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!
Award winning author, Paul Lisicky will enchant us with his words on Saturday, September 21st 2019, after day one of his workshop :: On Urgency at Corporeal Center. This reading is free and open to the public. You can also pre-order Paul's forthcoming book, LATER with Graywolf Press (2020) here :: https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/later
In 1974, at the age of 32, Les AuCoin became the first Democrat to win a U.S. House seat in Oregon’s First District. He was one of the post-Watergate reformers who shook up an insular, autocratic Congress and led fights for affordable housing, “trickle-up” economics, wilderness protection, abortion rights, and nuclear arms control. In the 1980s, The Oregonian called him “the most powerful congressman in Oregon.” In his compelling collection of life stories, Catch and Release (Oregon State University), AuCoin traces his unlikely rise from a fatherless childhood in Central Oregon to the top ranks of national power. Catch and Release offers readers a revealing glimpse behind the scenes of congressional life, as lived by the 535 souls who inhabit the U.S. House and Senate…
In this Delve seminar, we’ll explore autobiographies executed in the medium of comics, and in doing so sample from a few of the world’s most respected illustrator-storytellers. In turn, Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi will each inspire and challenge participants as we examine graphic literature’s unique perspective on created identity. READING LIST: ONE! HUNDRED! DEMONS! by Lynda Barry FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi MAUS by Art Spiegelman: A DRIFTING LIFE by Yoshihiro Tatsumi Delve Access Program We want Delve seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. We are happy to offer an Access Program which provides reduced tuition to…
This Delve will examine the essays of James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the black freedom struggle. We will devote our first session to Baldwin’s early autobiographical writings, literary criticism, and essays. We will consider how Baldwin draws on personal experience to reach conclusions about identity, morality, and power and we will confront Baldwin’s early thoughts on the responsibilities of the writer. In Session 2, we will consider some Baldwin’s major pieces on the “lover’s war” between the writer and their society. In these pieces, we will find Baldwin diagnosing the ills of the American soul and gesturing toward a prescription for what ails us. In Session 3, we will travel to the American South with Baldwin as he visits the region for the…
What happens when a childhood hobby grows into a lifelong career? The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist (Drawn & Quarterly), Adrian Tomine's funniest and most revealing foray into autobiography, offers an array of unexpected answers. When a sudden medical incident lands Tomine in the emergency room, he begins to question if it was really all worthwhile: despite the accolades and opportunities of a seemingly charmed career, it's the gaffes, humiliations, slights, and insults he's experienced (or caused) within the industry that loom largest in his memory. Tomine illustrates the amusing absurdities of how we choose to spend our time, all the while mining his conflicted relationship with comics and comics culture. But in between chaotic book tours, disastrous interviews, and cringe-inducing interactions with other artists,…
For the first time in seven years, Allie Brosh — beloved author and artist of the extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller Hyperbole and a Half — returns with a new collection of comedic, autobiographical, and illustrated essays. Solutions and Other Problems (Gallery Books) includes humorous stories from Brosh’s childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life. Solutions and Other Problems, featuring all-new material, marks the return of a beloved American humorist who has “the observational skills of a scientist, the creativity of an artist, and the wit of a comedian” (Bill Gates). Brosh will be joined in conversation by a…
In “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman wrote, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” We’ll follow in Whitman’s footsteps by reading and writing poems that explore the multiple people we have been, are, and could be. We’ll also blend autobiographical and fictional details and invite in personae—selves who seem vastly different from us—to discover new strategies for writing from the fullness of our messy, contradictory lives. October 11 – November 1, 2020 Sundays, 2:00-4:00 p.m (4 sessions) online via Zoom Instructor: Jennifer Perrine Jennifer Perrine is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Again (Airlie Press, 2020). Perrine’s other books include No Confession, No Mass, winner of the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize; In the Human Zoo, which was…
My Life in Transition (Andrews McMeel) is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed autobiographical comics collection, Super Late Bloomer, documenting transgender artist Julia Kaye’s life post-transition. My Life in Transition is a story that’s not often told about trans lives: what happens beyond the early days of transition. Both deeply personal and widely relatable, this collection illustrates six months of Julia's life as an out trans woman — about the beauty and pain of love and heartbreak, struggling to find support from bio family and the importance of chosen family, moments of dysphoria and misgendering, learning to lean on friends in times of need, and finding peace in the fact that life keeps moving forward. After the nerve-wracking, anxiety-ridden early transition period has ended and…
Through autobiographical writing about our identities—including race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and class—we’ll explore where we hold power and privilege and where we have experienced marginalization and oppression. In addition to experimenting with craft techniques such as audience, point of view, research, dialogue, and figurative language, we’ll also discuss how to use our writing in service of reflection, healing, truth-telling, and culture change. By the end of the course, I hope you’ll emerge with several drafts, and that we’ll each emerge with a deeper understanding of what it means to have lived in our individual bodies. Access Program We want our Delves and writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some…
Through autobiographical writing about our identities—including race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and class—we’ll explore where we hold power and privilege and where we have experienced marginalization and oppression. In addition to experimenting with craft techniques such as audience, point of view, research, dialogue, and figurative language, we’ll also discuss how to use our writing in service of reflection, healing, truth-telling, and culture change. By the end of the course, I hope you’ll emerge with several drafts, and that we’ll each emerge with a deeper understanding of what it means to have lived in our individual bodies. Please note there is also a section of this class that is open to all. This section is for BIPOC participants only. Access Program We want our Delves and writing…