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!

The Writers’ Gymnasium: The Writing Workout

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For writers at all levels. This class takes place online. Registered participants will receive information on how to access the Zoom meeting before the class starts. How can we build a better writing practice? This prompt-driven generative workshop will give writers an opportunity to flex their literary muscles. Classes will provide an intimate, structured, and supportive time to broaden basic and complex writing skills. Through a series of experimental and innovative exercises we will explore the concepts of character, setting, plot and scene, as well as voice, form, and technique. Close attention will be paid to literary and poetic devices as we take a deep dive into the craft of prose writing. Supportive in-workshop sharing and feedback will be an integral part of the process.…

$185

VIRTUAL IPRC: Drawing Time

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join Marissa and friends for an hour of drawing together! This week we’ll be doing still lifes. We’ll start with a check in drawing activity and do several short times drawings and a longer drawing. Set up your own scene to share or draw one that’s provided! Leave Marissa an artist tip via Paypal: marissabperez@gmail.com Register here to receive a reminder email with Zoom link Zoom meeting link here

Free

Horror Book Club (Remote)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The Books Around the Corner Horror Book Club is led by the owner/librarian, Stephanie Rose, and meets monthly on the fourth Thursday of every month at 6PM. We would like to extend an invitation to all of our horror loving customers (RSVP is not required). Our book discussions aim to bring people together to talk about books in a safe and inviting atmosphere. Our meetings are lovely and inclusive; we invite you to attend. Come and enjoy a lively discussion about the chosen book with other readers. Our July pick is The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay and we will meet on July 23rd. About the book: The Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A Head Full of Ghosts adds an…

Free

Heather Lende in Conversation With Jennifer Steinhauer

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The writer whom the Los Angeles Times calls “part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott” now brings us her quirky and compassionate account of holding local office. Heather Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take a more active role in politics during the past few years. Though her entire campaign for assembly member in Haines, Alaska, cost less than $1,000, she won! But tiny, breathtakingly beautiful Haines — a place accessible from the nearest city, Juneau, only by boat or plane — isn’t the sleepy town that it appears to be: from a bitter debate about the expansion of the fishing boat harbor to the matter of how to stop bears from rifling through garbage on Main Street to the recall campaign…

Free

Write Around Portland: Bi-Monthly BIPOC Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For people who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC). 2nd & 4th Friday of every month from 4 to 5:30 pm, Free. Workshops are held via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Pre-register for July 10, 2020 workshop here. Pre-register for July 24, 2020 workshop here. Click here for more workshop details. Write Around Portland provides high-quality, participant-centered, creative writing workshops. Most of our workshops run for ten weeks, two hours per week. The workshop curriculum focuses on experiential learning, generating new writing and building on the writers’ strengths. Workshop participants write stories, poems, memoirs, letters and essays while experimenting with imagery, character development, dialogue and early-draft revision. To build community through writing, our workshops are facilitated by extensively-trained volunteers who write and share alongside…

Free

PNCA Low-Residency MFA Program Summer 2020 Residency Classes & Readings Open to the Public

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

As part of the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program, PNCA offers talks, discussions, and readings by acclaimed writers and artists, July 24th to August 3rd. Everything is free and open to the public. All events this summer are hosted via Zoom. The passwords for all faculty classes are 515000. CLASSES Saturday, July 25 10am: Unsafe is Not a Feeling: How Writing Contends with the Illusion of Safety Sara Jaffe https://pnca.zoom.us/j/98345715004?pwd=OVVOLysrZUh5S0hxS0d5QlBHUDZMUT09 2pm: Winter Poop, Spring Revivals, Summer Fires, and Fall Marigolds Alison C Rollins https://pnca.zoom.us/j/98224439656?pwd=TnNGWkJmQUZaTWlOOXFhZjlhUnJudz09 Sunday, July 26 10am: THE ART OF WEALTH (in life & in literature) Vi Khi Nao https://pnca.zoom.us/j/95075415254?pwd=YVd4ZVJON3YrZHIrdWF1MXN4WmkwZz09 Monday, July 27 10am: Outsider Ecopoetics Tyrone Williams https://pnca.zoom.us/j/95516376236?pwd=T1EycmFvM05STEJlN1JPZ3k3WVY3dz09 11am: Feminism / Queer Theory Shawna Liption and Sloane McNulty https://pnca.zoom.us/j/97573944766?pwd=Y0NZeEtETmxZdDFRczRrYU0wdEJLdz09 Tuesday, July 28…

Free

The Edge of Reason: poetic line w/ Brigid Yuknavitch

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHERE: Online, for six weeks (please note: there is no live/Zoom component to this class—poets will go at their own pace each week) LEADER: Brigid Yuknavitch COST: $350 SCHOLARSHIPS: Yes, scholarships are available. Please follow this link to apply. The Edge of Reason: poetic line The form of the poem organizes our sensory and felt experience as we read. It supports and disrupts what the language is saying. The line slows the sentence down. The line makes a dance inside the sentence. The line breaks open the sentence. The line registers what the sentence tried to contain. The line takes a walk as Paul Klee described it in painting. And because the line can make these many moves it lets us do more with words…

$350

VIRTUAL Risograph Basics with Outlet!

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Welcome to our Risograph Basics course: a printing, collage, experimentation, and mark making extravaganza! Get to know Outlet and our RISO sisters (Barbara, Janet, Corita, and Tina) and learn the basics of this fun and unique print method with Kate Bingaman-Burt! IMPORTANT: Due to social distancing this class will be taught virtually via Zoom—more info on that below! About the Workshop: Want to learn what Risograph printing is? Want to meet others who do too? Join us to learn all about the basics of the Risograph in our two-color introduction workshop. The workshop will kick off with a Show & Tell of exactly what a Risograph can do with a printing demo, print and zine samples and a general exploration of how we can get the best results from this…

$15 – $100

Kids’ Storytime with Skylaar Amann

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Today, author and illustrator Skylaar Amann joins us to read from her new picture book, Lloyd Finds His Whalesong (Page Street Kids). Lloyd can't sing. The rhythm of the whalesong guides the whales through danger and connects them to each other. But Lloyd is too quiet to join in. If he can't sing, how can he be a part of the pod? Then one day he finds a magical, mysterious object with supersonic seaweed strings! This could be his chance to be part of the song. He practices and practices, nervously preparing to show the other whales. But before he can perform for them, a disruptive, noisy boat approaches and scatters the pod. Lloyd's powerful new instrument may be the only thing that can reunite…

Free