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!

Broadway Books: Independent Bookstore Day

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Independent Bookstore Day (IBD) just hasn't been the same the past couple of years, since Covid reared its ugly head and put a lid on in-store events, but we're happy to announce--with only a slight bit of trepidation--IT'S BACK!!! We are thrilled to once again welcome you into the store to party like it's, well, 2019, before all this nonsense began. On Saturday, April 30th (which also happens to be Jacqueline Winspear's birthday) we will celebrate all that is indie with a party at the store--consider it a warm-up party to our 30th anniversary celebration on May 14th. We will have IBD specialty items created just for this day, including special Blackwing pencils, mugs, tote bags, and other items. We have limited quantities of most…

Free

Pile Press Meet & Greet + Anniversary

Nalu Kava and Tea Lounge 722 N Sumner St, Portland, OR, United States

Pile Press is an alternative publishing collective for women, non-binary + gender fluid creatives. And we are having an 1 year anniversary meet and greet! Open mic, food, drinks, Pile Press merch, and contributors past/present, friends and family. All welcome.

Free

Write Now Online: The Narrative Braid w/ videos by Lidia Yuknavitch (Ongoing)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Write Now: The Narrative Braid - a four-week online workshop We’re bringing one of our most popular workshops online for those of you who can’t be with us in person. We know sometimes generative workshops can leave you with an overwhelming amount of raw material. In this four-part series (guided by videos featuring our resident mermaid Lidia Yuknavitch) you’ll read, get inspired and discover the germ of an idea, write it, revise it, and finish it—and for those interested in publication, we’ll offer strategies towards that end as well! Two versions of this course will be offered: Introvert’s Narrative Braid: For $99, you’ll receive access to the four “weeks” of videos that Lidia has created for this series, and you will take them each on…

$99

Reagan M. Sova Reading and Music

Revolutions Bookshop 8713 N Lombard St, Portland, OR, United States

Mark your Calendars For May 5th at 7:00 PM with Reagan M. Sova and musical guests Sunday Mornings and Abbot Daimler! We’re super excited to hear Reagan read and Play music from his new book ; Wildcat Dreams in the Death Light published by @firsttoknock Wildcat Dreams in the Death Light is an incantatory work of narrative poetry. Infused with hobo melancholy, Jewish lore, bloodshed, and hilarity, this poem is nothing short of a contemporary masterpiece. It traces young Mort Sloman’s odyssey to honor his jockey uncle—the only dead man ever to have won a horse race. But before Mort can organize a worthy funeral, he must acquire “the Locksmith keys”—a form of esoteric knowledge beyond the understanding of even graybeard rabbis. Undeterred, Mort sets…

Free

Colonial Domesticity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This lecture considers the centrality of forms of domesticity, such as family, kinship, and schooling, to the social reproduction of colonialism and racial capitalism in the United States. Colonial and capitalist social relations are materially reproduced through feminized household, care work, and biological labor. While homes and households are primary sites for the invisible and mostly unwaged labors of colonized, racialized, and immigrant women that reproduce human being, social reproduction takes place on plantations, in schools, factories, on assembly lines, in hospitals and prisons and in other institutions, at both intimate and global scales. Lisa Lowe is Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies at Yale University, Director of Graduate Studies, and an affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. An interdisciplinary scholar whose work is…

Free

In-conversation with Jason Tanamor about LOVE, DANCE & EGG ROLLS

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Ooligan Press is honored to host Jason Tanamor, in-conversation with Tracy Badua (author of FREDDIE VS. THE FAMILY CURSE), in celebration of his new YA novel, LOVE, DANCE & EGG ROLLS, on Tuesday 05/10/2022 at 5pm PT (8pm ET). No registration necessary. About LOVE, DANCE & EGG ROLLS: Jamie Santiago is just an ordinary high school teenager―he has a huge crush on a girl from school, he watches a ton of sitcoms, and he is constantly trying to keep his dad from feeding egg rolls to his white friends. Not to mention he also aspires to be the next Tinikling master. Okay, maybe he’s not so ordinary. It's hard enough balancing the demands of high school, but when the last ever Asian Folk Festival falls…

Free

Sam Roxas-Chua

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

Sam Roxas-Chua is the author of Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater, Echolalia in Script, and Fawn Language. His poems, artworks, and asemic writings have appeared in journals including Narrative, December Magazine, Cream City Review and an essay/review of his two recent books appears in the Georgia Review and Rhino Poetry. His poetry sequence Diary of Collected Summers was awarded the Missouri Review’s Miller Audio Prize and most recently he was interviewed by Gulf Coast Journal. In his writing process, Sam is interested in discovering the invisible poem. These are images and thoughts conjured up by asemic or open-form writing, a writing practice using non-sensical script. Here’s how he described it in an interview: "In between stanzas of a poem, or when I can’t quite get to an image or a phrase, I pull out a piece of paper and start writing this…

Free

Book Signing: LOVE, DANCE & EGG ROLLS

Barnes & Noble (Clackamas Town Ctr Mall) 12000 SE 82nd Avenue, Portland, OR, United States

Jamie Santiago is just an ordinary high school teenager growing up in Portland, Oregon. Yet, in a moment, he is forced to make an important decision between honoring his heritage and salvaging what's left of his social life. With a racist bully at school and rising protests in Portland, Jamie sometimes wonders if it would be easier to forget his Filipino side entirely instead of trying to embrace it. Jason Tanamor currently lives and works in the Portland, Oregon area. He is the critically acclaimed author of Vampires of Portlandia, Anonymous, and Drama Dolls. Growing up, he did not see many Filipinos in books and wants young readers to be able to "see themselves" when they read, so he has made it his personal mission…

$18

Everybody Reads: OLGA TOKARCZUK’S THE BOOKS OF JACOB

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The 2022 Levy Event The Sixth Annual Levy Event at Portland State University Everybody Reads: OLGA TOKARCZUK’S THE BOOKS OF JACOB We invite you to read Olga Tokarczuk’s masterpiece, now translated for the first time into English, and attend a worldwide discussion of the book guided by our distinguished panelists, held on Zoom. HOW TO PARTICIPATE: 1. Read the book. Go ahead and start reading! The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk is widely available! Purchase through your favorite bookseller! 2. Register. This event is free with prior registration and will be held on Zoom. Please go to our registration page. 3. Log in on May 15 and participate in the community-wide discussion. About the book and its author Poland’s literary star Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019.…

Free

Write Now Online: The Narrative Palimpsest w/ videos by Lidia Yuknavitch (Introvert Ongoing)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Write Now: The Narrative Palimpsest - a Four-Week Online Creative Incubator Extrovert Version Begins Saturday, March 13th What is a Narrative Palimpsest? pal·imp·sest /ˈpaləm(p)ˌsest/ noun: palimpsest; plural noun: palimpsests a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain. 


something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form. Origin: mid 17th century: via Latin from Greek palimpsēstos, from palin ‘again’ + psēstos ‘rubbed smooth’ A narrative palimpsest is a story that carries LAYERS of meaning; meanings that carry the trace of each other a layer at a time, like an onion or something being uncovered through more than one strata. As if an idea or…

$99