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!
A reading with some of the Oregon Book Awards finalists in poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction: manuel arturo abreu David Biespiel Patrick deWitt Nick Dybek Apricot Irving John Larison Matthew Minicucci Dionisia Morales Meaghan O’Connell Wendy Willis Beth Wood Taylor Zajonc Leni Zumas
In Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State (Picador), we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Buckling under the weight of being a single parent, Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in the hope that the quiet will bring clarity. Boy, was she wrong. Ultimately, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world. The National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honoree will be joined in conversation by Meaghan O’Connell, author of And Now We Have Everything.
We are delighted to welcome Nicole Chung to discuss her book, All You Can Ever Know (just released in paperback by Catapult) with Portland authors Meaghan O’Connell and Lydia Kiesling on Tuesday, November 5th, at 7 pm. The thread of motherhood connects these three authors and their books, a jump-off point for conversation about parenting, race, identity, and family. Nicole Chung was placed for adoption by her Korean parents and raised by a white family in a rural Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of her adoption as a comforting, prepackaged myth. She believed that her biological parents had made the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of giving her a better life. With warmth, candor, and startling insight, Nicole Chung tells of her…
“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink….”–Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway Red Ink makes one think of vitality, blood, the monthly cycle, correcting history, and making a mark on the world. This dynamic series focuses on women writers, past and present, and is held four times a year at Books are Magic in Brooklyn. Join us for a special Portland edition. Featuring Gabby Rivera (Juliet Takes a Breath), Cari Luna (The Revolution of Every Day), and Meaghan O'Connell (And Now We Have Everything). Curated and moderated by Michele Filgate (What My Mother And I Don't Talk About). The topic is ambition.
In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener – stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial – left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress. Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir, Uncanny Valley (MCD), is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. Wiener will be joined…