A resource for the PDX literary community. Produced by Old Pal.
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!
Please join La Casa Latina and the Chicano/Latino Studies for an afternoon talk with Dr. Isabel Millán Author and illustrator of the queer bilingual children’s picture book Chabelita’s Heart/El corazón de Chabelita Wednesday, April 26 1:00 - 2:30 pm La Casa Latina SMSU 228 More about Dr. Millán Find the book here.
We think Marcy Cottrell Houle is a wonder. With each of her books she brings such clarity and useful information to us all. So we are exceptionally happy to have her in the store to present her latest book: Forest Park: Exploring Portland's Natural Sanctuary, a gorgeously illustrated book published by Oregon State University Press. Situated in the rugged hills west of downtown Portland, Forest Park is the nation's premier urban natural sanctuary. It supports essential habitat for hundreds of native plants and animals, including species at risk, and is one of the largest city parks in the world, offering miles of outstanding hiking trails within minutes of downtown. Forest Park showcases this treasure in a new light, offering a compendium of the most up-to-date…
Rules to Win By: Participation and Power in Union Negotiations (Oxford) is a book for anyone who wants to understand how to build the power required to effectively challenge and reverse income inequality and attacks on democracy. Drawing insights from recent hard-won unionization and contract negotiation fights, Abby Lawlor (and co-author Jane McAlevey) uses lessons from some of the toughest fights today — preparing a durable, all-out strike in a union-hostile environment — to provide a master class in participatory social change, indispensable both within and beyond the workplaces where we spend half of our waking lives. In an era of polarization, big lies, and massive legislative setbacks, changemakers in every arena need to learn the skills and lessons honed in pitched battles against experienced…
Annie Bloom's welcomes Pacific Northwest author Mitzi Zilka for an in-store reading from her novel, Water Fire Steam. About Water Fire Steam: The year is 1884. Rolla Alan Jones, an ambitious dreamer fresh out of an East Coast engineering school, is commissioned to design and build the first water system in Spokane Falls, Washington, a booming town of twenty-thousand. He is everyone's golden boy for five years until the city burns down on August 4, 1889. The once-celebrated engineer is scapegoated for the catastrophe, alleging his system yielded inadequate water pressure. Asked to resign, betrayed by his friends, shunned by the community, and abandoned by his pregnant wife and three-year-old son, Rolla must find the strength to reinvent himself or return to New York as…
The gray wolf has made an astonishing comeback in Washington. Nearly eradicated by the 1990s, conservationists and environmentalists have cheered its robust return to the state over the last two decades. But Washington ranchers are not so joyous. When wolves prey on livestock, ranchers view their livelihood as under attack. In The Return of Wolves (Timber Press), journalist Eli Francovich investigates how we might mend this divide while keeping wolf populations thriving. He finds an answer in the time-honored tradition of range riding and one passionate range rider, Daniel Curry, who has jumped directly into the fray by patrolling the rural Washington landscape on horseback. Curry engages directly with farmers, seeking to protect livestock from wolves while also protecting and proliferating wolf populations. In The…
What began as a passion project when Max Miller was furloughed during Covid-19 has become a viral YouTube sensation with a million followers amassed in just two years. The Tasting History with Max Miller channel has thrilled food enthusiasts and history buffs alike as Miller recreates a dish from the past, often using historical recipes from vintage texts, but updated for modern kitchens as he tells stories behind the cuisine and culture. From ancient Rome to Ming China to medieval Europe and beyond, Miller has collected the best-loved recipes from around the world and has shared them with his fans. Now, with beautiful photographs portraying the dishes and historical artwork throughout, Miller’s new cookbook, Tasting History (S&S/Simon Element) compiles over 60 dishes such as: Tuh’u:…
Youth Poetry Slam Championship Celebrate Portland’s youth poets during Literary Arts’ annual Verselandia! Youth Poetry Slam Championship. Cheer on students from Portland and East Multnomah County public high schools competing for poetic glory at this energetic and inspiring event. Support provided by: To support this event as a sponsor, please contact Lydah DeBin at lydah@literary-arts.org or call 503-989-7110.
Anastacia-Reneé’s Side Notes from the Archivist (Amistad Press) is a preservation of Black culture viewed through a feminist lens. The Archivist leads readers through poems that epitomize youthful renditions of a Black girl coming of age in Philadelphia’s pre-funk ’80s; episodic adventures of “the Black Girl” whose life is depicted through the white gaze; and selections of verse evincing affection for self and testimony to the magnificence within Black femme culture at-large. Every poem in Side Notes elevates and honestly illustrates the buoyancy of Blackness and the calamity of Black lives on earth. In her uniquely embracing and experimental style, Anastacia-Reneé documents these truths as celebrations of diverse subjects, from Solid Gold to halal hotdogs; as homages and reflections on iconic images, from Marsha P.…
Join us in celebration of the launch of oh orchid o’clock (Omnidawn Publishing, 2023) by Endi Bogue Hartigan who will introduce her new collection. She will be joined by Brazilian poet Flávia Rocha, who will read from her most recent book Exosfera. Enjoy an evening of lyric investigations into space, time, our time, and orchids, followed by a short discussion and Q&A. This collection speaks the language of the clock as a living instrument, exposing the sensory impacts of our obsession with time. In oh orchid o’clock, lyrics wind through histories like a nervous system through a body. The poems speak to how we let our days become over-clocked, over-transactional, and over-weaponed. With an instrumental sensibility, Endi Bogue Hartigan investigates what it is to be…
Come join the party! We're celebrating the tenth anniversary of Independent Bookstore Day and indie bookstores across the country, and of course we are celebrating YOU, who have kept this little neighborhood bookstore thriving for more than thirty years of slinging books and sharing stories. We will be providing more details about the party in the weeks to come, but you can be assured it will involve a BIG sale, live music, the spinning wheel of magical joy, and, of course, tote bags. Please come join us to celebrate all things book-ish!