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!

Joseph Han in Conversation With Gene Kwak

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Things are looking up for Mr. and Mrs. Cho. Their dream of franchising their Korean plate lunch restaurants across Hawaiʻi seems within reach after a visit from Guy Fieri boosts the profile of Cho’s Delicatessen. Their daughter, Grace, is busy finishing her senior year of college and working for her parents, while her older brother, Jacob, just moved to Seoul to teach English. But when a viral video shows Jacob trying — and failing — to cross the Korean demilitarized zone, nothing can protect the family from suspicion and the restaurant from waning sales. No one knows that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his lost grandfather, who feverishly wishes to cross the divide and find the family he left behind in the…

Free

Leah Sottile in Conversation With Ryan Haas

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

Inspired by Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven and Jess Walter’s Every Knee Shall Bow, Leah Sottile’s When the Moon Turns to Blood (Twelve) explores modern-day survivalism and end-times extremism through the story of Lori Vallow and her husband, gravedigger turned doomsday novelist, Chad Daybell. When police in Rexburg, Idaho perform a wellness check on seven-year-old J.J. Vallow and his sister, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan, both children are nowhere to be found. Their mother, Lori Vallow, gives a phony explanation, and when officers return the following day with a search warrant, she, too, is gone. As the police begin to close in, a larger web of mystery, murder, fanaticism, and deceit begins to unravel. Vallow’s case is sinuously complex. As investigators prod further, they find…

Free

Dan Lambe

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

Timed to the organization's 150th anniversary, Dan Lambe’s Now Is the Time for Trees (Timber Press), written with Lorene Edwards Forkner, celebrates the Arbor Day Foundation’s important role in conservation and energizes readers to plant trees as a means of individual climate activism. Trees and forests are the number one nature-based solution for revers­ing the negative effects of a changing climate. If ever there was a time to be planting trees, that time is now. Inspired by a collective sense of urgency, a global movement to plant trees is gaining momentum. To move the needle, we need to act on a massive scale and plant millions of trees today to have a measurable and lasting impact on billions of lives tomorrow. In Now Is the…

Free

Dan Pfeiffer

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

In Battling the Big Lie (Twelve), Pod Save America cohost Dan Pfeiffer dissects how the right-wing built a massive, billionaire-funded disinformation machine powerful enough to bend reality and nearly steal the 2020 election. From the perspective of someone who has spent decades on the front lines of politics and media, Pfeiffer lays out how the right-wing media apparatus works, where it came from, and what progressives can do to fight back against disinformation. Over a period of decades, the right-wing has built a massive media apparatus that is weaponizing misinformation and spreading conspiracy theories for political purposes. This “MAGA Megaphone” that is personified by Fox News and fueled by Facebook is waging war on the very idea of objective truth — and they are winning.…

Free

Ada Calhoun

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

When Ada Calhoun stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews her father, celebrated art critic Peter Schjeldahl, had conducted for his never-completed biography of poet Frank O’Hara, she set out to finish the book her father had started 40 years earlier. As a lifelong O’Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, Calhoun thought the project would be easy, even fun, but the deeper she dove, the more she had to face not just O’Hara’s past, but also her father’s, and her own. The result is a groundbreaking and kaleidoscopic memoir that weaves compelling literary history with a moving, honest, and tender story of a complicated father-daughter bond. Also a Poet (Grove Press) explores what happens when we want to…

Free

Katee Robert

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

In Olympus, you either have the power to rule… or you are ruled. Achilles Kallis may have been born with nothing, but as a child he vowed he would claw his way into the poisonous city's inner circle. Now that a coveted role has opened to anyone with the strength to claim it, he and his partner, Patroclus Fotos, plan to compete and double their odds of winning. Neither expect infamous beauty Helen Kasios to be part of the prize… or for the complicated fire that burns the moment she looks their way. Zeus may have decided Helen is his to give away, but she has her own plans. She enters into the competition as a middle finger to the meddling Thirteen rulers, effectively vying…

Free

Slamlandia- June

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community. This event takes place in-person. Proof of Covid-19 vaccine or a negative PCR test is required for admittance. Please see our Covid-19 guidelines for in-person events at Literary Arts. Hosted by Julia Gaskill. If you have any questions about this event, please contact Jessica Meza-Torres at jessica@literary-arts.org.  

Free

Live Reading: CONFESSIONS

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

Poetry, prose, and arcane literary rituals. . HOCUS enters its third year with a confession-themed event. Curated readings, a few choice anonymous confessions, and absolution for all your literary sins!

Free

Lynn Xu, Joshua Edwards, and Stacey Tran

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

Poetry reading featuring Lynn Xu, Joshua Edwards, and Stacey Tran. Born in Shanghai, China, Lynn Xu is the author of the full-length collection Debts & Lessons (Omnidawn, 2013) and the chapbooks June (Corollary Press, 2006) and Tournesol (Compline, 2021). She has performed cross-disciplinary works at the Guggenheim Museum, The Renaissance Society, Rising Tide Projects, and 300 S. Kelly Street. She teaches at Columbia University, coedits Canarium Books, and lives with her family in New York City and Marfa, Texas. Joshua Edwards is the author of Castles and Islands, Architecture for Travelers, Imperial Nostalgias, Campeche (with photographs by his father, Van Edwards), and Photographs Taken at One-Hour Intervals During a Walk from Galveston Island to the West Texas Town of Marfa; and he translated María Baranda's book-length…

Free

Wellspring Open Mic

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

John Carter hosts this very open mic. You’re welcome to share any of your talents from any field of art or other interest. Music and poetry, of course, but also comedy, magic, dance. You can give an art talk about a piece of visual art. You can read a chapter of your dissertation. Let’s share our creative endeavors so that we can all grow through shared inspiration. Starting in March, Wellspring will be on 2nd and 4th Sundays right after Community Art Day. Sign ups start at 6:00 or so.

Free