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!

Michelle Nijhuis in Conversation With Elena Passarello

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In the late 19th century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species to extinction, a movement to protect and conserve them was born. In Beloved Beasts (W. W. Norton), acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement’s history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale. Nijhuis describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, as well as lesser-known figures in conservation history; she reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund; she explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping…

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Submission Deadline: Oregon Humanities: Features for “Climate”

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For the summer issue of Oregon Humanities magazine, we want to hear stories and ideas about what global climate change means for the people and land of this place. Tell us about how climate change and its myriad consequences affect your work, or how you choose what work to do; how you raise your children, or whether you decide to have them; how you vote; where you live; what you eat. How are Oregonians adapting to climate change personally and politically? Who are building visionary communities in these rapidly changing climates? What possibilities does climate change provide, and what does it foreclose? What about other kinds of climate—political winds, social ambiance, architecture and infrastructure, work environment, and other prevailing conditions? We’re looking particularly for stories…

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Thor Hanson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid (Basic), beloved natural historian and biologist Thor Hanson — author of Buzz, The Triumph of Seeds, and Feathers — tells the remarkable story of how plants and animals are responding to climate change: adjusting, evolving, and sometimes dying out. Anole lizards have grown larger toe pads, to grip more tightly in frequent hurricanes. Warm waters have caused the development of Humboldt squid to alter so dramatically that fishermen mistake them for different species. Brown pelicans move north, and long-spined sea urchins south, to find cooler homes. And when coral reefs sicken, they leave no territory worth fighting for, so aggressive butterfly fish transform instantly into pacifists. A story of hope, resilience, and risk, Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid is natural…

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FROM KNOWLEDGE TO POWER Launch Party

Lucky Labrador Beer Hall 1945 NW Quimby St, Portland, OR, United States

We're hosting a party to celebrate the launch of FROM KNOWLEDGE TO POWER by John Perona! Join us in celebrating K2P's release with food, drinks, and by spending the evening with other climate advocates. The launch party will include a discussion between author John Perona and climate advocate and actress K.B. Mercer, a brief talk by John Perona about several of his favorite chapters from the book, and an author signing with Q&A. Mark your calendars, this is an event you won't want to miss!

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Neal Stephenson in Conversation With Lev Grossman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Neal Stephenson's sweeping, prescient new novel transports readers to a near-future world in which the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves, and virulent, deadly pandemics. One man — visionary billionaire restaurant chain magnate T. R. Schmidt, Ph.D. — has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as "elemental." But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied? Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock (William Morrow) brings together a disparate group of…

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Dan Lambe

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

Timed to the organization's 150th anniversary, Dan Lambe’s Now Is the Time for Trees (Timber Press), written with Lorene Edwards Forkner, celebrates the Arbor Day Foundation’s important role in conservation and energizes readers to plant trees as a means of individual climate activism. Trees and forests are the number one nature-based solution for revers­ing the negative effects of a changing climate. If ever there was a time to be planting trees, that time is now. Inspired by a collective sense of urgency, a global movement to plant trees is gaining momentum. To move the needle, we need to act on a massive scale and plant millions of trees today to have a measurable and lasting impact on billions of lives tomorrow. In Now Is the…

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Jon Raymond in Conversation With Leni Zumas

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

Denial (Simon & Schuster) is a futuristic thriller about climate change by Jon Raymond, the acclaimed screenwriter of First Cow, Meek’s Cutoff, and HBO’s Mildred Pierce. The year is 2052. Climate change has had a predictably devastating effect: Venice submerged, cyclones in Oklahoma, megafires in South America. Yet it could be much worse. Two decades earlier, the global protest movement known as the Upheavals helped break the planet’s fossil fuel dependency, and the subsequent Nuremberg-like Toronto Trials convicted the most powerful oil executives and lobbyists for crimes against the environment. Not all of them. A few executives escaped arrest and went into hiding, including pipeline mastermind Robert Cave. Now, a Pacific Northwest journalist named Jack Henry who works for a struggling media company has received…

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Madeline Ostrander in Conversation With Michelle Nijhuis

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

How do we find a sense of home and rootedness in a time of unprecedented upheaval? What happens when the seasons and rhythms in which we have built our lives go off-kilter? Once a distant forecast, climate change is now reaching into the familiar, threatening our basic safety and forcing us to reexamine who we are and how we live. In At Home on an Unruly Planet (Henry Holt), science journalist Madeline Ostrander reflects on this crisis not as an abstract scientific or political problem but as a palpable force that is now affecting all of us at home. She offers vivid accounts of people fighting to protect places they love from increasingly dangerous circumstances. A firefighter works to rebuild her town after catastrophic western…

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Ruby McConnell and Char Miller

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for an evening with Ruby McConnell and Char Miller discussing their latest books, Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of Life and Natural Consequences: Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril. Ruby McConnell is a registered geologist and outdoor adventurer. She is a recipient of numerous honors, including the Literary Arts Oregon Literary Fellowship, and she was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. Ground Truth is an extended eulogy to a rapidly changing land, population and society awakening to the realities of logging, climate change, land-use and pollution. The book illuminates the central role of landscapes in our ideas of home and self despite the growing disconnect between modern lifestyle and the environment. Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental…

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Jake Bittle in Conversation With Monica Samayoa

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

When the subject of migration that will be caused by global climate change comes up in the media or in conversation, we often think of international refugees — those from foreign countries who will emigrate to the United States to escape disasters like rising shorelines and famine. What many people don’t realize though, is that climate migration is happening now — and within the borders of the United States. A human-centered narrative with national scope, Jake Bittle’s The Great Displacement (Simon & Schuster) is the first book to report on climate migration in the US. From half-drowned Louisiana to fire-scorched California, from the dried-up cotton fields of Arizona to the soaked watersheds of inland North Carolina, people are moving. In the last decade alone, the…

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