in conversation by a…

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$30
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