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!

Omar El Akkad in Conversation With Roy Scranton

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

From Omar El Akkad, the widely acclaimed author of American War, comes What Strange Paradise (Knopf), a beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving new novel that brings the global refugee crisis down to the level of a child’s eyes. More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vänna: a teenage girl, native to the island, who lives inside her own sense…

Free

Delve Readers Seminar: Shuggie Bain

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Douglas Stuart won the 2020 Booker Prize with this debut novel about young Hugh (Shuggie) Bain, growing up in 1980s Glasgow and struggling to care for his wayward, alcoholic mother. Drawing on his own experience, Stuart portrays the difficulties of a working-class, queer childhood with heartbreaking tenderness, bringing Shuggie and his world vividly to life. This seminar will introduce readers to one of the most exciting new voices in literature. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classses…

$120

Books Around the Corner: Science Fiction Book Club (REMOTE)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us July 20th at 6:30pm for our Science Fiction Book Club. We will discuss We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker. About the Book: Everybody's getting one. Val and Julie just want what's best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all. Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device. Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse?…

$16.00

How to Get a Literary Agent

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Kirby Kim, Janklow and Nesbit Renée Jarvis, Triangle House Literary agents are the publishing professionals whose job is to be in an author’s corner, to champion their work and find it the best home and negotiate the strongest deals. So, how do you research hundreds of agents to find ones who would be the best fit for your creative visions? How do you query them to demonstrate that you are a perfect addition to their list? Once you’ve signed with an agent, what will your professional relationship look like? What are the reasons an author-agent relationship might end, and what should you do next? Join our panel of seasoned literary agents to learn about all about the process, from the early…

$10

Carrot Quinn in Conversation With Torrey Peters

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

After a childhood marked by neglect, poverty, and periods of homelessness, and raised by a mother who believed herself to be the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, Carrot Quinn moved out on her own. She found a sense of belonging among straight-edge anarchists who taught her how to traverse the country by freight trains, sleep in fields under the stars, and feed herself by foraging in dumpsters. Her new life was one of thrilling adventure and freedom, but still, she was haunted by the ghosts of her lonely and traumatic childhood. The Sunset Route (Dial Press) is a powerful and brazenly honest adventure memoir set in the unseen corners of the United States — in the Alaskan cold, on trains rattling through forests and deserts,…

Free

A conversation with Jayne Allen and LaTanya McQueen

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

We have been reminded how important it is for diverse voices to be heard. #BlackVoices helps amplify the many titles from authors with stories to tell. Join us in 2021 as we use our resources and access to help amplify #BlackVoices. Save your spot for a virtual live event with authors Jayne Allen and LaTanya McQueen. Jayne Allen is being called an “An author to watch!"—Emily Henry, New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read. The first novel in a captivating three-book series about modern womanhood, in which a young Black woman must rely on courage, laughter, and love—and the support of her two longtime friends—to overcome an unexpected setback that threatens the most precious thing she’s ever wanted. LaTanya McQueen is the author of…

Free

Patrick Wyman in Conversation With Mike Duncan

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Patrick Wyman, creator of the hit podcast series Tides of History and Fall of Rome, explores the four explosive decades between 1490 and 1530, bringing to life the dramatic and deeply human story of how the West was reborn. In the bestselling tradition of The Swerve and A Distant Mirror, The Verge (Twelve) tells the story of a period that marked a decisive turning point for both European and world history. Here, Wyman examines two complementary and contradictory sides of the same historical coin: the world-altering implications of the developments of printed mass media, extreme taxation, exploitative globalization, humanistic learning, gunpowder warfare, and mass religious conflict in the long term, and their intensely disruptive consequences in the short term. As told through the lives of…

Free

Books Around the Corner: Horror Book Club (REMOTE)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

We will meet on Thursday July 22nd at 6:30pm and discuss Paradise Club by Tim Meyer. About the book: Welcome to Paradise. Sandy beaches. Crystalline waters. An all-inclusive resort with virtually everything you can think of. A true idyllic paradise. An event is taking place at Paradise Club that wasn’t on the brochure: a dangerous game pitting the hotel’s guests against a gang of bloodthirsty maniacs. Elliot Harper—family man and FBI agent—is about to find out how fast heaven can become hell when every single vacationer is forced to become a ruthless killer in order to survive. A team of killers have been unleashed, and they won't stop until every single guest is dead. Let the mayhem begin . . . TO ATTEND: 1) Purchase the book club…

$15.95

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

Love Notes: Flash Prose

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this prompt-driven 2-day intensive participants will create a series of connected flash love stories. With the aid of experimental exercises exploring prose and poetry (epistolary, lists, photo captions, etc.) we will celebrate and write about love in all its forms, including the flip side of love and more! Special attention will be paid to voice and technique. Fiction, non-fiction, all genres welcome. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classses have at least one access spot available.…

$145