LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.

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Morgan Thomas in Conversation With Kristen Arnett

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The nine stories in Morgan Thomas’s shimmering debut collection, Manywhere (MCD), witness Southern queer and genderqueer characters determined to find themselves reflected in the annals of history, at whatever cost. As each character traces deceit and violence through Southern tall tales and their own pasts, their journeys reveal the porous boundaries of body, land, and history, and the sometimes ruthless awakenings of self-discovery. A trans woman finds her independence through the purchase of a pregnancy bump. A young Virginian flees their relationship, choosing instead to immerse themselves in the life of an intersex person from Colonial-era Jamestown. A young writer tries to evade the murky and violent legacy of an ancestor who supposedly disappeared into a midwifery bag. And in the uncanny title story, a…

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Free

Chuck Klosterman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The ’90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Beyond epiphenomena like “Cop Killer” and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the Internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it. In The Nineties (Penguin Press), Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the…

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Free

A Poetry Reading by Nikky Finney

Lewis & Clark College 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR, United States

Finney has authored four books of poetry: Head Off & Split (2011); The World Is Round (2003); Rice (1995); and On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). The John H. Bennett, Jr. Chair in Southern Letters and Literature at the University of South Carolina, Finney also authored Heartwood (1997), edited The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007), and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. Finney’s fourth book of poetry, Head Off & Split was awarded the 2011 National Book Award for poetry. Nikky Finney was born in South Carolina, within listening distance of the sea.  A child of activists, she came of age during the civil rights and Black Arts Movements. At Talladega College, nurtured by Hale Woodruff’s Amista murals, Finney began to understand the powerful synergy…

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Free

Dao Strom Reading

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Dao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of the poetry collection, Instrument (Fonograf Editions), and its musical companion, Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (Hanoi: AJAR Press); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (Counterpoint Press) and Grass Roof, Tin Roof (Mariner Books). Her work has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, NEA, and others. She was a 2020 Oregon Literary Arts Career Fellowship recipient. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California and lives in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder and director…

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Free

Passages Bookshop Open House and Reading/Performance: James Year, David Abel, Mark Owens

Passages Bookshop 1801 NW Upshur, Suite 660, Portland, OR, United States

Passages Bookshop Reopens on April 2 Please join us at an open house on the evening of April 2, with readings & performances by James Yeary, David Abel & Mark Owens. The occasion will also serve as a book launch for continue us, a book of poems designed for your home, neighborhood, and playmates by Marko Whens, with linotype composition and printing by Brian Scott Bagdonas. video of Marko performing at Passages in 2015 Doors will open at 6:00 pm, and remain open until just before the performance begins at 8:00 pm; they will be open again after the performance, at roughly 9:00 pm. Proof of vaccination required for admission, and face coverings required for all. (Readers will be unmasked while performing.) Saturday, April 2,…

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Free

Mimi German Reads from Her Book of Poetry: Beneath the Gravel Weight of Stars

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

Mimi German reads from her book of poetry dedicated to the houseless community! You're invited! This was so fun! So we’ve decided to do it again… this Sunday 4/10 at 1:00 with @eyesofhorsehair Mi mi German will be back to read from her book; Beneath the Gravel Weight of Stars. For those that don’t know, Mi Mi is a long time advocate for the houseless and through those experience’s she’s written poetry that reflects the long nights and struggles of the houseless community. Come join us! Houseless Friendly Event Please Wear Masks Inside the Store

Free

Final Windfall Reading

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

We are both excited and saddened to be hosting an in-person reading on Wednesday, April 20th, at 6:30 pm, to celebrate Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place, on the occasion of its final issue. Joining co-editors Bill Siverly and Michael McDowell to read on this evening will be Barbara Drake, Eric le Fatte, Charles Goodrich, Marilyn Johnston, Mike Langtry, Elizabeth McLagan, Paulann Petersen, Carlos Reyes, Penelope Scambly Schott, and Dianne Stepp. The first issue of Windfall was published in Fall of 2002. Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place features poetry which captures the spirit of place as part of the essence of the poem. The journal particularly emphasized poetry which is written in the Pacific Northwest and which is attentive to the relationships…

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Free

Sueyeun Juliette Lee

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Sueyeun Juliette Lee lives in Denver, Colorado. Her books include Underground National (Factory School Press, 2010), Solar Maximum (Futurepoem, 2015), No Comet, That Serpent in the Sky Means Noise (Kore, 2017), and Aerial Concave Without Cloud (Nightboat, 2022). A former Pew Fellow in the Arts for Literature, she's held international residencies in video art and poetry, and presented work at the Denver Art Museum, Artworks Center for Contemporary Art, Chicago’s city-wide performance arts festival IN>TIME, and the Asian Arts Initiative. Her essays on race, contemporary poetics, trauma, and the avant-garde have appeared with Cambridge University Press, Iowa University Press, The Poetry Foundation, Entropy Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her at silentbroadcast.com. Location: SMSU 327 NOTE: This is an in-person event. We ask that all attendees be vaccinated and wear a mask.

Free

Livestream Reading: Emmeline Duncan: Double Shot Death

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes back local author Emmeline Duncan for the livestream launch of Double Shot Death, the second Ground Rules mystery. Emmeline will be in conversation with fellow Portland mystery author Angela M. Sanders. Please register in advance for this Zoom event: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqd-2orzoqHNHPmwTgicWDkEfUtCqnzXfh Pre-order Double Shot Death and receive a gift from the author! Signed copies are available; please specify any personalization requests in the order comments box when you place your order. About Double Shot Death: Sage Caplin is taking her Portland coffee cart on the road to a sustainable music festival, but murder is an unwanted special guest… At Campathon, an annual eco-friendly festival held on a farm outside of Portland, fans celebrate the Pacific Northwest’s music scene in quintessential PDX style—with gourmet…

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Free

Pile Press Meet & Greet + Anniversary

Nalu Kava and Tea Lounge 722 N Sumner St, Portland, OR, United States

Pile Press is an alternative publishing collective for women, non-binary + gender fluid creatives. And we are having an 1 year anniversary meet and greet! Open mic, food, drinks, Pile Press merch, and contributors past/present, friends and family. All welcome.

Free
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