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!

A Surrealist Poetry Reading and Art Show

Mother Foucault's Bookshop 523 SE Morrison St, Portland, OR, United States

Zachary Schomburg is the author of 6 books of poems including, most recently, Fjords vol. 2 (Black Ocean, 2021), and a novel, Mammother (Featherproof Books, 2017). He is also a painter, illustrator, teacher, and publisher of an independent poetry press called Octopus Books. He lives in Portland with B and Y. http://www.zacharyschomburg.net/ Jon Boisvert was born in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, and now lives in Oregon. He studied poetry at Oregon State University and the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland. http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2017/09/jon-boisvert-born.html Dan Wiencek’s poetry combines empathy, a surreal imagination and a healthy sense of the absurd, creating poems that grapple with profound questions of personal identity while remaining grounded in authentic lived experience. His poetry has appeared in publications that include New Ohio Review, Sou’wester, The…

Free

Literally Crawling 2021 – A Virtual Lit-Crawl

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Working to find ways to bring writing and literature to everyone during the pandemic, zines + things (Portland, OR) and Death Rattle Writers Fest (Nampa, Idaho) have joined together to create Literally Crawling, an entirely online lit crawl planned for November 5, 6, and 7 2021. Co-Hosting literature showcases will be lit-journals Cobra Milk and Ginger Bug Press. Save the date and RSVP to get reader announcement updates! We can't wait to get together for a lovely weekend of sharing the literary arts from some truly amazing artists. Register to attend here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/literally-crawling-2021/register 4 Literature showcases and a writing workshop! Nov 5 - Friday : zines + things & DRWF Opening Showcase 6pm PST / 7pm MST / 8pm CST / 9pm EST Nov 6…

$7 – $14

Imago Dei: Open Mic Night

Imago Dei Community Loft 1302 Southeast Ankeny Street, Portland, OR, United States

Do you have a song, poem, spoken word piece, or piece of visual art you’ve been working on? Come share it with a like-minded crew of Imago folks & friends! Are you a really great audience member? We want you too! Friday, November 5th, from 7-9pm in the Loft of the Ankeny building. Open sign-ups for a 5-minute performance slot are from 7-7:20pm. Show starts at 7:30pm. Questions? Email arts@idcpdx.com

Free

Portland Book Festival 2021

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Portland Book Festival 2021 will be a hybrid event. There will be virtual events from November 8–12, leading up to an in-person festival day on Saturday, November 13, 2021 at Portland Art Museum and Portland’5, as well as in-person writing workshops at our downtown Literary Arts space. We will announce this year’s lineup of authors and events and tickets will go on sale on September 22. Youth 17 and under (and/or with a valid high school I.D.) will receive free entry. Although this continues to be an uncertain time, Literary Arts remains committed to the safety of all readers and writers and will follow all health and safety guidelines. Whether you join us online or in-person, we are excited to build community and celebrate books, storytelling, and the power of…

$15 – $25

Livestream Reading: Rachel King

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes back Portland author Rachel King for the livestream launch of her debut novel, People Along the Sand. Rachel will be in conversation with North Carolina author Heather Frese, whose novel is The Baddest Girl on the Planet. Please register in advance for this Zoom event: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvcOihqz8uGNdTNbG3efY7XlZKe0lnChyp If you would like a signed or personalized copy of People Along the Sand, please leave a note in the comments section of your order! About People Along the Sand: It's 1967 in Kalapuya, a town on the Central Oregon Coast, and Jackson Ryder decides to build a second story onto his motel. His wife, Marilyn Ryder, doesn't want to take on more debt for an expansion. Their ongoing dispute prompts Marilyn to leave Jackson and…

Free

Huma Abedin in Conversation With Cheryl Strayed / Ticketed Event

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In her beautifully written and propulsive new memoir, Huma Abedin — Hillary Clinton’s famously private top aide and longtime advisor — emerges from the wings of American political history to take command of her own story. The daughter of Indian and Pakistani intellectuals and advocates, Abedin grew up in the United States and Saudi Arabia and traveled widely. Her relationship with Clinton has seen both women through extraordinary personal and professional highs, as well as unimaginable lows. Here, for the first time, is a deeply personal account of Clinton as mentor, confidante, and role model. Abedin’s memoir is also the candid and heartbreaking chronicle of her marriage to Anthony Weiner, what drew her to him, how much she wanted to believe in him, the devastation…

Free

Kate Gray Poetry Reading

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Kate Gray's poetry reading will be livestreamed on November 10, 2021 on the Ledding Library YouTube Channel. Kate Gray's passion stems from writing, teaching, leading salons, and volunteering. For Every Girl: New & Selected Poems was published by Widow & Orphan House in 2019. Her first full-length book of poems, Another Sunset We Survive (Cedar House Books, 2007) was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and followed chapbooks, Bone-Knowing (2006), winner of the Gertrude Press Poetry Prize and Where She Goes (2000), winner of the Blue Light Chapbook Prize. Kate’s first novel, Carry the Sky, (Forest Avenue, 2014) stares at bullying without blinking. Her poetry and essays have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. In her novel-in-progress, she narrates, in Sylvia Plath’s voice, what led to The Bell Jar and her suicide attempt in 1953. Over the years she’s been awarded…

Free

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Igor Brezhnev

Art At The Cave 108 E Evergreen Blvd, Vancouver, WA, United States

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Igor Brezhnev Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004 7 pm Thursday, November 11 Art at the Cave 108 E Evergreen Blvd Vancouver, WA 98660 https://artatthecave.com/ $5 Suggested donation Igor Brezhnev is a poet and a book designer, among his other sins. His most recent body of published work is titled nights since. It is a series of 363 poems written every night from January 18th, 2019 to January 14th, 2020 documenting the emotional landscape of being without a home. Igor’s other work includes two full-length poetry books, dearest void (2016) and america is dry cookie and other love stories (2018) as well as a number of spoken-word albums…

Free – $5

Jackson Bliss Reading

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Register here for the Jackson Bliss reading. You will receive a Zoom link upon registration. Jackson Bliss is the winner of the 2020 Noemi Press Award in Prose and the mixed-race/hapa author of Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments (Noemi Press, 2021), Amnesia of June Bugs (7.13 Books, 2022), Dream Pop Origami (Unsolicited Press, 2022), and the speculative fiction hypertext, Dukkha, My Love (2017). His short stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, Ploughshares, Guernica, Antioch Review, ZYZZYVA, Longreads, TriQuarterly, Columbia Journal, Kenyon Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Witness, Fiction, Santa Monica Review, Boston Review, Juked, Quarterly West, Arts & Letters, Joyland, Fiction International, Pleiades, Hobart, African American Review, Stand (UK), 3:am Magazine, The Good Men Project, The Daily Dot, and Multiethnic Literature in the US, among others. He has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from USC. He is the Distinguished Visiting Writing at Bowling Green State University and lives in LA with his wife and their two…

Free

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