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!

Events Search and Views Navigation

Event Views Navigation

Today

2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Omar El Akkad, R.O. Kwon, Faylita Hicks

Reed College - Cerf Amphitheater 3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

We are excited to once again be offering in-person readings as part of our 2022 Summer Workshop programming. Starting at 7:30 pm, these events will take place in Reed College’s Cerf Amphitheater and are free and open to the public. Faculty books will be available for purchase at the Reed Bookstore, with authors signing after the event. Masks are not required in the outdoor amphitheater. Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations…

Continue reading2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Omar El Akkad, R.O. Kwon, Faylita Hicks
Free

Summer | Write from Life w David Biespiel | July 16 + 17 | In-Person + Online FULL for in-person; ONLINE available

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Praise for Writing from Life: "It was unbelievable. I feel like I just skied down Mt Hood." ~ Phil Meehan This popular tune-up workshop will be run twice this summer, in July and August. It's the kind of study every writer needs, an opportunity to write from studying your own life experiences and then seeing what new subjects that leads you to. The supportive approach emphasizes observation as the route to achieve new material, new possibilities, and new pieces, whether you are writing fiction, memoir, or poems. The approach teaches you new skills that you can use for all your future writing, as well as how to transfer your observations into clear notes, jottings, studies, and pieces of new writing. This method of writing is one of the foundational skill sets that all…

Continue readingSummer | Write from Life w David Biespiel | July 16 + 17 | In-Person + Online FULL for in-person; ONLINE available
$215 – $244

The Great Word Regatta with Shawn Aveningo-Sanders, Michael Schein, Annie Lighthart, and Matthew Brouwer

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

Come hear four festive writers bring life to hallowed Portland pub space through their wily and resplendent words. Opened by the briefest of open mics and followed by the pouring of libations. No cover, but please support your venue that so kindly hosts poets and other weirdos at no charge. Vaccination required. Michael Schein wrote Liquid Perishable Hazardous (2019) (poetry), John Surratt: The Lincoln Assassin Who Got Away (2015) (historical), The Killer Poet’s Guide to Immortality by AB Bard (2012) (hysterical), historical novels Bones Beneath Our Feet (2011); Just Deceits (2005). Schein edited Poets UNiTE! The LiTFUSE Anthology (2015). His poetry appears in many journals and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. Schein is the founder of LiTFUSE Poets’ Workshop (litfuse.us), & has taught at Port Townsend…

Continue readingThe Great Word Regatta with Shawn Aveningo-Sanders, Michael Schein, Annie Lighthart, and Matthew Brouwer
Free

2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Saeed Jones, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Paisley Rekdal

Reed College - Cerf Amphitheater 3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

We are excited to once again be offering in-person readings as part of our 2022 Summer Workshop programming. Starting at 7:30 pm, these events will take place in Reed College’s Cerf Amphitheater and are free and open to the public. Faculty books will be available for purchase at the Reed Bookstore, with authors signing after the event. Masks are not required in the outdoor amphitheater. Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics…

Continue reading2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Saeed Jones, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Paisley Rekdal
Free

Summer Series: Cyanotypes

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

Summer Series: Cyanotypes Register here Instructor: Katherine Spinella This workshop is in person: Masks + Proof of Vaccination Required Capacity: 8 Sun, July 17th 11am – 1:30pm Sliding Scale $10 – 55 2 no-cost spots available; BIPOC & 2S prioritized Join us to explore the photographic alt-process of cyanotypes! Cyanotypes, otherwise known as blueprints, are one of the earliest forms of photography used by engineers and astronomers as a simple and low-cost process to produce copies of drawings. In this workshop, we’ll experiment with fun and easy ways to create cyanotypes. By laying film negatives and/or 2D objects on top of the chemically treated material, you’ll create a deep blueprint with bright, ghost-white silhouettes. Feel free to bring your own film negatives, spring botanicals, or…

Continue readingSummer Series: Cyanotypes
$10 – $55

Literary Speculative Fiction :: A Webinar with Lidia Yuknavitch — July 17

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Literary Speculative Fiction :: A Webinar with Lidia Yuknavitch Are you writing toward the territory of speculative fiction, the polyphonic novel, or literary innovations in fiction that take you off-road, possibly off-map? In this webinar we will talk about some recent examples of Literary Speculative fiction, explore some narrative strategies, and open up a few writing portals for practice. Good examples to eyeball ahead of time: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, The Overstory by Richard Powers, The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the short story collection Verge (Riverhead Books), the novels The Book of Joan (Harper Books), The Small Backs of Children (Harper Books), and Dora: A Headcase (Hawthorne Books), and the anti-memoir The Chronology of Water…

Continue readingLiterary Speculative Fiction :: A Webinar with Lidia Yuknavitch — July 17
$125

Write Your Rant with Lisa Loving

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

"Whatever stories in your community most need to be told, the best person to tell them is you." What really burns your toast? And what’s the best way to tell the world about it? Rose City Book Pub is extremely thrilled to host Lisa Loving's first of three writing workshops: "Write Your Rant." Join journalist and retired talk radio host Lisa Loving for the basics of online research, writing tips, narrative structure and where to bring it. Tickets are 25$ and include a copy of Street Journalist: Understand and Report the News in Your Community as well as a drink and some phenomenal shared appetizers. Get tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/374866454657 Lisa Loving’s Website: http://www.street-journalist.com/ Lisa Loving’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Media4thepeople

$25

Meng Jin & K-Ming Chang in Conversation With Rachel Khong

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Meng Jin’s debut novel, Little Gods, was praised as “spectacular and emotionally polyphonic" (Omar El-Akkad) and “meticulously observed, daringly imagined” (Claire Messud). Now Jin turns her considerable talents to short fiction, in ten thematically linked stories. Written during the turbulent years of the Trump administration and the first year of the pandemic, these stories explore intimacy and isolation, coming-of-age and coming to terms with the repercussions of past mistakes, fraying relationships, and surprising moments of connection. Moving between San Francisco and China, and from unsparing realism to genre-bending delight, Self-Portrait with Ghost (Mariner) considers what it means to live in an age of heightened self-consciousness, seemingly endless access to knowledge, and little actual power. Gods of Want (One World) features stories that center the bodies,…

Continue readingMeng Jin & K-Ming Chang in Conversation With Rachel Khong
Free

Reclaiming Our Lost Selves with Gerette Buglion

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

RECLAIMING OUR LOST SELVES How understanding undue influence builds compassion and resilience In this presentation four questions are presented and aimed to be answered through personal anecdotes, quoted resources and from reading brief sections from An Everyday Cult, Gerette’s memoir. These questions are: What is Undue Influence and Coercive Control? How does indoctrination take place? Who is vulnerable to cultic influence? And perhaps most relevant: how can this exploration support the health and resilience of our communities, neighborhoods and families? IGotOut.org is pleased to sponsor this event. The #igotout movement empowers survivors of cultic abuse to share their stories online as a catalyst for education, prevention, and healing. Learn more at igotout.org

Free

Chris Belcher in Conversation With Katherine Morgan

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

The dominatrix is the id of American femininity. She says the words that we all wish we could say when we find ourselves frozen in the presence of men. No is principal among them. So writes Chris Belcher, who appeared destined for a life of conventional femininity after she took first place in an infant beauty contest — a minor glory that can follow you around a working-class town of 1,600 people in rural West Virginia. But when she came out as queer, the conservative community that had once celebrated its prettiest baby turned on her. A decade later, living in Los Angeles and trying to stay afloat in the early years of a PhD program, Belcher plunges into the work of a pro domme.…

Continue readingChris Belcher in Conversation With Katherine Morgan
Free
Click a category label below to view the calendar with only events in that specific category.