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!

Jessica Machado Reading

PSU - Lincoln Hall 1620 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR, United States

The PSU Program in Creative Writing is pleased to host a reading by Jessica Machado. The event is cosponsored by the School of Music, and is free and open to the public. Jessica Machado is a graduate of Portland State University's MFA in creative writing program. She is currently an editor at NBC News and was previously a staff editor at Vox, the Daily Dot, and Rolling Stone. Local, a memoir woven with Hawaiian history, is her first book.

Free

Chloé Cooper Jones in Conversation With Lydia Kiesling, Kimberly King Parsons & Casey Parks

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

From Chloé Cooper Jones — Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, and Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient — comes an “exquisite” (Oprah Daily) and groundbreaking memoir about disability, motherhood, and the search for a new way of seeing and being seen. “I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.” So begins Easy Beauty (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster), Jones’s bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor “pain calculations” into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. But there is also the pain…

Free

Kids’ Storytime With Elizabeth Rusch & Elizabeth Goss

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

Nothing is really something! What might be hidden in the space around things, and how is that space important? In art, this is known as negative space, but “nothing” can be thought of more broadly — as free time during the day or the space between people. When we allow ourselves a moment of nothingness, we make room for creativity and so much more. All about Nothing (Charlesbridge) – written by Elizabeth Rusch and illustrated by Elizabeth Goss — is an artful picture-book exploration of negative space and the beauty of nothingness. This mindful meditation encourages children to see the world differently. Preorder a Signed Edition

Free

Neal Shusterman & Eric Elfman

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

Eoin Colfer meets Rick Riordan — with a little Margaret Peterson Haddix sprinkled on top — in I Am the Walrus (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), the first book in a hilarious new sci-fi series from authors Neal Shusterman and Eric Elfman. When 14-year-old Noah falls from the trees on his classmate Sahara, he doesn’t understand how, or why, he would have been up there. It’s just one more in a string of strange things happening to Noah lately. Like when he keels over and every muscle in his body freezes when confronted by bullies. And when he vanishes into the background at a moment he doesn’t want to be noticed. And when he unexpectedly blasts Sahara with a bird shriek while flapping his…

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Matt Kracht

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

Guess what: bees are incredible. If you don't think so, you're wrong; but you're also in luck! Extreme bee enthusiast Matt Kracht — author of The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America and its sequel, The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World — is here to set the record straight with his helpful guidebook to all things bees. With lighthearted watercolor and ink drawings, humorous quips, lists, and musings, OMFG, BEES! (Chronicle) will show you just how important these esteemed bee-list celebrities really are. (Hint: We can't live without them.) Delving into various bee topics, from distinguishing between bees and not bees (very crucial), to exploring the absolute wonder that is bee behavior (they do a coded dance directing…

Free

Reading: Warren C. Easley: Fatal Flaw

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes back Oregon author Warren C. Easley for an in-store reading from his latest Cal Claxton mystery novel, Fatal Flaw. Signed and personalized copies are available for order! Please, please, please include the name for personalization in the order notes; all orders without a name specified in the order notes will be signed only. About Fatal Flaw: It's winter in the Oregon wine country, and small-town lawyer Cal Claxton deserves a respite after his last grueling case. But just as the world learns about a threatening new virus variant, a woman named Willow Daniels shows up at his office, asking Cal to represent her in the settlement of her uncle's estate. The uncle's death was ruled a suicide, but Willow isn't buying it.…

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Jake Bittle in Conversation With Monica Samayoa

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

When the subject of migration that will be caused by global climate change comes up in the media or in conversation, we often think of international refugees — those from foreign countries who will emigrate to the United States to escape disasters like rising shorelines and famine. What many people don’t realize though, is that climate migration is happening now — and within the borders of the United States. A human-centered narrative with national scope, Jake Bittle’s The Great Displacement (Simon & Schuster) is the first book to report on climate migration in the US. From half-drowned Louisiana to fire-scorched California, from the dried-up cotton fields of Arizona to the soaked watersheds of inland North Carolina, people are moving. In the last decade alone, the…

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Jeff Boyd in Conversation With Dave Depper

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

Julian Strickland is seemingly the lone Black man in the hipster dreamland of Portland, Oregon. To his friends, he’s the coolest member of the scene: the soulful drummer from Chicago in an indie rock band that’s just about to break through. But to himself, he’s a sheltered Christian homeschool kid who used to write book reports on Leviticus. A virgin until the night of his marriage, divorced at 24, he’s still in disarray two years later — pretending to fit in, wondering if any of his relationships are real, estranged from his family, and struggling to reconcile his relationship with God. Then he meets Ida Blair, a Black painter at the start of a promising career. They begin a tentative relationship, and Ida seems to…

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Brent Weeks

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

Brent Weeks returns to the world of the Night Angel in Night Angel Nemesis (Orbit), following master assassin Kylar on a new adventure as the High King Logan Gyre calls on him to save his kingdom and the hope of peace. After the war that cost him so much, Kylar Stern is broken and alone. He's determined not to kill again, but an impending amnesty will pardon the one murderer he can't let walk free. He promises himself this is the last time. One last hit to tie up the loose ends of his old, lost life. But Kylar's best — and maybe only — friend, the High King Logan Gyre, needs him. To protect a fragile peace, Logan’s new kingdom, and the king’s twin…

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Marcy Cottrell Houle, Forest Park: Exploring Portland’s Natural Sanctuary

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

We think Marcy Cottrell Houle is a wonder. With each of her books she brings such clarity and useful information to us all. So we are exceptionally happy to have her in the store to present her latest book: Forest Park: Exploring Portland's Natural Sanctuary, a gorgeously illustrated book published by Oregon State University Press. Situated in the rugged hills west of downtown Portland, Forest Park is the nation's premier urban natural sanctuary. It supports essential habitat for hundreds of native plants and animals, including species at risk, and is one of the largest city parks in the world, offering miles of outstanding hiking trails within minutes of downtown. Forest Park showcases this treasure in a new light, offering a compendium of the most up-to-date…

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