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!

Summer Series: Recycled Paper Making

IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) 318 SE Main Street #175, Portland, OR, United States

Recycled Paper Making Register here Instructor: Jenn Woodward of Pulp + Deckle This workshop is in person: Masks / Proof of Vaccination Required Capacity: 8 Sliding scale $10-55 2 no-cost spots available; BIPOC & 2S prioritized Sunday, June 26th 10:30-12:30 Want to learn how to make your own paper for art, books, or other fun projects? In this course we will focus on simple papermaking that you can do at home using an ordinary kitchen blender, picture frames, knitting hoops, and recycled paper- like test prints and junkmail. We’ll also use cookie cutters and stencils, try out some embedding/inclusions, and learn different drying techniques. Students are encouraged to bring dried plants, seeds, yarn and thread if they would like to add it to their paper.…

$10 – $55

Community Art Day

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

Community Art Day is bringing people together to connect and create every 2nd and 4th Sunday from 2-6 pm. This free event is open to the public and features art classes, collaborative projects, supplies to do your own thing and a creation station made just for kids! There will be a different art form with support from a local artist every time.

Free

Learn Make Share: Comb Binding

IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) 318 SE Main Street #175, Portland, OR, United States

Register here *This workshop is scheduled to be in-person in the Main Studio Space at the IPRC: Masks & Proof of Vaccination Required 318 SE Main St. Ste. 155 Portland OR 97214 Learn Make Share: Comb Binding In this Learn Make Share workshop, members will learn how to use the comb binder in the IPRC’s Publishing Tool Library. Participants will come away with a spiral bound notebook, info about where to source binding materials, and the know-how to make their own comb-bound projects. Our Learn, Make, Share series offers introductory, hands-on demos on a variety of the tools in our Print & Publishing Tool Library including our button makers, spiral and coil binders, stack cutters, staplers and photocopiers. These hour-long skill-shares are designed to introduce new…

Free – $10

Wellspring Open Mic

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

John Carter hosts this very open mic. You’re welcome to share any of your talents from any field of art or other interest. Music and poetry, of course, but also comedy, magic, dance. You can give an art talk about a piece of visual art. You can read a chapter of your dissertation. Let’s share our creative endeavors so that we can all grow through shared inspiration. Starting in March, Wellspring will be on 2nd and 4th Sundays right after Community Art Day. Sign ups start at 6:00 or so.

Free

Kaitlyn Tiffany in Conversation With Lindsay Zoladz

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In 2014, on the side of a Los Angeles freeway, a One Direction fan erected a shrine in the spot where, a few hours earlier, Harry Styles had vomited. “It’s interesting for sure,” Styles said later, adding, “a little niche, maybe.” But what seemed niche to Styles was actually an irreverent signpost for an unfathomably large, hyper-connected alternative universe: stan culture. In Everything I Need I Get from You (MCD x FSG), Kaitlyn Tiffany, a staff writer at The Atlantic and a superfan herself, guides us through the online world of fans, stans, and boybands. Along the way we meet girls who damage their lungs from screaming too loud, fans rallying together to manipulate chart numbers using complex digital subversion, and an underworld of inside…

Free

The Break with Kaveh Akbar

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, “The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though many of the activities and discussions orbit or are inflected by recovery themes (Akbar has been in active recovery for eight years), participants are not required to self-identify as being in recovery to participate.” Register at: https://www.portlandalano.org/the-break Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar is a poet, teacher and the poetry editor for The Nation. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Paris Review, Poetry, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. His newest book, Pilgrim Bell, was published by Graywolf in 2021; he is also the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James,…

Free

Tom Perrotta

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

Tracy Flick is back and, once again, the iconic protagonist of Tom Perrotta’s Election — and Reese Witherspoon’s character from the classic movie adaptation — is determined to take high school politics by storm. Tracy Flick is a hardworking assistant principal at a public high school in suburban New Jersey. Still ambitious but feeling a little stuck and underappreciated in midlife, Tracy gets a jolt of good news when the longtime principal, Jack Weede, abruptly announces his retirement, creating a rare opportunity for Tracy to ascend to the top job. Energized by the prospect of her long-overdue promotion, Tracy throws herself into her work with renewed zeal, determined to prove her worth to the students, faculty, and school board, while also managing her personal life…

Free

Sam J. Miller in Conversation With Fonda Lee

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

In Nebula Award-winning author Sam J. Miller’s devastating debut short-fiction collection, Boys, Beasts & Men (Tachyon), queer infatuation, inevitable heartbreak, and brutal revenge seamlessly intertwine. Whether innocent, guilty, or not even human, the boys, beasts, and men roaming through Miller’s gorgeously crafted worlds can destroy readers, yet leave them wanting more. Despite his ability to control the ambient digital cloud, a foster teen falls for a clever con-man. Luring bullies to a quarry, a boy takes clearly enumerated revenge through unnatural powers of suggestion. In the aftermath of a shapeshifting alien invasion, a survivor fears that he brought something out of the Arctic to infect the rest of the world. A rebellious group of queer artists create a new identity that transcends even the anonymity…

Free

Jim Woodring in Conversation With Gary Groth

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Jim Woodring has been chronicling the adventures of his cartoon everyman, Frank, for almost 30 years. These stories are a singular rarity in the comics form — both bone-chillingly physical in their depictions of Frank’s travails and profoundly metaphysical at the same time. Not since George Herriman’s Krazy Kat has the comics language been so exquisitely distilled into pure, revelatory aesthetic expression. One Beautiful Spring Day (Fantagraphics) combines three previously published volumes — Congress of the Animals, where Frank embarked upon a life-changing voyage of discovery; Fran, where he learned, then forgot, that things are not always what they seem; and Poochytown, in which Frank demonstrated his dizzying capacity for both nobility and ignominy — along with 100 dazzling new pages conceived and drawn by…

Free

Forest Bathing and Writing: Mt. Tabor Park

Mt. Tabor Park SE 60th Avenue and Salmon Street, Portland, OR, United States

This class, held outdoors at Mt. Tabor Park, will guide you in practicing skills associated with shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing—a gentle, meditative approach to being with nature. The class will include several invitations to explore your senses and your relationship with nature, time for written reflection, and opportunities to share your observations and your writing, if you wish. In each class, you’ll learn approaches to writing and to being with nature that you can use in your everyday life to help promote a sense of relaxation, connection, and wonder. No prior experience with writing is required. All forest bathing and writing prompts may be practiced seated, standing, or walking, depending on your comfort, ability, and interest. Classes will be held rain or shine, so please…

$75