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!

Livestream Reading: Jamie Yourdon

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes back Portland author Jamie Yourdon for the livestream launch of his new novel, The Space Between Two Deaths. Register in advance here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYvcu2oqDMtGNKRmAN4UP5sM1ZBj7RxtMkT About The Space Between Two Deaths: In ancient Sumeria, only a thin veil separates the living from the dead. The lives of Ziz, her mother, Meshara, and her father, Temen, are disrupted when a mysterious crevasse rends the earth. Temen becomes obsessed with the mystery and, capturing a crow to guide him, he follows a path to the netherworld where he hopes to gain wisdom from his dead father. Yet he soon finds that ancestors don't always provide the answers we need. In his absence, a grisly accident occurs on their farm––Meshara and Ziz are forced to flee. Friendless…

Free

A Reading with Allison Hutchcraft

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Allison Hutchcraft is the author of Swale, which was named the 2019 Editor’s Choice by New Issues Poetry & Prose. Her poems have appeared in Boulevard, The Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, The Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, and The Southern Review, among other journals. A former resident at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the Oregon coast, she has been awarded an Artist Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council and scholarships from the Tin House Writers Workshop, the Key West Literary Seminars, and the Community of Writers. She teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Free

Willy Vlautin in Conversation With Chelsea Cain

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Award-winning author Willy Vlautin (The Motel Life, Lean on Pete) explores the impact of trickle-down greed and opportunism of gentrification on ordinary lives in his scorching new novel that captures the plight of a young woman pushed to the edge as she fights to secure a stable future for herself and her family. Barely 30, Lynette is exhausted. Saddled with bad credit and juggling multiple jobs, some illegally, she’s been diligently working to buy the house she lives in with her mother and developmentally disabled brother, Kenny. Portland’s housing prices have nearly quadrupled in 15 years, and the owner is giving them a good deal. Lynette knows it’s their last best chance to own their own home — and obtain the security they’ve never had.…

Free

One Page Wednesday – April

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Here is an opportunity to share or listen to one page of work in progress from talented writers from everywhere. Come with a single page of work and sign up to read – or come to listen and prepare to be inspired! Hosted by Natalie Serber. April’s featured reader is Marilyn Freeman. Click here to register in advanced. You don’t need to live in Portland to participate. If you have questions, please contact jessica@literary-arts.org Media artist and writer Marilyn Freeman (they/them) works at the intersections of reckoning and resiliency, queerness and film, and contemplative, creative and social practices. They are author of The Illuminated Space: A Personal Theory and Contemplative Practice of Media Art (The 3rd Thing, 2020) and creator of Cinema Divina®—short evocative films…

Free

Open Mic Poetry Reading on Zoom

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Since April is National Poetry Month, the theme of the open mic is poetry and it's importance. This year is the 25th annual National Poetry Month celebration by the Academy of American Poets. Anyone who would like to participate in this Open Mic is welcome. 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.

Free

Dawnie Walton in Conversation With Nadia Owusu

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Opal is a fiercely independent young woman pushing against the grain in her style and attitude, Afro-punk before that term existed. Coming of age in Detroit, she can’t imagine settling for a 9-to-5 job — despite her unusual looks, Opal believes she can be a star. So when the aspiring British singer/songwriter Neville Charles discovers her at a bar’s amateur night, she takes him up on his offer to make rock music together for the fledgling Rivington Records. In early 1970s New York City, just as she’s finding her niche as part of a flamboyant and funky creative scene, a rival band signed to her label brandishes a Confederate flag at a promotional concert. Opal’s bold protest and the violence that ensues set off a…

Free

Virtual Event: Elle Marr, Author of Lies We Bury, In Conversation with Georgina Cross

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Oregon author Elle Marr celebrates the release of her second book, LIES WE BURY - a psychological thriller set in Portland and drawing on the "twisted history, shadowy passages, and trap doors" of the Shanghai Tunnels under Portland's Chinatown. She is joined in conversation by Georgina Cross, author of The Stepdaughter. Elle Marr Originally from Sacramento, Elle Marr graduated from UC San Diego before moving to France, where she earned a master's degree from the Sorbonne University in Paris. She now lives and writes in Oregon, with her husband, son, and one very demanding feline. Her debut thriller, The Missing Sister, was the #24 Best Selling eBook of 2020 on Amazon, a #1 Amazon Best Seller, #1 in the Kindle Store, featured in Woman's World,…

Free

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Eileen Davis Elliott

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Eileen Davis Elliott Hosted by Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige 7 pm Thursday, April 8 On Zoom $5 Suggested donation LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST, ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004 https://printedmattervancouver.com/2021/03/21/ghost-town-poetry-open-mic-on-zoom-featuring-eileen-davis-elliott-april-8-2021/ Please support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, has provided a home for the reading series since 2015: https://nichewinebar.com Eileen Davis Elliott is a poet and visual artist from Vancouver, WA where she retired from a career in mental health. She has just released Pobrecitos, a collaborative work written by Eileen Davis Elliott and illustrated by Lily Engblom-Stryker and Ava Town, students from Vancouver School of Arts and Academics who shared and expanded the messages of the written work focusing on the marginalized from all over the…

Free – $5

Alumni Showcase Reading: Chelsea Bieker, Susan Leslie Moore, & Candace Opper

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Chelsea Bieker is the author of the novel Godshot and the forthcoming story collection Cowboys and Angels (2022). Her writing has been published in The Paris Review, Granta, The Cut, McSweeney’s, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award and a MacDowell fellowship. Originally from California’s Central Valley, she now lives and teaches in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children. She is a graduate of the Portland State MFA program. Susan Leslie Moore’s poetry has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2019 Juniper Prize in Poetry and her first full-length collection, That Place Where You Opened Your Hands, was published by University of Massachusetts Press in 2020. Her poem “Night of the Living” appears in The Best American Poetry…

Free

The Poetry Box LIVE — April Edition

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The Poetry Box LIVE – April Edition April 10, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern) The Poetry Box LIVE is a monthly Zoom poetry reading series on the 2nd Saturday of each month and hosted by Shawn Aveningo Sanders. APRIL Featured Poets: • Penelope Scambly Schott (Oregon), author of SOPHIA AND MISTER WALTER WHITMAN • Sally Naylor (Florida), author of SYNAPSE FLIES INTO STARTLE • David Belmont (New York), author of WORLD GONE ZOOM ------- ABOUT THE FEATURED POETS ---------- Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry and author of a novel and several books of poetry, including her 2018 prizewinning chapbook November Quilt and most recently On Dufur Hill about a small wheat-growing town in…

Free