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!

Live Wire: Portland Book Festival Edition with Gary Shteyngart, Omar El Akkad, Atsuko Okatsuka, The Lowest Pair.

Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR, United States

GARY SHTEYNGART Gary Shteyngart is not afraid to get satirical when the situation calls for it. An American writer born in Leningrad, Shteyngart’s prose is filled with blistering humor and sharp societal observations powered by masterful storytelling. His work is acclaimed and awarded, best-selling and blurbed, read and translated into twenty-six languages. Our Country Friends is the story of eight friends, one country house, four romances, and six months in isolation to explore love, friendship, family, and betrayal. Twitter • Buy 'Our Country Friends' OMAR EL AKKAD Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He began his journalism career at the start of the war on terror, and, over the following decade, he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and many other locations around the…

$30 – $45

Debby Applegate in Conversation With Abbott Kahler

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Madam (Doubleday) — the new book from Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Most Famous Man in America — is the compulsively readable and sometimes jaw-dropping story of the life of a notorious madam who played hostess to every gangster, politician, writer, sports star, and Cafe Society swell worth knowing, and who as much as any single figure helped make the twenties roar. Simply put: Everybody came to Polly’s. Pearl “Polly” Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring Twenties became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld — and had a good time…

Free

Livestream Reading: Joan Nockels Wilson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Lewis & Clark College alum Joan Nockels Wilson for a reading from her new memoir, The Book of Timothy: A Sister's Pursuit. Joan will be in conversation with Lewis & Clark Law School Professor Janet Steverson and the book's subject, Timothy Nockels. Please register in advance for this Zoom event: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUpd-uqrTsqH9S2BFywd_xq31yi-BJXRfal About The Book of Timothy: Set in Rome, Chicago, and Anchorage, and spanning thirty years from crime to confrontation, The Book of Timothy: A Sister's Pursuit recounts in lyric movements a sister's journey, partly through trickery, but eventually through truth, to gain a long-absent admission from the priest who abused her brother. While on that journey, Nockels Wilson, a former prosecutor, confronts not only the priest, but her personal quest for…

Free

Incite: Queer Writers Read – November

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Incite: Queer Writers Read is a curated, bimonthly reading series for Queer writers. Incite’s hope is to create conversation, connection, and greater understanding both within the Queer community and with other communities. Hosted by Vinnie Kinsella and Jennifer Perrine. The theme for November is “Bare.” Register for this event in advance. Andrew L. Huerta lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he has spent the last twenty-four years in Higher Education teaching/advising students who are the first in their families to attend college. With his MA in Creative Writing and PhD in Education, he just published a collection of short stories entitled A Different Man (Bold Stroke Books) and is now looking to complete his first novel, Raggedy Anthony. His short stories have appeared in Chelsea Station Magazine,…

Free

Columbia Writers Series: Sloane Crosley

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Sloane Crosley is a fiercely funny author and essayist whose humor is lively and genuine. She is a relentless comedic force who the New York Times called, “an incisive observer of human nature.” Sloane Crosley is the author of The New York Times bestselling essay collections, I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number. The former was a finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor, and was described as “perfectly, relentlessly funny” by David Sedaris. Her debut novel, The Clasp, was a national bestseller, a New York Times editor’s choice, and it has been optioned for film by Universal Pictures. Sloane’s most recent book of essays, Look Alive Out There, was met with high praise. Steve Martin said of…

Free

Susan DeFreitas with Lidia Yuknavitch, Michelle Ruiz Keil, David D. Levine, Leni Zumas & Curtis C. Chen

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Named for the anarchist utopia in Ursula K. Le Guin’s science fiction classic, The Dispossessed, Dispatches From Anarres (Forest Avenue Press) embodies the anarchic spirit of Le Guin’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, while paying tribute to her enduring vision. In stories that range from fantasy to sci-fi to realism, some of Portland's most vital voices have come together to celebrate Le Guin’s lasting legacy and influence on that most subversive of human faculties: the imagination. Editor Susan DeFreitas (Hot Season) will be joined by contributors Lidia Yuknavitch (Verge), Michelle Ruiz Keil (Summer in the City of Roses), David D. Levine (Arabella of Mars trilogy), Leni Zumas (Red Clocks), and Curtis C. Chen (the Kangaroo series). Register for the Zoom event  /  Buy the Book

Free

Casey Michel in Conversation With Alexander S. Vindman (Lt. Col., U.S. Army, Ret.)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn’t been the sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama, that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the USA. Casey Michel’s American Kleptocracy (St. Martin’s) examines just how the United States’ implosion into a center of global offshoring…

Free

Stand Up Smut : An Erotic Open Mic (now on zoom!)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Stand Up Smut is an open mic that welcomes all kinds of adult material. We celebrate your creative erotic imagination! Saucy stories? Electric erotica? Poetry that gets you wet? We want your sacred smut! Share your creations (participants get in FREE - sign up in advance!) or be an aroused, engaged audience. One of the best parts of SUS is becoming part of a creative erotic community! We are now online, on zoom, and you can log in from all over the world! (While we had hoped to return to an in-person version, delta is keeping us virtual for now) You are welcome to attend with your cameras on or off (we like seeing your face, but you are always at choice!) Our agreements are…

$5

Sandor Ellix Katz in Conversation With Liz Crain

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For the past two decades, James Beard Award winner, fermentation expert, and bestselling author Sandor Ellix Katz has traveled the world, both teaching and learning about the many fascinating and delicious techniques for fermenting foods. Wherever he's gone, he has gleaned valuable insights into the cultures and traditions of local and Indigenous peoples, whether they make familiar ferments like sauerkraut or less common preparations like natto and koji. In his latest book, Sandor Katz's Fermentation Journeys (Chelsea Green), Katz takes readers along with him to revisit these special places, people, and foods. Katz’s new cookbook reminds us that the magical power of fermentation belongs to everyone, everywhere. Perfect for adventurous foodies, armchair travelers, and fermentation fanatics who have followed Katz's work through the years —…

Free

James S. A. Corey in Conversation With Ann Leckie / Ticketed Event

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The biggest science fiction series of the decade comes to an incredible conclusion in Leviathan Falls (Orbit), the ninth and final novel in James S. A. Corey’s Hugo Award-winning space opera series, The Expanse. The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the 1,300 solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again. In the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them, even if it means compromising herself and the half-alien children who bear the weight of her investigation. Through the wide-flung systems of humanity, Colonel Aliana Tanaka hunts for Duarte’s missing…

$30