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!

Talks & Discussions

  1. Events
  2. Talks & Discussions

Events Search and Views Navigation

Event Views Navigation

Today

Chris Belcher in Conversation With Katherine Morgan

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

The dominatrix is the id of American femininity. She says the words that we all wish we could say when we find ourselves frozen in the presence of men. No is principal among them. So writes Chris Belcher, who appeared destined for a life of conventional femininity after she took first place in an infant beauty contest — a minor glory that can follow you around a working-class town of 1,600 people in rural West Virginia. But when she came out as queer, the conservative community that had once celebrated its prettiest baby turned on her. A decade later, living in Los Angeles and trying to stay afloat in the early years of a PhD program, Belcher plunges into the work of a pro domme.…

Continue readingChris Belcher in Conversation With Katherine Morgan
Free

Eve Fairbanks in Conversation With Kiese Laymon

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A dozen years in the making, The Inheritors (Simon & Schuster) weaves together the stories of three ordinary South Africans over five tumultuous decades in a sweeping and exquisite look at what really happens when a country resolves to end white supremacy. Dipuo grew up on the south side of a mine dump that segregated Johannesburg’s black townships from the white-only city. Some nights, she hiked to the top. To a South African teenager in the 1980s — even an anti-apartheid activist like Dipuo — the divide that separated her from the glittering lights on the other side appeared eternal. But in 1994, the world’s last explicit racial segregationist regime collapsed to make way for something unprecedented. With penetrating psychological insight, intimate reporting, and bewitching…

Continue readingEve Fairbanks in Conversation With Kiese Laymon
Free

Lyndsie Bourgon in Conversation With Ed Jahn

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

There's a strong chance that chair you are sitting on was made from stolen lumber. In Tree Thieves (Little, Brown Spark), Lyndsie Bourgon takes us deep into the underbelly of the illegal timber market. As she traces three timber poaching cases, she introduces us to tree poachers, law enforcement, forensic wood specialists, the enigmatic residents of former logging communities, environmental activists, international timber cartels, and indigenous communities along the way. Old-growth trees are invaluable and irreplaceable for both humans and wildlife, and are the oldest living things on earth. But the morality of tree poaching is not as simple as we might think: stealing trees is a form of deeply rooted protest, and a side effect of environmental preservation and protection that doesn't include communities…

Continue readingLyndsie Bourgon in Conversation With Ed Jahn
Free

Vince A. Liaguno & Rena Mason in Conversation With Tananarive Due, Jennifer McMahon, Alma Katsu & Nathan Carson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Other Terrors (William Morrow) is an anthology of original new horror stories edited by Bram Stoker Award winners Vince A. Liaguno and Rena Mason that showcases authors from underrepresented backgrounds telling terrifying tales of what it means to be, or merely to seem, “other.” Offering original new stories from some of the biggest names in horror, as well as some of the hottest up-and-coming talents, Other Terrors will provide the ultimate reading experience for horror fans who want to celebrate fear of “the other.” Be they of a different culture, a different background, a different sexual preference, a different belief system, or a different skin color, some people simply aren’t part of the dominant community — and are perceived as scary. Humans are almost instinctively…

Continue readingVince A. Liaguno & Rena Mason in Conversation With Tananarive Due, Jennifer McMahon, Alma Katsu & Nathan Carson
Free

FREE: Consult about Your Writing

N/A

Call us. Let us help you with your writing. You're invited to schedule a free 15-minute conference call consult to describe your writing situation and focus. During the call, we listen to your writing situation and help you out -- sometimes writers will register for an upcoming workshop. Other times, after a consult, writers will initiate a formal Introductory Consult through our Individual Consult Group to find a writing coach selected specifically for your project. To initiate a Free Consult, e-mail us -- and when you do, please let us know specifically what you're working on and want to discuss. Then we'll get back in touch and begin to talk together about your writing. Register for a free consult Teacher: Carol Hendrickson Time: By appointment only. Location: Telephone Conference…

Continue readingFREE: Consult about Your Writing
Free

A Conversation & Reading with Jackson Bliss and Frances Badalamenti

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

Come celebrate two great authors (and the launch of a brand new book!) this summer at the illustrious Rose City Book Pub. Jackson Bliss and Frances Badalamenti will be sitting down with each to talk writing as well as the release of DREAM POP ORIGAMI. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Frances Badalamenti was raised in Queens, New York and Suburban New Jersey, but she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and son. Her essays, stories and interviews appear in The Believer Magazine, Longreads, Vol.1 Brooklyn, Entropy and elsewhere. Salad Days is her second novel; her debut novel I Don't Blame You​ released in 2019. Jackson Bliss is the winner of the 2020 Noemi Press Award in Prose and the mixed-race/hapa author of Counterfactual Love Stories…

Continue readingA Conversation & Reading with Jackson Bliss and Frances Badalamenti
Free

W. Kamau Bell & Kate Schatz in Conversation With Megan Rapinoe

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

W. Kamau Bell and Kate Schatz’s Do the Work! (Workman) is a hands-on workbook for anyone overwhelmed by racial injustice, who feels shocked by all the American histories they never learned, and who keeps asking the question “what can I DOOOOOO?!” Packed with humorous, thought-provoking activities — all are rooted in history and contemporary social justice concepts — Bell and Schatz’s new book helps readers move from "What can I do?" to... you know... actually doing the work. Revelatory and thought-provoking, their highly illustrated, highly informative interactive workbook gives readers a unique, hands-on understanding of systemic racism — and how we can dismantle it. Packed with activities, games, illustrations, comics, and eye-opening conversation, Do the Work! challenges readers to think critically and act effectively. Try…

Continue readingW. Kamau Bell & Kate Schatz in Conversation With Megan Rapinoe
Free

Jon Raymond in Conversation With Leni Zumas

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

Denial (Simon & Schuster) is a futuristic thriller about climate change by Jon Raymond, the acclaimed screenwriter of First Cow, Meek’s Cutoff, and HBO’s Mildred Pierce. The year is 2052. Climate change has had a predictably devastating effect: Venice submerged, cyclones in Oklahoma, megafires in South America. Yet it could be much worse. Two decades earlier, the global protest movement known as the Upheavals helped break the planet’s fossil fuel dependency, and the subsequent Nuremberg-like Toronto Trials convicted the most powerful oil executives and lobbyists for crimes against the environment. Not all of them. A few executives escaped arrest and went into hiding, including pipeline mastermind Robert Cave. Now, a Pacific Northwest journalist named Jack Henry who works for a struggling media company has received…

Continue readingJon Raymond in Conversation With Leni Zumas
Free

Nan Fischer in Conversation with Chelsea Cain

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

In Nan Fischer’s Some of It Was Real (Berkley), a psychic on the verge of stardom who isn’t sure she believes in herself and a cynical journalist with one last chance at redemption are brought together by secrets from the past that also threaten to tear them apart. Psychic-medium Sylvie Young starts every show with her origin story, telling the audience how she discovered her abilities. But she leaves out a lot — the plane crash that killed her parents, an estranged adoptive family who tend orchards in rainy Oregon, panic attacks, and the fact that her agent insists she research some clients to ensure success. After a catastrophic reporting error, Thomas Holmes’s next story at the L.A. Times may be his last, but he’s…

Continue readingNan Fischer in Conversation with Chelsea Cain
Free

Michael Pollan in Conversation With Dave Miller / TICKETED EVENT

Newmark Theatre 1111 SW Broadway Ave., Portland, OR, United States

From Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, comes a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants — and the equally powerful taboos. Of all the things humans rely on plants for — sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber — surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate or calm, fiddle with or completely alter, the qualities of our mental experience. Take coffee and tea: People around the world rely on caffeine to sharpen their minds. But we do not usually think of caffeine as a drug, or our daily use as an addiction, because it is legal and socially acceptable.…

Continue readingMichael Pollan in Conversation With Dave Miller / TICKETED EVENT
$28
Click a category label below to view the calendar with only events in that specific category.