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!

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…

$30

Jewell Parker Rhodes & Kelly McWilliams

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

From award-winning, bestselling author Jewell Parker Rhodes (Ghost Boys) comes a powerful coming-of-age story about two brothers, one who presents as white, the other as black, and the complex ways in which they are forced to navigate the world, all while training for a fencing competition. Powerful and emotionally gripping, Black Brother, Black Brother (Little, Brown) is a careful examination of the school-to-prison pipeline and follows one boy's fight against racism and his empowering path to finding his voice. Agnes loves her home of Red Creek. There, she cares tirelessly for her younger siblings and follows the town's strict laws. What she doesn't know is that Red Creek is a cult, controlled by a madman who calls himself a prophet. Then Agnes meets Danny, an…

Free

Oxeye Reader Portland launch reading

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Spare Room presents a launch reading for Oxeye Reader Issue 1: Portland, OR Sunday, September 27, at 7:00 PM Pacific Time, via Zoom (link TBA on , or DM Sam Lohmann) Featuring: David Abel Chris Ashby Jen Coleman Tom Fisher Jamondria Harris Endi Bogue Hartigan Lorraine Lupo & Paul Maziar Thomas Mowe Phoebe Wayne James Yeary Hosted by Jordan Dunn (publisher) and Sam Lohmann (guest editor) Oxeye Reader (Oxeye Press, Ames IA) is a new print journal published by Jordan Dunn. Each issue focuses on a different place, and issue 1 is Portland.

Free

Livestream Reading: Nancy Lane: Pretty Chrysanthemum and Other Stories

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Oregon author Nancy Lane for a livestream reading from her new collection, Pretty Chrysanthemum and Other Stories. Join here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81611677344?pwd=QjYzVzVkWFZFcjZGZFoycHV3eGh5UT09 Signed copies will be available shortly after the event. If you would like a personalized signature, please leave a comment when ordering. These sixteen stories remind readers how family is at the core of human experience and how relationships, especially those between parent and child, rely on the power of love to overcome challenges. Five stories feature historical content from 1897 through 1971. Eleven contemporary stories pose challenging situations. Throughout these tales, the pull of family, the power of love, and unshakeable human decency prevail.

Free

Dan Mathews in Conversation With Alex Ebert

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Dan Mathews knew that his witty, bawdy, unhinged mother, Perry, was unable to maintain her fierce independence at 78 — so he flew her across the country to Virginia to live with him in an 1870 townhouse badly in need of repairs. But to Dan, a screwdriver is a cocktail not a tool, and he was soon overwhelmed with two fixer-uppers: the house and his mother. Unbowed, Dan and Perry built a rollicking life together fueled by costume parties, road trips, after-hours gatherings, and an unshakable sense of humor as they faced down hurricanes, blizzards, and Perry’s steady decline. They got by with the help of an ever-expanding circle of sidekicks — Dan’s boyfriends (past and present), ex-cons, sailors, strippers, deaf hillbillies, evangelicals, and grumpy…

Free

Airlie Press: The Animal at Your Side Launch

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

East Coast book launch for The Animal at Your Side, featuring DC band All Her Muses and the art of Sara Everett Washington DC band All Her Muses will be performing at the virtual book launch for our new title The Animal at Your Side by Airlie Prize winner @ayil_m tomorrow, October 1, at 7pm ET.

Free

Colin Quinn

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In Colin Quinn's new book, Overstated: A Coast-to-Coast Roast of the 50 States (St. Martin’s), the comedian, social commentator, and creator and star of the one-man Broadway show, Red State Blue State, and the Netflix special, Unconstitutional, tackles the condition of our union today. The United States is in a 50-states-wide couples’ counseling session, thinking about filing for divorce. But is that really what we want? Can a nation composed of states that are so different possibly hang together? Quinn identifies the hypocrisies inherent in what we claim to believe and what we actually do. Within a framework of big-picture thinking about systems of government — after all, how would you put this country together if you started from scratch today? — to dead-on observations…

Free

Livestream Reading: Jessica O’Dwyer with Katey Schultz

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes California author Jessica O'Dwyer for a livestream reading from her novel Mother Mother. She'll be in conversation with Katey Schultz, author of Still Come Home. They will discuss the experience of working with a student-run, learning press—Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press—and they will also explore their approaches to authentically and respectfully "writing the other." Signed copies of both authors' new books are available! Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwud-Cqqj8tGN0jk2wm3r552FeJtLDQ1MIP About Jessica O'Dwyer's Mother Mother: A married couple in California grapples with race, betrayal, love, and loss when their son comes home from a Guatemalan orphanage. Contemporary art museum curator Julie Cowan achieves her dream of motherhood through adoption, but her life is far from perfect. Her pathologist husband, Mark, is distracted by his gorgeous,…

Free

Marilynne Robinson: Jack

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Presented in partnership with the Black Mountain Institute, Literary Arts, and The Loft’s Wordplay, and Wisconsin Book Festival. Marilynne Robinson will appear live on Crowdcast, in conversation with novelist C Pam Zhang. Join us at: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/jack Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the latest novel in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction. Presented in partnership with the Black Mountain Institute, Literary Arts, and The Loft’s Wordplay, and Wisconsin Book Festival. Marilynne Robinson’s mythical world of Gilead, Iowa—the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack—and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world. Jack is Robinson’s fourth novel in…

Free

Lee van der Voo in Conversation With Isaac Vergun

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Do children have a right to inherit a livable planet, and if so, is the government obliged to protect it? That’s the question posed by Juliana v. United States, one of the most critical lawsuits of our time. In her new book, As the World Burns (Timber Press), award-winning investigative journalist Lee van der Voo reports on Juliana v. the United States. Combining unparalleled access to the plaintiffs and reporting on the natural disasters that form an urgent backdrop to the story, Van der Voo shares a timely and important story about the environment, the law, and the new generation of activists. Twenty-one young people from across America sued the federal government over climate change, charging that U.S. actions to promote a fossil fuel economy…

Free