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!

In-Store Reading: Jeff Fearnside with Kim Stafford

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Oregon author Jeff Fearnside for the launch of his new book, Ships in the Desert. Jeff will be in conversation with Portland writer and Oregon poet laureate Kim Stafford. This in-store reading is first come, first served. Seating is limited. Please be mindful of any store health policies that might be in effect on the night of the reading. Signed and personalized copies are available for pre-order! Please, please, please include the name for personalization in the order notes; all orders without a name specified in the order notes will be signed only. About Ships in the Desert: In this linked essay collection, award-winning author Jeff Fearnside analyzes his four years as an educator on the Great Silk Road, primarily in Kazakhstan.…

Free

In-Store Reading: Bill Lascher: The Golden Fortress

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland author Bill Lascher for the in-store launch of his new book, The Golden Fortress: California's Border War on Dust Bowl Refugees. This in-store reading is first come, first served. Seating is limited. Please be mindful of any store health policies that might be in effect on the night of the reading. Signed and personalized copies are available for pre-order! Please, please, please include the name for personalization in the order notes; all orders without a name specified in the order notes will be signed only. About The Golden Fortress: In February 1936, Los Angeles police officers drove hundreds of miles to California’s state borders with one mission: turn back anyone deemed too poor to enter. Myths of the Golden State’s abundance…

Free

Rinker Buck

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

Seven years ago, readers around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules and propelled his book about the trip, The Oregon Trail, to ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. A modern-day Huck Finn, Buck casts off down the river on the flatboat Patience, accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, Buck steers his fragile wooden craft through narrow channels dominated by massive cargo…

Free

Mike Duncan

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

From Mike Duncan, author of The Storm Before the Storm and host of the Revolutions podcast, comes Hero of Two Worlds (PublicAffairs), the thrilling story of the Marquis de Lafayette’s lifelong quest to defend the principles of liberty and equality. Few in history can match the revolutionary career of the Marquis de Lafayette. Over 50 incredible years at the heart of the Age of Revolution, he fought courageously on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a soldier, statesman, idealist, philanthropist, and abolitionist. As a teenager, Lafayette ran away from France to join the American Revolution. Returning home a national hero, he helped launch the French Revolution, eventually spending five years locked in dungeon prisons. After his release, Lafayette sparred with Napoleon, joined an underground…

Free

Rachel Aviv in Conversation With Stephanie Danler

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Strangers to Ourselves (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is the highly anticipated debut from acclaimed, award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv, compelling us to examine how the stories we tell about mental illness shape our sense of who we are. In her powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life…

Free

First Matter Press 2022 Book Release Celebration & Reading

205 NW 4th Ave 205 NW 4th Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Our community is invited to join us for a poetry reading and the launch of five new books from our 2022 cohort of authors! Capacity is limited so please register for a ticket to attend. Our authors will begin reading at 5:30pm. We look forward to celebrating with you! **This is an indoor venue. To protect the health of our community, masks are strongly encouraged. ** * Even the Air, Too Heavy by Riley Danvers A vivid navigation through the experience of miscarriage, grief and the search for healing in a blend of text + image, experimental and traditional forms, affirming the transformational power of poetry. * Between These Borders Wanders a Golem by ahuva s. zaslavsky A hybrid book of poems, flash, and short…

Free

First Friday Art and Poetry with Scott Poole

Birdhouse Books 1001 Main Street, Vancouver, WA, United States

Join us in launching the third installment of Scott Poole's Paintings and Poetry chapbook series! THE CLOUDS WILL SAVE YOU NOW is the new *limited edition* art book of 20 poems and 20 paintings from Vancouver artist and writer Scott Poole. The event, which will include a launch reception, refreshments, a reading, and original art from Scott, will be held at Birdhouse Books on October 7th at 7pm.

Free

In-Store Reading: Steven Mayfield: Delphic Oracle, U.S.A.

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes back Portland author Steven Mayfield for the in-store launch of his new novel, Delphic Oracle, U.S.A. Masks are required for this event. We keep a supply of masks near our front door for anyone who needs one. Signed and personalized copies are available for pre-order! Please, please, please include the name for personalization in the order notes; all orders without a name specified in the order notes will be signed only. About Delphic Oracle, U.S.A.: It is 1925 when a love affair between enchantress Maggie Westinghouse and con man July Pennybaker upends the small town of Miagrammesto Station, tumbles it about, and sets it back down as Delphic Oracle, Nebraska. Will their love fulfill its destiny? The narrator of this wry, entertaining…

Free

Livestream Reading: Rachel King: Bratwurst Haven

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes back Portland author Rachel King for the online launch of her new linked story collection, Bratwurst Haven. Rachel will be in conversation with Rajia Hassib, author of the novel A Pure Heart. Watch the video recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76hd2ncvG2M Signed and personalized copies of Bratwurst Haven are available for order! Please, please, please include the name for personalization in the order notes; or indicate "signed only." About Bratwurst Haven: Linked stories trace the vocational and emotional bargains made by workers at a Colorado sausage factory. It’s almost a decade after the Great Recession, and in Colorado, St. Anthony Sausage has not recovered. Neither have its employees: a laid-off railway engineer, an exiled computer whiz, a young woman estranged from her infant daughter, an…

Free

Katherine Dunn Tribute Event with Naomi Huffman & Lydia Kiesling

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

Toad (MCD) is a previously unpublished novel of the reflections of a deeply scarred and reclusive woman, from cult icon Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love. Sally Gunnar has been in love, has been mad, has been an agent of destruction, has been spurned; and now she has retreated from the world. She lives in isolation in her small house, where her only companions are a vase of goldfish, a garden toad, and the door-to-door salesman who sells her cleaning supplies once a month. From her comfortable perch, she broods over her deepest regrets: her wayward, weed-hazy college days; her blighted romance with a scornful poet; a tragically comic accident involving a paper cutter; a suicide attempt; and her decision to ultimately relinquish a conventional…

Free