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!

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

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

Tin House Summer Workshop: Getting Past the Gatekeepers: How to keep writing in an industry that excludes us. Kaitlyn Greenidge and Mira Jacob in Conversation

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

From the first feedback to the final copyedits, navigating literary publishing can be especially harrowing when your story doesn’t fit the industry’s narrow bookshelf. Kaitlyn Greenidge and Mira Jacob discuss their combined 30+ years of experience, as well as the strategies they’ve employed to stay sane and keep writing. YouTube

Free

Shayla Lawson & Emma Dabiri

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Shayla Lawson is major. You don’t know who she is. Yet. But that’s okay. She is on a mission to move black girls like herself from best supporting actress to a starring role in the major narrative. Whether she’s taking on workplace microaggressions or upending racist stereotypes about her home state of Kentucky, she looks for the side of the story that isn’t always told, the places where the voices of black girls haven’t been heard. The essays in Lawson’s This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope (Harper Perennial) ask questions like: Why are black women invisible to AI? What is “black girl magic”? Or: Am I one viral tweet away from becoming Twitter famous? And: How much magic does…

Free

True Crime Book Club (Remote)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The True Crime Book Club is led by the true crime aficionado Rachel Newton Cumley. We would like to extend an invitation to all of our true crime enthusiasts. 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. Join us on July 26th at 3pm for True Crime Book Club. This month's pick is Columbine by Dave Cullen. "The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror . . ." So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It is…

Free

Grief Rites Virtual Reading

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Storytellers: Rebecca Smolen Robin Oakman Dion Lissner O’Reilly Jenny Stults Judith van Praag ........ Coffee And Grief is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: Grief Rites Time: Jul 26, 2020 04:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83410440326?pwd=eWYrWWp1T3BPdGZkSC9GRytyMkhXUT09 Meeting ID: 834 1044 0326 Password: 117529 One tap mobile +13462487799,,83410440326#,,,,0#,,117529# US (Houston) +16699006833,,83410440326#,,,,0#,,117529# US (San Jose) Dial by your location +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 929 205 6099 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) Meeting ID: 834 1044 0326 Password: 117529 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kefc0loMoE

Free