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!
Submissions for our Fall Issue close on the first official day of Fall. Have you submitted yet? Pile Press accepts poetry, short fiction, CNF, art, photography, comics, and more. Pile Press is an alternative publishing collective for women, non-binary, and gender fluid creatives. You can find more information on their website here. Submission guidelines can be found here.
The millions of people around the world who read and loved What If? still have questions, and those questions are getting stranger. Thank goodness xkcd creator Randall Munroe is here to help. Planning to ride a fire pole from the moon back to Earth? The hardest part is sticking the landing. Hoping to cool the atmosphere by opening everyone’s freezer door at the same time? Maybe it’s time for a brief introduction to thermodynamics. Want to know what would happen if you rode a helicopter blade, built a billion-story building, made a lava lamp out of lava, or jumped on a geyser as it erupted? Okay, if you insist. Before you go on a cosmic road trip, feed the residents of New York City to…
Drawing on the experiences of his Vietnamese American family and his love of ’80s sci-fi shows, award-winning creator Jonathan Hill crafts a funny, insightful graphic novel about the immigrant experience and the perils of middle school. Threatened with diminishing resources, Booger Lizk’t and his family flee their lizard community deep below Earth’s crust to survive above among humans. The Lizk’t family of Elberon now passes as the Tomkins family of Eagle Valley. “Tommy Tomkins” wears a human face to school but can’t seem to fit in no matter how he looks. The basketball team becomes a pipe dream when bullies label him a bug eater, and only Dung Tran, an immigrant from Vietnam and fellow outsider, sees Tommy for who he is inside, which is…
We'll read graphic novels for early readers. Pick up a grab & go bag at the beginning of each month to participate! Ages 5-7. October 2022 Tiny Tales: Shell Quest by Steph Waldo November 2022 Hello, Crabby! by Jonathan Fenske December 2022 Beak & Ally: Unlikely Friends by Norman Feuti January 2023 Owly: The Way Home by Andy Runton February 2023 Pea, Bee, & Jay: Stuck Together by Brian Smith March 2023 Shelby & Watts: Tidepool Trouble by Ashlyn Anstee April 2023 Arlo & Pips: King of the Birds by Elise Gravel Room Location: Children's Room
Submissions for Issue 19: Hacking are now open. Submit your piece(s) by November 30, 2022. The color of the cover will be Gray. General Guidelines We publish fiction, poetry, comics, art, images, medical reports, plays, essays, philosophies, sculptures, sounds, mushroom dataset analyses, magic spells, fairy tales, folklore, riddles, jokes, horoscopes, death-predictions, and more. Surprise us! We have open submissions on a rolling basis. *Winter Issue: Open September 1st through November 30th. Release: January. Spring Issue: Open December 1st through February 28th. Release: April. Summer Issue: Open March 1st through May 31st. Release: July. Fall Issue: Open June 1st through August 31st. Release: October. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but let us know if the piece gets accepted elsewhere. We do not accept previously published works. Include…
We'll read graphic novels for early readers. Pick up a grab & go bag each month to participate! Ages 5-7. October 2022 Tiny Tales: Shell Quest by Steph Waldo November 2022 Hello, Crabby! by Jonathan Fenske December 2022 Beak & Ally: Unlikely Friends by Norman Feuti January 2023 Owly: The Way Home by Andy Runton February 2023 Pea, Bee, & Jay: Stuck Together by Brian Smith March 2023 Shelby & Watts: Tidepool Trouble by Ashlyn Anstee April 2023 Arlo & Pips: King of the Birds by Elise Gravel Room Children's Room
Learn More & Get Tickets In 1977 a comic was launched with the tagline, “This female fights back!” We can’t disclose who the character is, but you would recognize her from her blue and red outfit and oversized fists. Indeed, this character punched her way past a cavalcade of villains, but did so while struggling not to gain weight and keeping her day job as a magazine editor. This character was identified as “This Woman, This Warrior” in the first issue of her solo series, and her story arc offers a complicated response to second-wave feminism in the mainstream media, particularly as she was written by male creators who, based on interviews and letter columns, seemed unfamiliar with key tenets of feminism and were more…
To join us for this lively event, please register here. On Monday, March 13, Portland State University hosts Will Eisner Week 2023, celebrating sequential art and freedom of expression in a no-holds-barred conversation with creator Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir), author and illustrator of Gender Queer, the US’s most banned book of 2022! The Zoom discussion will be moderated by Dr. Susan Kirtley, director of PSU’s Comics Studies program, in conjunction with the department of English, the department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, and the Center for Urban Studies. Winner of the comics industry’s Ignatz Award, the American Library Association Alex Award, and the Stonewall Books Award, Maia Kobabe is a nonbinary, queer author and illustrator from the Northern California Bay Area,…
Archie Bongiovanni, the comics artist behind the hit A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns, explores queerness in their shockingly frank and funny graphic novel, Mimosa (Abrams ComicArts – Surely). Best friends and chosen family Chris, Elise, Jo, and Alex work hard to keep themselves afloat. Their regular brunches hold them together even as the rest of their lives threaten to fall apart. In an effort to avoid being the oldest gays at the party, the crew decides to put on a new queer event called Grind — specifically for homos in their dirty thirties. Grind is a welcome distraction from their real problems: after a messy divorce, Chris adjusts to being a single parent while struggling to reconnect to their queer community. Elise…
Old Pal is currently open for submissions until May 20, 2023! We publish poetry, fiction, criticism, excerpts, audio, mixed media, and various mediums of art. We encourage artists from all experience levels and communities to submit. Contributors are compensated $50 upon publication. We ask that submissions are limited as follows: Up to 10 pages of poetry Up to 15 pages of prose Up to 10 images or visual artworks Up to five minutes of audio or video Simultaneous submissions are welcome; we just ask that you notify us to withdraw works if accepted elsewhere. We do not accept previously published work; however, works previously posted to social media will still be considered. There is no submission fee or subscription required to submit. All rights revert…