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!

Write Around Portland: Bi-Weekly Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writing is often thought of as something done in isolation; we know there is immense power when writing is done in community. Join us for 90 minutes of creativity and community-building, with generative writing exercises, sharing and strengths-based feedback. Our workshop model, refined over 21 years, is proven for people of all writing levels: from the budding writer to the published author. Workshops are held via Zoom. Weekly registration opens Mondays at noon and closes one hour before the workshop. Click here for more info. Wednesdays from 4 to 5:30 pm Sliding Scale Registration $5-$30. Register here. $0 registration available for past Write Around Portland participants at a social service agency and people experiencing financial hardship due to the coronavirus. Register here. Thursdays from 11 am to…

$5 – $30

Maaza Mengiste in Conversation With Hannah Giorgis

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Set during Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King (W. W. Norton), shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, takes us back to the first real conflict of World War II, casting light on the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. At its heart is orphaned maid Hirut, who finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, of betrayals and overwhelming rage. In incandescent, lyrical prose, Mengiste breathes life into complicated characters on both sides of the battle line, shaping a heartrending, indelible exploration of what it means to be a woman at war. Mengiste will be joined in conversation by Hannah Giorgis, culture writer at The Atlantic. Register for the Zoom event  /  Buy the Book

Free

Write A Book: Fiction & Creative Nonfiction Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Write A Book: Fiction & Creative Nonfiction IPRC Creative Workshops for Fall 2020 will be held online via zoom, PST. Instructor: Michael Heald Wednesdays, 6:30 – 8:30 Nine students maximum (ages 18+) Class meetings: 24 (8 per term) Cost: $825 *2 spots available at sliding scale, BIPOC prioritized; email hquinn@iprc.org *2 spots available at no cost, BIPOC prioritized; email hquinn@iprc.org October 7, 2020 – June 9, 2021 This workshop will consist of three eight-week terms. Writers currently working on memoirs, essay collections, novellas, novels, short story llections, oral histories, and long-form journalism are all strongly encouraged to apply. Hybrid forms welcome. Over the course of 24 sessions, writers will work towards a draft of a manuscript in a supportive workshop environment. We’ll explore non-linear solutions…

$825

@ Literary Arts Online: One Page Wednesday – October

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Literary Arts is taking One Page online! Here is an opportunity to share or listen to one page of work in progress from talented writers from everywhere. Come with a single page of work and sign up to read – or come to listen and prepare to be inspired! October’s One Page featured reader is R.L. Maizes. Hosted by Natalie Serber. R.L. Maizes is the author of the novel Other People’s Pets, released July 14, and the short story collection We Love Anderson Cooper (both from Celadon Books, Macmillan). Her stories have aired on National Public Radio and have appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and LitHub, and have aired on NPR.…

Free

Write Around Portland: Bi-Weekly Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writing is often thought of as something done in isolation; we know there is immense power when writing is done in community. Join us for 90 minutes of creativity and community-building, with generative writing exercises, sharing and strengths-based feedback. Our workshop model, refined over 21 years, is proven for people of all writing levels: from the budding writer to the published author. Workshops are held via Zoom. Weekly registration opens Mondays at noon and closes one hour before the workshop. Click here for more info. Wednesdays from 4 to 5:30 pm Sliding Scale Registration $5-$30. Register here. $0 registration available for past Write Around Portland participants at a social service agency and people experiencing financial hardship due to the coronavirus. Register here. Thursdays from 11 am to…

$5 – $30

Memoir: The Process — with Kimberly Dark

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

STARTS: 10/8/2020 WHERE: ZOOM WHEN: 5:30PM PST—four weekly 2-hour sessions on Thursdays (10/8, 10/15, 10/22, 10/29) TEACHER: Kimberly Dark COST: $350 (Payment plans always available—please contact Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com) SCHOLARSHIPS: Yes, scholarships are available. Please follow this link to apply. Memoir: The Process Memoir: The Process Memories aren’t enough. We have to connect them to culture, to history, to zeitgeist—and then be as clear and specific about our unique perspectives as possible. In this generative workshop, we’ll open a number of creative doorways (and windows and portholes and tunnels) into meaning and we’ll discuss how and why they work. We’re going to work on releasing the story without it getting caught in the mind first. We’ll work together in four, two-hour, face-to-face (Zoom) meetings. This…

$350

David Biespiel in Conversation With David Naimon

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In his new book, A Place of Exodus: Home, Memory, and Texas (Kelson), acclaimed writer David Biespiel tells the story of the rise and fall of his Jewish boyhood in Texas, and his search for the answer to his life’s central riddle: Are we ever done leaving home? Raised in the 1970s in Meyerland, the historic Jewish neighborhood of Houston, Biespiel explores the story of triumph and shame that changed his relationship to the world around him. With cinematic fluidity, he writes of his early years as a teenager who yearns for bold self-invention as he grapples with the enigmas of illness, death, love, and the meaning of faith. Growing up in a family devoted to Jewish identity, Biespiel comes under the tutelage of the…

Free

Virtual Collage Night

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Virtual Collage Night returns, with a monthly challenge and Show & Tell. For this month’s challenge, create a monochrome collage. Tag the IPRC, or use #collagechallengeiprc, or join us on Thursday, October 8th at 6:30pm for a virtual show & tell of your collage creations! Register here, and zoom link will be sent on the day of the event.

Free

Livestream Reading: Joanna Rose with Stevan Allred

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland author Joanna Rose for a livestream reading from her new novel, A Small Crowd of Strangers, from Southwest Portland publisher Forest Avenue Press. She will be joined in conversation by fellow local author Stevan Allred. Thursday, October 8, 7pm Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqf-Csrz0sGd2GhOiYz3EhHzd_eLcF47wM Signed copies available soon! About the book: How does a librarian from New Jersey end up in a convenience store on Vancouver Island in the middle of the night, playing Bible Scrabble with a Korean physicist and a drunk priest? She gets married to the wrong man for starters--she didn't know he was 'that kind of Catholic'--and ends up in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She gets a job in a New Age bookstore, wanders toward Buddhism without realizing it, and…

Free

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Featuring Wil Gibson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond everyone's control, this month's reading will take place over Zoom. Email christopherjluna@gmail.com by no later than 3 pm on October 8 to indicate your interest in participating. In the subject line, let us know if you are "Reading" or "Just Listening." You will receive instructions for how to join the meeting. Open mic readers are invited to share one poem for three minutes or less. If you are willing to donate to support the series, please use Christopher Luna’s PayPal account (christopherjluna@gmail.com) or contact him to make other arrangements. Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry. The suggested donation is five dollars. Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic Hosted by Christopher Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, &…

Free – $10