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!

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Transmit Culture: Diversity and Inclusion in the Children’s Publishing Workspace

PSU - Fariborz Maseeh Hall 1855 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

A conversation on how the children's publishing industry handles diversity and representation through their employees and authorship. With guest speaker Nakita Simpson, Designer and Art Director for Portland-based company A Kids Company About. Moderated by the publisher, author, and illustrator Brian Parker from Believe In Wonder. Nakita is an art director, designer, and illustrator—someone who draws words for a living. She's a now Portland-based Creative by way of Georgia, Florida, and Toronto (her hometown) who works as an Art Director at A Kids Company About. She's a lifelong learner who loves to explore creativity through work, travel, crafts, and cooking. The conversation will be moderated by PSU's very own Brian Parker. Brian is the current adjunct instructor for Children’s Book Publishing. In 2015, Brian started an…

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Free

The Stacks Coffeehouse: November Write-In

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Gather online with a group of writers on a Saturday morning! This will be focused, dedicated writing time, filled with inspiration, writing exercises, guided writing time, and discussion about writing craft. All levels are welcome. All you need is three hours of Saturday morning that you can steal from the rest of your daily obligations, a device that can connect with us on Zoom, and something to write on, whether that’s pen/paper, laptop, or a typewriter.

Free

FROM KNOWLEDGE TO POWER Launch Party

Lucky Labrador Beer Hall 1945 NW Quimby St, Portland, OR, United States

We're hosting a party to celebrate the launch of FROM KNOWLEDGE TO POWER by John Perona! Join us in celebrating K2P's release with food, drinks, and by spending the evening with other climate advocates. The launch party will include a discussion between author John Perona and climate advocate and actress K.B. Mercer, a brief talk by John Perona about several of his favorite chapters from the book, and an author signing with Q&A. Mark your calendars, this is an event you won't want to miss!

Free

Poetry Reading & Process Talk

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for the next Siren Nation Speaks on December 5, a Poetry Reading & Process Talk with authors Dao Strom, Michele Glazer, and Endi Bogue Hartigan. They’ll read from their work, talk about their creative processes, and answer your questions. Find out how they get started on a piece, see it forward, and explore the power of language and art. Speakers Dao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. The author of five books and two song-cycles, most recently the poetry collection Instrument (Fonograf Editions) and its companion album, Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records), Strom was born in Vietnam and grew up in the Sierra Nevadas of California. Her bilingual…

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Free

Robin George Andrews in Conversation With Steve Olson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Volcanoes are capable of acts of pyrotechnical prowess verging on magic: they spout black magma more fluid than water, create shimmering cities of glass at the bottom of the ocean and frozen lakes of lava on the moon, and can even tip entire planets over. Between lava that melts and reforms the landscape, and noxious volcanic gases that poison the atmosphere, volcanoes have threatened life on Earth countless times in our planet’s history. Yet despite their reputation for destruction, volcanoes are inseparable from the creation of our planet. A lively and utterly fascinating guide to these geologic wonders, Super Volcanoes (W. W. Norton) revels in the incomparable power of volcanic eruptions past and present, earthbound and otherwise — and recounts the daring and sometimes death-defying…

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Free

Michael J. Fox in Conversation With Willie Geist / Ticketed Event

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The entire world knows Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, the teenage sidekick of Doc Brown in Back to the Future; as Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties; as Mike Flaherty in Spin City; and through numerous other movie roles and guest appearances on shows such as The Good Wife and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Diagnosed at age 29, Fox is equally engaged in Parkinson’s advocacy work, raising global awareness of the disease and helping find a cure through The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the world’s leading nonprofit funder of PD science. In his new memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality (Flatiron), Fox shares personal stories and observations about illness and health, aging, the strength of family and friends,…

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$17.99

Paul Levy in Conversation With Andrew Harvey

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In its Native American meaning, wetiko is an evil cannibalistic spirit that can take over people's minds, leading to selfishness, insatiable greed, and consumption as an end in itself, destructively turning our intrinsic creative genius against our own humanity. Revealing the presence of wetiko in our modern world behind every form of destruction our species is carrying out, both individual and collective, Paul Levy shows how this mind-virus is so embedded in our psyches that it is almost undetectable — and it is our blindness to it that gives wetiko its power. Yet, as Levy reveals in striking detail in his new book, Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World (Inner Traditions), by recognizing this highly contagious mind parasite, by seeing wetiko, we can…

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Free

André Lewis Carter in Conversation With Kaylie Jones

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In André Lewis Carter’s debut novel, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Kaylie Jones Books), the Vietnam War is raging, the US Navy has only recently begun the process of integration, and the country is reeling from racial turmoil and unrest. So why does César, a street-tough kid of Afro-Cuban descent, enlist in the navy? He is on the run from a life of crime and from Mr. Mike, a charismatic, sociopathic gangster who was once a mentor but has now turned on him. Escaping into a navy wrestling with its history of racism and sexism, César soon sees the absurdity of certain prejudices that seem as old as the US Armed Forces. When he is deployed aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, racial…

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Free

Dan Millman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In his long-awaited true story of a search for the good life, author Dan Millman describes his quest for meaning in the modern world, including the story behind his writing of the spiritual classic, Way of the Peaceful Warrior. His evolution from childhood dreamer to world-class athlete catapults him, over a span of two decades, through mind-expanding experiences with four radically different mentors who prepare him for his calling as a down-to-earth spiritual teacher. For 40 years, through books and seminars, Millman has shown how to live with a peaceful heart and a warrior’s spirit. This memoir shares his course corrections, wake-up calls, and life lessons as he introduces readers to four key mentors: the Professor, a Bolivian scientist-mystic; the Guru, an American-born spiritual master;…

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Free

Let’s Get It On The Page: Writing Sex Scenes to Excite and Entice Your Readers

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Perhaps you snuck a peek at your grandma’s romance novels and giggled at the over-the-top metaphors. Maybe your writing group said you could use a sex scene but you’re mortified by putting it on the page. Maybe you write erotica and want to polish your craft. Sex can be one of the most exciting and emotionally resonant moments in a novel. It can also be cringe-worthy and awkward. Join author and sex-positivity advocate, Karelia Stetz-Waters, for a talk on writing fabulous sex scenes. This fun, unembarrassed look at sex scenes will cover plot and character elements as well as the physicality of sex on the page, Karelia will practical tips and tricks that any writer can use. All heat levels, sexual orientations, and gender identities…

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Free
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