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 Poetry Reading: Riley Danvers, Xylophone Mykland, Ahuva S. Zaslavsky, Nastashia Minto

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

Annie Bloom's welcome local poets Riley Danvers, Xylophone Mykland, and Ahuva S. Zaslavsky for readings from their new collections, published by Portland's own First Matter Press. They will be joined by fellow local poet Nastashia Minto, who will be reading a selection of new poems. This in-store reading is first come, first served. Please be mindful of any store health policies that might be in effect on the night of the reading. About Even the Air, Too Heavy: When the body becomes a monument of loss, the self must navigate a vast internal space, not on the world's timeline, but in its own circadian cadences. Riley Danvers's collection Even the Air, Too Heavy wayfinds through the emptiness of miscarriage with words and experimental forms that…

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

TAP@PBF: Keep Swimming

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Stay tuned for a special podcast-only Portland Book Festival episode of Literary Arts’ The Archive Project! Karen Eva Carr (Shifting Currents: A World History of Swimming) and Bonnie Tsui (Why We Swim) in conversation, moderated by OPB’s Paul Marshall. This event is podcast only, and will be released on The Archive Project wherever you get your podcasts as part of the 2022 Portland Book Festival.  

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

Alison Cochrun in Conversation With Anita Kelly

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

Alison Cochrun, author of the “swoon-worthy debut” (Harper’s Bazaar), The Charm Offensive, returns with a festive romantic comedy about a woman who fakes an engagement with her landlord… only to fall for his sister. One year ago, recent Portland transplant Ellie Oliver had her dream job in animation and a Christmas Eve meet-cute with a woman at a bookstore that led her to fall in love over the course of a single night. But after a betrayal the next morning and the loss of her job soon after, she finds herself adrift, alone, and desperate for money. Finding work at a local coffee shop, she’s just getting through the days — until Andrew, the shop’s landlord, proposes a shocking, drunken plan: a marriage of convenience…

Free

TAP@PBF: Oregon Symphony

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Stay tuned for a special podcast-only Portland Book Festival episode of Literary Arts’ The Archive Project! A conversation between Oregon Symphony creative chair Gabriel Kahane and author Karen Russell (Sleep Donation). This event is podcast only, and will be released on The Archive Project wherever you get your podcasts as part of the 2022 Portland Book Festival. Karen Russell Karen Russell won the 2012 and the 2018 National Magazine Award for fiction, and her first novel, Swamplandia! (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She has also written Orange World and, most recently, Sleep Donation. She has received a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, the "5 under 35" prize from the National Book Foundation, the NYPL Young Lions Award, the Bard Fiction Prize, and is a former fellow of…

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…

Free

Documentary Screening: The Bookstour

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

In 2019, Mason took a road trip around the country to 50 independent bookstores in 50 days. His goal was to promote his self-published novel, 2084, but his conversations with booksellers shifted his focus. On a second trip, he brought a cameraman along and asked booksellers a simple question: why should we shop indie? The resultant documentary, “The Bookstour”, premiered on public television this spring. Mason works on his books--and bookish films--in Los Angeles. Screening at 8:00, panel discussion at 8:30.

Free

Mean Baby: Selma Blair with Esmé Weijun Wang

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 1037 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Selma Blair has played many roles: Ingenue in Cruel Intentions. Preppy ice queen in Legally Blonde. Muse to Karl Lagerfeld. Advocate for the multiple sclerosis community. But before all of that, Selma was known best as … a mean baby. In a memoir that is as wildly funny as it is emotionally shattering, Blair’s Mean Baby tells the captivating story of growing up and finding her truth. Blair is in conversation with Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias. This is one of two Portland Book Festival events at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, and requires a ticket for entry, in addition to your festival pass. A limited number of tickets include priority seating and a signed copy of Mean Baby. Simplify your Portland Book Festival experience…

$5 – $30