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!

Aubrey Gordon in Conversation With Sarah Marshall

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

In her new book, “You Just Need to Lose Weight” (Beacon Press), Aubrey Gordon, co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast and creator of Your Fat Friend, equips you with the facts to debunk common anti-fat myths and with tools to take action for fat justice. The pushback that shows up in conversations about fat justice takes exceedingly predicable form. Losing weight is easy — calories in, calories out. Fat people are unhealthy. We’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Fat acceptance “glorifies obesity.” The BMI is an objective measure of size and health. Yet, these myths are as readily debunked as they are pervasive. In “You Just Need to Lose Weight," Gordon equips readers with the facts and figures to reframe myths about fatness…

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Caverly Morgan

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

When Caverly Morgan reentered the world after a period of eight solitary years as a practicing Zen monk, she was confronted with a question so many of us find ourselves asking these days: when faced with the enormity of the collective problems before us, how can an individual mindfulness and meditation practice actually make a difference in our world? In The Heart of Who We Are (Sounds True), Morgan explores how contemplative technologies designed for the pursuit of personal freedom can be — and must be — applied collectively. Filled with wisdom rooted in presence and the truth of our oneness, Morgan’s timely guide invites us to connect with the core of who we are and then use that understanding to transform our own lives…

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Lauren Fleshman in Conversation With Robin Romm

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

Lauren Fleshman has grown up in the world of running. One of the most decorated collegiate athletes of all time and a national champion as a pro, she was a major face of women’s running for Nike before leaving to shake up the industry with feminist running brand, Oiselle, and now coaches elite young female runners. Every step of the way, she has seen the way that our sports systems — originally designed by men, for men and boys — fail young women and girls as much as empower them. Girls drop out of sports at alarming rates once they hit puberty, and female collegiate athletes routinely fall victim to injury, eating disorders, or mental health struggles as they try to force their way past…

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Kids’ Storytime with Christine Babinec

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

It’s never too early to teach children about the necessity of boundaries and the power of consent. Developed by therapist Christine Babinec after years of working with survivors of abuse, Want a Hug?: Consent and Boundaries for Kids (Familius) is a book about communication, understanding, mutuality, listening, and love. Far from a didactic lecture, this joyful picture book affirms that developing consent skills is a natural, positive, fun, and affirming experience. With colorful, inviting illustrations, children will learn that it’s okay to say no and, perhaps more importantly, it’s okay to say yes. The power is in the choice. Preorder a Signed Edition

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Emme Lund in Conversation With Vanessa Friedman

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

Emme Lund’s The Boy with a Bird in His Chest (Atria) is a “poignantly rendered and illuminating” (The Washington Post) coming-of-age story about “the ways in which family, grief, love, queerness, and vulnerability all intersect” (Kristen Arnett). Though Owen Tanner has never met anyone else who has a chatty bird in their chest, medical forums would call him a Terror. From the moment Gail emerged between Owen’s ribs, his mother knew that she had to hide him away from the world. After a decade spent in isolation, Owen takes a brazen trip outdoors and his life is upended forever. Suddenly, he is forced to flee the home that had once felt so confining and hide in plain sight with his uncle and cousin in Washington.…

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Erika Bolstad in Conversation With Lydia Kiesling

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

At first, Erika Bolstad knew only one thing about her great-grandmother, Anna: she was a homesteader on the North Dakota prairies in the early 1900s before her husband committed her to an asylum under mysterious circumstances. As Erika's mother was dying, she revealed more. Their family still owned the mineral rights to Anna's land — and oil companies were interested in the black gold beneath the prairies. Their family, Erika learned, could get rich thanks to the legacy of a woman nearly lost to history. Anna left no letters or journals, and very few photographs of her had survived. But Erika was drawn to the young woman who never walked free of the asylum that imprisoned her. As a journalist well versed in the effects…

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Curtis White

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

In Transcendent (Melville House), celebrated cultural critic Curtis White asks what Buddhism will look like in the future. Do we want a secular Buddhism that looks like corporations and neuroscience? Or do we want a Buddhism that still provides refuge from the debased world of money and things? Transcendence is not about magic realms where spirits fly about; the world is, as Shunryu Suzuki put it, its own magic. We only need to reclaim it and reclaim our humanity while we’re at it. The problem White suggests is a culture that recognizes only "things," capitalist things and science things, and aggressively denies the idea that the world of things has a beyond. We're told by science ideologues like the New Atheists that we live in…

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Kids’ Storytime

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

Join us every Saturday for kids’ storytime. Today we’re reading My Parents Won’t Stop Talking! by Emma Hunsinger and Tillie Walden. Buy the Book

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Alison Mariella Désir in Conversation With Peter Bromka

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

Running saved Alison Désir’s life. At rock bottom and searching for meaning and structure, Désir started marathon training, finding that it vastly improved both her physical and mental health. Yet as she became involved in the community and learned its history, she realized that the sport was largely built with white people in mind. Running While Black (Portfolio) draws on Désir’s experience as an endurance athlete, activist, and mental health advocate to explore why the seemingly simple, human act of long distance running for exercise and health has never been truly open to Black people. Weaving historical context — from the first recreational running boom to the horrific murder of Ahmaud Arbery — together with her own story of growth in the sport, Désir unpacks…

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Deb Perelman in Conversation With Liz Crain

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

Deb Perelman is the author of two bestselling cookbooks (The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook and Smitten Kitchen Every Day), one of the internet's most successful food bloggers, the creator of a homegrown brand with more than a million Instagram followers, and the self-taught cook with the tiny kitchen who obsessively tests her recipes to make sure that no bowls are wasted and that the results are always worth the effort. In her new book, Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Forever Files (Knopf), Perelman gives us 100 recipes (including a few favorites from her site) that aim to make shopping easier, preparation more practical and enjoyable, and food more reliably delicious for the home cook. These are the fail-safe, satisfying recipes you’ll rely on for…

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