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!

Amber Tamblyn in Conversation With Lidia Yuknavitch, Dr. Mindy Nettifee & Dr. Nicole Apelian

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

Edited by author, actress, and activist Amber Tamblyn, Listening in the Dark (Park Row) is an anthology on women’s intuition, with essays by Amy Poehler, Samantha Irby, Jia Tolentino, Jessica Valenti, US Poet Laureate Ada Limón, America Ferrera, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, and others. Have you ever had a feeling about something that you just couldn’t explain? Something that was telling you in your gut what decision to make, which direction to go in, or what to believe. Most women are taught from an early age to ignore their intuition in favor of making logical, evidence-based decisions. But what if that small voice or deeper knowing was your greatest power? In a time when women are revolutionizing politics, entertainment, healthcare, and other industries, it’s critical to…

Free

Russ Feingold & Peter Prindiville

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

Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a convention under the Constitution's amendment mechanism — the nation's first ever — has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and for some, great power. In their important new book, The Constitution in Jeopardy (PublicAffairs), former U. S. Senator Russ Feingold and legal scholar Peter Prindiville distill extensive legal and historical research and examine the grave risks inherent in this effort. But they also consider the role of constitutional amendment in modern life. Though many…

Free

Chelsey Luger & Thosh Collins in Conversation With Sam McCracken

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

When wellness teachers and husband-wife duo Chelsey Luger and Thosh Collins founded their Indigenous wellness initiative, Well for Culture, they extended an invitation to all to honor their whole self through Native wellness philosophies and practices. In reclaiming this ancient wisdom for health and wellbeing — drawing from traditions spanning multiple tribes — they developed the Seven Circles, a holistic model for modern living rooted in timeless teachings from their ancestors. Luger and Collins have introduced this universally adaptable template for living well to Ivy league universities and corporations like Nike, Adidas, and Google, and now make it available to everyone in their wise guide. In The Seven Circles (HarperOne), Luger and Collins share intimate stories from their life journeys growing up in tribal communities,…

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

Oregon Humanities Live

Rontoms 600 East Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Join the editors of Oregon Humanities magazine for an evening of readings by recent magazine contributors. We'll hear essays and poems by Sallie Tisdale, Daniela Molnar, Paul Susi, and Laura Gibson. The event is copresented with Literary Arts as part of the Cover to Cover series and sponsored by Lyceum Agency. No RSVP is required.

Free

Rachel King in Conversation With Kimberly King Parsons

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

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 older man with cancer who lacks health care. As these low-wage workers interact under the supervision of the factory’s owner and his quietly rebellious daughter, they come to understand that in America’s postindustrial landscape, although they may help or comfort each other, they also have to do what’s best for themselves. Over the course of twelve interrelated stories in Bratwurst Haven (West Virginia University), Rachel King gives life to diverse, complex, and authentic characters who are linked through the sausage factory and through their daily lives in…

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Adam Elder in Conversation With Shawn Levy

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

In 1990, though no one knew it then, a fearless group of players changed the sport of soccer in the United States forever. Young, bronzed, and mulleted, they were America’s finest athletes in a sport that America loved to hate. Even sportswriters rooted against them. Yet this team defied massive odds and qualified for the World Cup, making possible America’s current obsession with the world’s most popular game. In this era, a U.S. Soccer Federation head coach had a better-paying day job as a black-tie restaurant waiter. Players earned $20 a day. The crowd at home games cheered for their opponent, and the fields were even mismarked. In Latin America, the U.S. team bus had a machine gun turret mounted on the back, locals would…

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Samantha Cole in Conversation With Andi Zeisler

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

From the moment there was an “online,” there was sex online. The famous test image used by software engineers to develop formats like the jpeg was “Lena,” taken from Playboy’s November 1972 centerfold. Early bulletin boards and multi-user domains quickly came to serve their members sexual musings. Facebook started as a way to rate “hot or not” Harvard co-eds. In fact, virtually every significant development that defines the Internet we know and love (and hate) today — privacy issues, online payments and online banking, dating, social media, streaming technology, mass data collection — came about through the meeting of sexuality and technology. And the kicker is, not only did sexuality vastly influence the Internet, but the Internet arguably changed modern human sexuality by giving every…

Free

First Thursday: A Map Will Get You Only So Far

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

A Map Will Get You Only So Far features mixed media works by Portland, Oregon artist Cristina Aine Berretta. Everyone found their own ways through the strange landscape of the past few years, and Cristina’s latest show documents the path she took and where she found inspiration and solace along the way. Drawn from long walks in the wilderness and long afternoons in the backyard, imagined islands and ghostly trees are joined by haloed birds and evocative landscapes.

Free

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 I Don’t Care by Julie Fogliano. Buy the Book

Free