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!

Colonial Domesticity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This lecture considers the centrality of forms of domesticity, such as family, kinship, and schooling, to the social reproduction of colonialism and racial capitalism in the United States. Colonial and capitalist social relations are materially reproduced through feminized household, care work, and biological labor. While homes and households are primary sites for the invisible and mostly unwaged labors of colonized, racialized, and immigrant women that reproduce human being, social reproduction takes place on plantations, in schools, factories, on assembly lines, in hospitals and prisons and in other institutions, at both intimate and global scales. Lisa Lowe is Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies at Yale University, Director of Graduate Studies, and an affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. An interdisciplinary scholar whose work is…

Free

Everybody Reads: OLGA TOKARCZUK’S THE BOOKS OF JACOB

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The 2022 Levy Event The Sixth Annual Levy Event at Portland State University Everybody Reads: OLGA TOKARCZUK’S THE BOOKS OF JACOB We invite you to read Olga Tokarczuk’s masterpiece, now translated for the first time into English, and attend a worldwide discussion of the book guided by our distinguished panelists, held on Zoom. HOW TO PARTICIPATE: 1. Read the book. Go ahead and start reading! The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk is widely available! Purchase through your favorite bookseller! 2. Register. This event is free with prior registration and will be held on Zoom. Please go to our registration page. 3. Log in on May 15 and participate in the community-wide discussion. About the book and its author Poland’s literary star Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019.…

Free

Nick Seabrook

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

A redistricting crisis is now upon us. Nick Seabrook’s surprising, compelling new book, One Person, One Vote (Pantheon) tells the history of how we got to this moment — from the Founding Fathers to today’s high-tech manipulation of election districts — and shows us as well how to protect our most sacred, hard-fought principle of one person, one vote. Here is THE book on gerrymandering for citizens, politicians, journalists, activists, and voters. Seabrook, an authority on constitutional and election law and an expert on gerrymandering, begins before our nation’s founding, with the rigging of American elections for partisan and political gain and the election meddling of George Burrington, the colonial governor of North Carolina, in retaliation against his critics. Seabrook writes of Patrick Henry, who…

Free

Rose City Book & Paper Fair

DoubleTree Hotel 1000 NE Multonomah St, Portland, OR, United States

Announcing the in-person return of the annual Rose City Book & Paper Fair! June 17-18, 2022 1000 NE Multnomah Portland, Oregon Friday 2-8 pm & Saturday 10 am-5 pm Admission $5 Booksellers from the Pacific Northwest and beyond will be bringing their best rare and collectible books, ephemera, maps, prints, photographs and more. Click here for a list of our exhibitors. Mark your calendar and stay tuned for updates. Tickets on sale now at Eventbrite!

$5

Rose City Book & Paper Fair

DoubleTree Hotel 1000 NE Multonomah St, Portland, OR, United States

Announcing the in-person return of the annual Rose City Book & Paper Fair! June 17-18, 2022 1000 NE Multnomah Portland, Oregon Friday 2-8 pm & Saturday 10 am-5 pm Admission $5 Booksellers from the Pacific Northwest and beyond will be bringing their best rare and collectible books, ephemera, maps, prints, photographs and more. Click here for a list of our exhibitors. Mark your calendar and stay tuned for updates. Tickets on sale now at Eventbrite!

$5

Ada Calhoun

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

When Ada Calhoun stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews her father, celebrated art critic Peter Schjeldahl, had conducted for his never-completed biography of poet Frank O’Hara, she set out to finish the book her father had started 40 years earlier. As a lifelong O’Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, Calhoun thought the project would be easy, even fun, but the deeper she dove, the more she had to face not just O’Hara’s past, but also her father’s, and her own. The result is a groundbreaking and kaleidoscopic memoir that weaves compelling literary history with a moving, honest, and tender story of a complicated father-daughter bond. Also a Poet (Grove Press) explores what happens when we want to…

Free

Kim Kelly in Conversation With Shane Burley

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

Fight Like Hell (Atria/One Signal) is a revelatory and inclusive history of the American labor movement, from independent journalist and Teen Vogue labor columnist Kim Kelly. Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America’s civil rights movement. These are only some of the working-class heroes who propelled American labor’s relentless push for fairness and equal protection under the law. The names and faces of countless silenced, misrepresented, or forgotten leaders have been erased by time as a privileged few decide which stories…

Free

Marilyn Milne & Linda Kirk

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

In the 1960s, Tillamook County, Oregon was at war with itself. As the regional dairy industry shifted from small local factories to larger consolidated factories, and as profit margins for milk and cheese collapsed, Tillamook farmers found themselves in a financial crisis that fueled multiple disputes. The ensuing Cheese War included lies and secrets, as well as spies, high emotion, a shoving match, and even a death threat. Sisters Marilyn Milne and Linda Kirk, children of the Cheese War, conducted years of research and have integrated it with tales of their experiences as farm kids living through the all-consuming fight. As Americans become ever more interested in food supply chains and ethical consumption, Cheese War (Oregon State) is the story of the very human factors…

Free

W. Kamau Bell & Kate Schatz in Conversation With Megan Rapinoe

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

W. Kamau Bell and Kate Schatz’s Do the Work! (Workman) is a hands-on workbook for anyone overwhelmed by racial injustice, who feels shocked by all the American histories they never learned, and who keeps asking the question “what can I DOOOOOO?!” Packed with humorous, thought-provoking activities — all are rooted in history and contemporary social justice concepts — Bell and Schatz’s new book helps readers move from "What can I do?" to... you know... actually doing the work. Revelatory and thought-provoking, their highly illustrated, highly informative interactive workbook gives readers a unique, hands-on understanding of systemic racism — and how we can dismantle it. Packed with activities, games, illustrations, comics, and eye-opening conversation, Do the Work! challenges readers to think critically and act effectively. Try…

Free

Claude Johnson in Conversation With Keith Houlemard

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

From the introduction of the game of basketball to Black communities on a wide scale in 1904 to the racial integration of the NBA in 1950, dozens of African American teams were founded and flourished. This period, known as the Black Fives Era (teams at the time were often called “fives”), was a time of pioneering players and managers. They battled discrimination and marginalization and created culturally rich, socially meaningful events. But despite headline-making rivalries between big-city clubs, the savvy moves of innovative businessmen, and the undeniable talent of star players, this period is almost entirely unknown to basketball fans. Claude Johnson has made it his mission to change that. An advocate fiercely committed to our history, for more than two decades Johnson has conducted…

Free