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

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Michio Kaku

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Michio Kaku, renowned theoretical physicist and New York Times bestselling author of Hyperspace and The Future of Humanity, tells the story of the greatest quest in all of science. When Newton discovered the laws of motion and gravity, he unified the rules of heaven and earth. From then on, physicists have been discovering new forces and incorporating them into ever-greater theories. But the major breakthroughs of the 20th century — relativity and quantum mechanics — are incompatible, and so since then, physicists have been endeavoring to combine these two theories. This would ultimately tie all the forces in the universe together into one beautiful equation that can unlock the deepest mysteries of space and time. That epic journey is the story of Kaku’s new book,…

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Free

PNCA MFA Reading: Ocean Vuong in conversation with Dao Strom

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Mark your calendars!!! On Thursday, April 15th at 6:30 p.m., poet and novelist Ocean Vuong will read from his recent creative works. Following the reading, Vuong will be joined by faculty mentor and interdisciplinary artist Dao Strom for a conversation. This event will be co-hosted by PNCA’s MFA Low-Residency Creative Writing and MA Critical Studies programs and has been made possible by a generous grant from the Collins Foundation. Ocean Vuong is the author of The New York Times bestselling novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, from Penguin Press (2019) and forthcoming in 30 languages. A recipient of a 2019 MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Vuong is also the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, a New York Times Top 10…

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Free

Livestream Event: Polly Campbell

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes back Portland author Polly Campbell for a livestream presentation from her new book, You, Recharged: How to Beat Fatigue (Mostly), Amp Up Your Energy (Usually), and Enjoy Life Again (Always). Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcrf-Cvqj0iEtYacgrt_C0wP2TvB6U2QEwg About You, Recharged: When author and podcaster Polly Campbell got tired of her hoodie smelling like pizza and her days being clouded by midlife over-exhaustion, emotional burnout, and boredom, she decided to get off the couch and reclaim her core energy. But could this burned-out, chronically ill, middle-aged mother of a teen rediscover her vitality? Yes. And so can you. Self-help books for women often encourage you to throw out the life you're living and create a fresh start. You, Recharged isn't about that. You don't have to quit…

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Free

Slamlandia

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community. Hosted by Julia Gaskill. Register in advance for this event If you have any questions, please contact slamlandia@gmail.com or jessica@literary-arts.org.

Free

Oregon Book Award Fiction Finalists at Springfield Public Library

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join the five 2021 Oregon Book Award finalists for the Ken Kesey Award for a reading as part of Springfield Celebrates Authors. Chelsea Bieker is from California’s Central Valley. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Foundation Award and her fiction and essays have been published in Granta, McSweeney’s, Catapult magazine, Electric Literature, and Joyland, among others. She has been awarded a MacDowell Colony fellowship, and holds an MFA in creative writing from Portland State University. Godshot is her first novel. Purchase Godshot from Broadway Books, one of our Portland-based, independent bookstore partners HERE. Originally from Alabama, Genevieve Hudson earned an MFA from Portland State University and has received Fulbright, MacDowell, and Vermont Studio Center fellowships. She is the author of Pretend We Live Here: Stories, and lives in Portland,…

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Free

Talakayan at Kapehan: The Power of the Written Word

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Please join us for our next event in the Talakayan at Kapehan Series: The Power of the Written Word, cosponsored by NAFCON Portland and Whitenoise Project! Did you know Clark County, WA, has a Filipino American Poet Laureate? What is the tradition of our poets making art and building community in the Philippines and the diaspora, and why weren’t we taught about them in schools? Join NAFCON Oregon and Whitenoise Project as we celebrate National Poetry Month, exploring these questions with local writers Armin Tolentino and Abigail Licad. Our second #NAFCONTAK event of 2021 will feature a poetry reading and discussion about seizing the means of literary production and building alternate structures to the academy. There will be a community Q&A after the reading, all…

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Free

Kim Stafford and John Morrison, A Virtual Event

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A Zoom Poetry Evening with Kim Stafford and John Morrison Please join us for an evening of poetry, music, and possibly even a little film, as we welcome Portland poets Kim Stafford and John Morrison to the Broadway Books virtual stage on Monday, April 19th, at 4:30 Pacific Time. It's National Poetry month, and we're going to have some poetic fun to celebrate! This evening is a red night, as Kim's book is published by Red Hen Press and John's is published by Redbat  Books. In Singer Come from Afar, Stafford considers war and peace, pandemic struggles, Earth imperatives, a seeker's spirit, and forging kinship. The former poet laureate of Oregon, Stafford offers tools for connection with the self, the community, and the Earth. Kathleen…

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Free

Paula McLain in Conversation With Sue Monk Kidd

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

From Paula McLain, the bestselling author of The Paris Wife, comes an atmospheric novel of intertwined destinies and heart-wrenching suspense: A detective hiding away from the world. A series of disappearances that reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal? Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime…

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Free

Livestream Reading: Levi Rogers

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland author Levi Rogers for the livestream launch of his debut novel, Utah! A Novel. Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtd--qrDojHteVzwYh6p878B9RD-3-Xkas About Utah! A Novel: Fleeing from ever present wildfires and the threat of the Yellowstone Supervolcano erupting, Lee, Becca, and their daughter Analise embark on a road-trip through the state of Utah to a wedding in Zion National Park. Set in the not-too-distant-future, Utah! is a novel about climate change and the intricacies of relationships-between family, partners, religious structures, nature, and the American West. Featuring a litany of intriguing Utah residents including ex and current Mormons, doomsday preppers, military vets, Presbyterian ministers, and Colombian housewives, these characters eventually find their paths crossing in violence, disaster, and friendship. Through desert islands, climbing gyms, beer bars,…

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Free

Patrick Radden Keefe in Conversation With Lydia Polgreen

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Empire of Pain (Doubleday) is a grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin — written by Patrick Radden Keefe, the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions — Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst…

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Free
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