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!

Reagan M. Sova Reading and Music

Revolutions Bookshop 8713 N Lombard St, Portland, OR, United States

Mark your Calendars For May 5th at 7:00 PM with Reagan M. Sova and musical guests Sunday Mornings and Abbot Daimler! We’re super excited to hear Reagan read and Play music from his new book ; Wildcat Dreams in the Death Light published by @firsttoknock Wildcat Dreams in the Death Light is an incantatory work of narrative poetry. Infused with hobo melancholy, Jewish lore, bloodshed, and hilarity, this poem is nothing short of a contemporary masterpiece. It traces young Mort Sloman’s odyssey to honor his jockey uncle—the only dead man ever to have won a horse race. But before Mort can organize a worthy funeral, he must acquire “the Locksmith keys”—a form of esoteric knowledge beyond the understanding of even graybeard rabbis. Undeterred, Mort sets…

Free

Sam Roxas-Chua

PSU - Fariborz Maseeh Hall 1855 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Sam Roxas-Chua is the author of Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater, Echolalia in Script, and Fawn Language. His poems, artworks, and asemic writings have appeared in journals including Narrative, December Magazine, Cream City Review and an essay/review of his two recent books appears in the Georgia Review and Rhino Poetry. His poetry sequence Diary of Collected Summers was awarded the Missouri Review’s Miller Audio Prize and most recently he was interviewed by Gulf Coast Journal. In his writing process, Sam is interested in discovering the invisible poem. These are images and thoughts conjured up by asemic or open-form writing, a writing practice using non-sensical script. Here’s how he described it in an interview: "In between stanzas of a poem, or when I can’t quite get to an image or a phrase, I pull out a piece of paper and start writing this…

Free

FE Magazine Reading

North Star Civic Foundation 1016 SW Clay St, Portland, OR, United States

Fonograf is holding a reading for their recent magazine FE! Readers: Ryan Mills, Harper Quinn, Charles Valle, Megan Savage, Joshua Pollock, Veronica Martin.

Free

Open Mic

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

This is the open mic that used to be at The Attic Institute.  Hosted by Sarah Bokich

Free

Reading: Space Toucans on the Patio

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

The Space Cocaine gang is back for another spectacular reading event as they rebrand themselves as something more family-friendly: Space Toucans. Well, until they get to the stories, which are full of horrible hijinks, terrible people doing not-quite-as-terrible things, and talking animals. Join us for an evening of hilarity and awkward pauses.

Free

Book Release Party: Wounded Faith: Understanding and Healing from Spiritual Abuse

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

Dr. Kenneth Garrett is a contributing author of a new book published by the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA). "Wounded Faith" is the answer to a growing number of individuals, approaching ICSA for help in recovery from Christian churches that operate in a cult-like manner. Ken will present several readings and will be available to sign both this new book as well as his previous book (which was published during covid and wasn't able to be celebrated!)

Free

Poetry hosted by Igor Brezhnev

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

We originally advertised this as a reading by Red O’Hare, but it turns out that Red will be out of town. Igor will bring us some great poetry regardless, someone or someones worth hearing from. Red is rescheduled for One Day.

Free

Launch of Paperback Edition of What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Omar El Akkad, What Strange Paradise We are thrilled to welcome Omar El Akkad back for the launch of the paperback edition of his award-winning second novel What Strange Paradise, published by Vintage/PRH. This novel, which looks at the global refugee crisis through the eys of a child, won the Giller Prize, the Oregon Book Award for Fiction, and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and was a finalist for The Aspen Words Literary Prize and Canada Reads 2022. More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old…

Free

David Duchovny in Conversation With Kristi Turnquist

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

David Duchovny’s The Reservoir (Akashic) follows an unexceptional man in an exceptional time. We see our present-day pandemic world and New York City through the eyes of a former Wall Street veteran, Ridley, as he, in his enforced quarantined solitude, looks back upon his life. He examines his wins, his failures, the gnawing questions — his career, his divorce, his estranged daughter — and wonders what it all means and who he really is. Sitting and brooding night after night, gazing out his huge picture window high above the Central Park Reservoir, Ridley spots a flashing light in an apartment across the park as if a lonely quarantined person is signaling him in Morse code. His determination to find out who this mystery woman is,…

Free

Maria Adelmann in Conversation With Steve Almond

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina's love story will shock them all. Though the women start out wary of one another, judging each other’s stories, gradually they begin to realize that they may have more in common than they supposed… What really brought them here? What secrets will they reveal? And is it too late for them…

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