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!

Oprah Winfrey and Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD in Conversation With Arianna Davis (Ticketed Virtual Event)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Our earliest experiences shape our lives far down the road, and What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing (Flatiron) provides powerful scientific and emotional insights into the behavioral patterns so many of us struggle to understand. “Through this lens we can build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately recalibrate our responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships. It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our very lives" (Oprah Winfrey). This book is going to change the way you see your life. Have you ever wondered, "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the…

$28.99

Kristin Hersh in Conversation With John Doe

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A sequel to the critically acclaimed Rat Girl, Kristin Hersh’s beautifully written new memoir takes readers on an emotional journey through the author's life as she reflects on 30 years of music and motherhood. Doony, Ryder, Wyatt, Bodhi. The names of Hersh’s sons are the only ones included in her new book, Seeing Sideways: A Memoir of Music and Motherhood (University of Texas Press). As it unfolds and her sons’ voices rise from its pages, it becomes clear why: these names tell the story of her life. This story begins in 1990, when Hersh is the leader of the indie rock group Throwing Muses, touring steadily, and the mother of a young son, Doony. The chapters that follow reveal a woman and mother whose life…

Free

Suzanne Simard in Conversation With Aaron Scott

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; she’s been compared to Rachel Carson, hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in a way that is dazzling and profound. Her work has influenced filmmakers and her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. Now, in her first book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (Knopf), the world’s leading forest ecologist brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths — that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through…

Free

Larissa Pham in Conversation With Mary H.K. Choi

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Like a song that feels written just for you, Larissa Pham’s debut work of nonfiction captures the imagination and refuses to let go. Pop Song (Catapult) is a book about love and about falling in love — with a place, or a painting, or a person — and the joy and terror inherent in the experience of that love. Plumbing the well of culture for clues and patterns about love and loss — from Agnes Martin’s abstract paintings to James Turrell’s transcendent light works, and Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet to Frank Ocean’s Blonde — Pham writes of her youthful attempts to find meaning in travel, sex, drugs, and art, before sensing that she might need to turn her gaze upon herself. Pop Song is…

Free

Coffee Talk #22

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Come hear 5 wonderful writers read their hearts on subjects around grief. The online reading will be around 1 hour long on zoom. Come listen. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87892128304?pwd=RGtiT3JiRGJNUU9FRmxrTFJiaHBMdz09 Meeting ID: 878 9212 8304 Passcode: 413895

Free

Wordplay Festival: Intercontinental Series featuring Helen Oyeyemi

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Helen Oyeyemi, bestselling author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, crafts a mesmerizing portrayal of two lovers forever changed by an unusual train journey in her new novel Peaces. As Otto and Xavier Shin depart on what appears to be a train constructed by their wildest imaginations, we discover that the past is never truly behind us—and could possibly be sitting right next to us. The Loft’s Virtual Wordplay is presented by St. Catherine University and Star Tribune. In partnership with Literary Arts (Portland, OR), The Loft (Minneapolis, MN), Black Mountain Institute (Las Vegas, NV), and Wisconsin Book Festival (Madison, WI). More info and register here.  

Free

First Friday Poetry Reading and Open Mic on Zoom

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

First Friday Open Mic and Poetry Reading a virtual event on Zoom. Co-sponsored by the Milwaukie Poetry Series and St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church. Featured Readers are members of the Milwaukie Poetry Series Committee. The Open Mic will follow their reading. Email Tom Hogan at tomhogan2@comcast.net (link sends e-mail) to register. You will receive a zoom link prior to the event. Plan to read 1 or 2 poems depending on the number of participants and length of the poems. If time permits additional poems will be allowed. The event will be recorded and available for viewing on demand on the Ledding Library YouTube Channel (link is external) after the event.

Free

Mary Jo Bang, Joshua Beckman, and Zachary Schomburg

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

An evening of poetry, to celebrate the publication of Fjords Vol. 2 by Oregon Book Award author Zachary Schomburg. Register in advance for this webinar Mary Jo Bang is the author of eight previous books of poetry, including A Doll for Throwing and Elegy, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also published a celebrated translation of Dante’s Inferno, and her translation of Purgatorio will be published in July with Greywolf. She teaches at Washington University in Saint Louis. Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of several books, including Animal Days (Wave, 2021), The Lives of the Poems and Three Talks (Wave Books, 2018), The Inside of an Apple, Take It, Shake, Your Time Has Come,…

Free

Book Launch: “Don’t Be Sad When I’m Gone” by Beatriz Dujovne

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Beatriz will be reading excerpts of her memoir. In this book all human emotions deserve a place of honor: life, death, morning, love, happiness, anger… The author’s American and Argentine cultures, the chronological time and Kairos, the more human time, reality and fantasy, are intertwined from Introduction to the Epilogue. We follow her to Buenos Aires from her present home in Portland, where she journeys to rekindle her life after the death of her life long husband. We partake in her internal and external experiences: those special spots where her love affair with him bloomed and took hold, her psychotherapy sessions with an Argentine psychoanalyst, the life force of the metropolis itself, and the warmth of its habitants. And we also witness how all these…

Free

POST Launch and Release Party

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

RSVP to join us in celebration on May 8th at 7PM (PDT) for an online reading event. Recommended donation is $5 but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Alissa Hattman will be joined by TJ Acena, Chalaundrai Grant, Hannah Pass, Lucie Bonvalet, Chrys Tobey and lark pien ~~~ Elevator Pitch: Love letters as postcards to people, spaces, and objects. The Details: "POST" is an epistolary collection of postcards written by Alissa Hattman during the American Short Fiction Constellation Challenge. This was a month-long writing experiment that took place in November 2020. In the collection, Alissa explores distance from loved ones, spaces, and objects with intense depth and nuance. She offers poignant observations about our relationship to the passage of time, memories, and ideas. The…

Free – $5