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!

Paul Tremblay in Conversation With Stewart O’Nan

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The Pallbearers Club (William Morrow) is a cleverly voiced psychological thriller about an unforgettable — and unsettling — friendship, with blood-chilling twists, crackling wit, and a thrumming pulse in its veins — from Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Survivor Song. What if the coolest girl you've ever met decided to be your friend? Art Barbara was so not cool. He was a 17-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who listened to hair metal, had to wear a monstrous back-brace at night for his scoliosis, and started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. But his new friend thought the Pallbearers Club was cool. And she brought along her Polaroid camera to take…

Free

Matthew Dickman in Conversation With Chelsea Bieker

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

Guided by acclaimed poet Matthew Dickman’s signature “clarity and ability to engage” (David Kirby, New York Times), Husbandry (W. W. Norton) is a love song from a father to his children. Written after a separation and during overwhelming single-fatherhood in the early days of COVID-19 lockdowns, Husbandry refuses romantic notions of parenting and embraces all its mess, anguish, humor, fear, boredom, and warmth. Dickman composes these poems entirely in vivid couplets that animate the various domestic pairs of broken-up parents, two sons, love and grief. He explores the terrain of his children’s dreams and nightmares, the almost primal fears that spill into his own, and the residual impacts of his parents’ failures. Threading his anxieties with bright moments of beauty and gratitude, the volume delights…

Free

Incite: Queer Writers Read – July

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, 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. This event will take place in-person at Literary Arts’ downtown center. Please review our Covid-19 guidelines.  The theme for July is “Catching Fire.”  Nicky Nicholson-Klingerman A Northwestern University journalism graduate, Nicky has been published in various media forms and outlets, including the Buckman Journal, Fertile Ground Festival and the Oregon Children’s Theatre. Her work focuses on life as an mixed Black queer artist navigating a system not made for her. Tashon Phoenix Born in Tucson, Arizona, Tashon is a Black Queer Non-Binary Transmasc Creative and Spoken Word Artist.…

Free

Elisa Albert in Conversation With Kimberly King Parsons

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

From an author whose writing has been praised as “blistering” (The New Yorker), “virtuosic” (The Washington Post), and “brilliant” (The New York Times) comes a provocative and entertaining novel about a woman who desperately wants a child but struggles to accept the use of assisted reproductive technology — a hilarious and ferocious send-up of feminism, fame, art, commerce, and autonomy. On the eve of her fourth album, singer-songwriter Aviva Rosner is plagued by infertility. The twist: as much as Aviva wants a child, she is wary of technological conception, and has poured her ambivalence into her music. As the album makes its way in the world, the shock of the response from fans and critics is at first exciting — and then invasive and strange.…

Free

Open Mic: Poetry Post Roe

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

Featured reader: Sara Quinn Rivara, followed by an open mic.  “If you’re going to hold someone down, you’re going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain.  You are confined by your own repression.” –Toni Morrison

Free

2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Patrick Cottrell, Sarah Gerard, Ruben Quesada, Lesley Nneka Arimah

Reed College - Cerf Amphitheater 3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

We are excited to once again be offering in-person readings as part of our 2022 Summer Workshop programming. Starting at 7:30 pm, these events will take place in Reed College’s Cerf Amphitheater and are free and open to the public. Faculty books will be available for purchase at the Reed Bookstore, with authors signing after the event. Masks are not required in the outdoor amphitheater. Patrick Cottrell was born in South Korea and raised in the Midwest. He is the author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace (McSweeney's), which has been translated into French, Italian, Turkish, and Korean. He is the 2018 winner of a Whiting Award in Fiction and a 2017 Barnes and Noble Discover Award. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Granta, Guernica and other places. He served as…

Free

Reading: Mia V. Moss & the Arcaneers

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

Local weird fiction publisher Underland Press is delighted to publish Mia V. Moss's debut novella, Mai Tais for the Lost, a dystopian under the sea crime story about family, debts, and GMO octopuses. She'll be joined by a rogues gallery of Underland Arcana writers, who will be on hand to help celebrate Moss's debut.

Free

2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Omar El Akkad, R.O. Kwon, Faylita Hicks

Reed College - Cerf Amphitheater 3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

We are excited to once again be offering in-person readings as part of our 2022 Summer Workshop programming. Starting at 7:30 pm, these events will take place in Reed College’s Cerf Amphitheater and are free and open to the public. Faculty books will be available for purchase at the Reed Bookstore, with authors signing after the event. Masks are not required in the outdoor amphitheater. Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations…

Free

The Great Word Regatta with Shawn Aveningo-Sanders, Michael Schein, Annie Lighthart, and Matthew Brouwer

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

Come hear four festive writers bring life to hallowed Portland pub space through their wily and resplendent words. Opened by the briefest of open mics and followed by the pouring of libations. No cover, but please support your venue that so kindly hosts poets and other weirdos at no charge. Vaccination required. Michael Schein wrote Liquid Perishable Hazardous (2019) (poetry), John Surratt: The Lincoln Assassin Who Got Away (2015) (historical), The Killer Poet’s Guide to Immortality by AB Bard (2012) (hysterical), historical novels Bones Beneath Our Feet (2011); Just Deceits (2005). Schein edited Poets UNiTE! The LiTFUSE Anthology (2015). His poetry appears in many journals and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. Schein is the founder of LiTFUSE Poets’ Workshop (litfuse.us), & has taught at Port Townsend…

Free