LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.

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Nick Flynn in Conversation With Melissa Febos

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

When Nick Flynn was seven years old, his mother set fire to their house. The event loomed large in his imagination for years, but it’s only after having a child of his own that he understands why. He returns with his young daughter to the landscape of his youth, reflecting on how his feral childhood has him still in its reins, and forms his memories into lyrical bedtime stories populated by the both sinister and wounded Mister Mann. With the spare lyricism and dark irony of his classic, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Flynn excavates the terrain of his traumatic upbringing and his mother’s suicide. His searing new memoir, This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire (W. W. Norton), unravels the story…

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Free

Delve Readers Seminar: The Book of Embraces

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The vignetted format of this text sometimes expands into short stories and sometimes shrinks into prose-poems, but regardless of any section’s length, this book is always intimate, charming, and transportive. Galeano uses journalistic research, autobiographical anecdotes, and interviews to emphasize how there really is no distinction between the personal and the political. He writes of the military dictatorship in Uruguay that forced him into exile, an Italian pantomime performance that reminded him the importance of loving your craft, a pet guinea pig that’s too afraid to leave its cage, the Chilean government’s despoiling of Pablo Neruda’s home, the fantastic dreams of his wife, and a few hundred other vignettes that advocate for love, friendship, and determination. A powerful text that uplifts humanity in the face…

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$110

Confronting Toxic Productivity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this iteration of their extremely popular training Toxic Productivity and the Creative Cycle, Marina Martinez-Bateman is bringing healing from toxic productivity into the workplace. New exercises, new skills, and new outcomes tailored to toxic productivity in the working world. If you are an employee, a freelancer or in a leadership position, Avoid Toxic Productivity and Revolutionize Your Workflow will help you achieve your professional goals without sacrificing your life and values. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a start on their own journey away from toxic productivity, as well as several tools and prompts to help them change their working habits and outlooks. *FREE* Register here Materials needed: paper and pen for note taking Learn about Marina at: marinaforhire.com — Digital Adventures with Sunday Parkways & the IPRC! This workshop is part of  Portland Sunday…

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Free

Jaime Lowe in Conversation With Jeff Sharlet

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

California’s fire season gets hotter, longer, and more extreme every year — fire season is now year-round. Of the thousands of firefighters who battle California’s blazes every year, roughly 30 percent of the on-the-ground wildland crews are inmates earning a dollar an hour. Approximately 200 of those firefighters are women serving on all-female crews. In Breathing Fire (MCD), Jaime Lowe expands on her revelatory work for The New York Times Magazine. She has spent years getting to know dozens of women who have participated in the fire camp program and spoken to captains, family and friends, correctional officers, and camp commanders. The result is a rare, illuminating look at how the fire camps actually operate — a story that encompasses California’s underlying catastrophes of climate…

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Free

Writing the Non-Fiction Book Proposal

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writing a book proposal is the best first step to writing a nonfiction book for both adults and young readers. An excellent proposal helps you organize your ideas, understand the competition, and can help you land a publishing contract even before you write the book. This six-week class will take you step-by-step through the major parts of the nonfiction book proposal: the query letter, overview, competitive analysis, marketing and promotion, author background, outline and sample chapter. Bring an idea, and be ready to write. The class includes extensive handouts and questionnaires to guide your work. Class outcomes: By the end of this six week workshop, students will leave with a rough draft of a nonfiction book proposal. More information: Download 10 Reasons to Write a…

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$285

On The Metaphysics of Deep Gossip: Bagley Wright Lecture Series

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this memoir and craft talk, Lisa Jarnot reflects on her entanglement in the New York poetry scene over twenty-five years. Beginning with the proposition that deep gossip and urban mindfulness are sacred practices, she explores the places where the New York School’s feminine, marvelous, and tough irreverence opens into a deeper mystery that is passed down as a liturgy of ecstatic connectedness. The Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry supports contemporary poets as they explore in-depth their own thinking on poetry and poetics, and give a series of lectures resulting from these investigations. Lectures are delivered publicly in partnership with institutions and organizations nationwide. Find out more about past, present, and future lecturers, and explore the archive at www.bagleywrightlectures.org. Charlie Wright, Publisher of Wave…

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Free

Horror Book Club (REMOTE)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

We will meet on Thursday August 26th at 6:30pm and discuss Goblin by Josh Malerman. About the book: Goblin seems like any other ordinary small town. But with the master storyteller Josh Malerman as your tour guide, you'll discover the secrets that hide behind its closed doors. These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, nighttime is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin. TO ATTEND: 1) Purchase the book club book to support our shop. If you already own the book you may purchase a gift certificate or sponsor a stack for $15 or $25 dollars depending on if the book club book is paperback or hardcover. 2) We will email you the Zoom link…

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$28.00

Telltale Presents: I Won’t Wait.

Chapel Theatre 4107 SE Harrison St, Milwaukie, OR, United States

Hey, champ! Thanks for checking out Telltale. We are a monthly curated storytelling event for people that like to get vulnerable and take no shit. We are keen on connection, laughter, heartbreak, poignant moments, and community building. We are in our fifth season now, which is wild. After a number of zoom shows.... WE ARE BACK, PAL! With an all vaccinated staff, we will be doing a series of summer shows outside of our old venue, Chapel Theatre. I said we'd do these shows until things stopped making me mad.... and well.... apparently there's an endless series of things to be angry at in this country. At Telltale, you can expect about 7-10 performers sharing something with you, in the way that feels right to…

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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 (Pacific Time), Free. (No workshop 12/25.) Workshops are held via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Registration opens the 1st of the month every month. Pre-register for our 2nd Friday workshop here. Pre-register for our 4th Friday workshop here. Click here for more workshop details.

Free

Cirque Journal at the Kennedy School

McMenamins Kennedy School 5736 NE 33rd Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Join Cirque Journal publisher, writers and fans for an evening of readings, book signings, and rubbing elbows with poets, essayists, fiction writers, dramatists, graphic artists for engaged literary arts fun. Learn how to publish with Cirque Press, and submit to Cirque Journal; be a fan. We want you all to have a chance to try your hand at submitting to this 11-year-old fine literary-arts journal out of Alaska, but for PNW/Alaska/ Canada/ Hawaii writers. Cirque #22 is just out, and it has a theme -- The Land Ethic. Just out May 2021, available now and at the Kennedy School event.

Free
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