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!

Starting the Memoir

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

John D’Agata describes memoir as “an agitation of memory,” which suggests memory-based writing as not just the expression of memory but volatile, vital consideration of memory. In this workshop, participants will look at examples of prose memoir in which the writer uses the poet’s tools of meditation, dream, and lyricism, and then do their own memory-based writing. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and Delve tuitions at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available. Please apply…

$80

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

Reality Bites: Rafael Agustin & Chuck Klosterman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Reckoning with the nineties, a decade that is not only back in fashion in a big way but a political, social, and societal impact that still ripples through our culture today. We’ll look at the the nineties from two very different perspectives: intensely personal, with Rafael Agustin’s memoir Illegally Yours; and from the stance of cultural criticism, with Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties. Moderated by Eden Dawn (The Portland Book of Dates). When Rafael Agustin (Illegally Yours) tried to get his driver’s license during his junior year of high school, his parents were forced to reveal his immigration status. Suddenly, the kid who modeled his entire high school career after American TV shows had no idea what to do — there was no episode of Saved…

Free

Life Story: Jon Mooallem & Casey Parks

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Narrative journalism at its very best, with acclaimed essayist Jon Mooallem and award-winning journalist Casey Parks. Moderated by Melissa Febos, author of Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. Jon Mooallem’s powers of perception have established him as one of the most distinctive, empathic, and clear-sighted narrative journalists working today. The Wall Street Journal has called his writing “as much art as it is journalism,” and Jia Tolentino has praised his “grace and command.” In Serious Face, Mooallem brings to life the desperate hopes and urgent fears of the people he meets, telling their stories with empathy, humor, insight, and kindness. These elegant, moving essays form an idiosyncratic tapestry of human experience: our audacity and fallibility, our bumbling and goodwill. In moments of calamity and within the extreme…

Free

PBF Cover to Cover: SPEKTRUM Tea Service

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Nick Jaina is an author and musician living in Oakland, California. His 2015 memoir Get It While You Can was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Atlantic Monthly, Wilderness House Review, Somnambulist, Oregon Journal of the Humanities, and many other places. He has composed music scores for feature films, such as the indie comedy All Sorts and the forest fire documentary Elemental. He also co-founded a ballet collective in New York City, in which he was the musical composer and worked with dancers from Julliard and New York City Ballet and performed works at the Baryshnikov Center and BAM Center for the Arts. His new book, SPEKTRUM, is a literary re-creation of an immersive light and sound exhibit…

$25

PBF Cover to Cover: SPEKTRUM Tea Service

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Nick Jaina is an author and musician living in Oakland, California. His 2015 memoir Get It While You Can was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Atlantic Monthly, Wilderness House Review, Somnambulist, Oregon Journal of the Humanities, and many other places. He has composed music scores for feature films, such as the indie comedy All Sorts and the forest fire documentary Elemental. He also co-founded a ballet collective in New York City, in which he was the musical composer and worked with dancers from Julliard and New York City Ballet and performed works at the Baryshnikov Center and BAM Center for the Arts. His new book, SPEKTRUM, is a literary re-creation of an immersive light and sound exhibit…

$25

Haunted: Writing into Death & The Dead with Sonya Lea — begins November 8th

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Haunted: Writing into Death & The Dead Begins November 8th, 2022 Four weekly 2-hour sessions over Zoom on Tuesdays from 5-7PM PST (11/8, 11/15, 11/22, 11/29) “Many people live and die without ever confronting themselves in the darkness. Pray that one day, you will spin around at the water’s edge, lean over, and be able to count yourself among the lucky.” ― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties “What would you read to someone who was dying? Annie Dillard had asked our class. She wanted this to be the standard for our work. There, at the memorial service for my friend, I thought of another: Dying, what stories would you tell?” ― Alexander Chee, How to Write An Autobiographical Novel: Essays “My grief…

$200 – $400

LC English Fall ’22 Reading Series: Jane Wong

Lewis & Clark - Frank Manor House 0615 SW Palatine Hill Road, Portland, OR, United States

LC English welcomes the poet Jane Wong! Jane is the author of How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). Her debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, is forthcoming from Tin House in May 2023. A Kundiman fellow, Jane is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room, the U.S. Fulbright Program, Artist Trust, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay, the Jentel Foundation, and others. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University. Frank Manor House, Armstrong Lounge

Free

Fall | Sustaining a Writer’s Notebook: A Yearlong Practice w Wendy Willis | Dec 2022 – Dec 2023 | Online

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this year-long class, we will explore the practice of creating and sustaining a writer’s notebook. Using prompts both in class and between sessions, each participant will develop and strengthen a notebook practice that works for them.  We'll use notebooks to catch the wisps of our lives and our wildest ideas. We will read excerpts of writers' and  other artists' notebooks and consider how a notebook is both an artifact in and of itself and mulch for other art--poem, novel, memoir, essay, painting, pasta sauce. At the end of the year, we'll  have a reading and an opportunity to display pages from our notebooks. Primer Session: December 10, 2022, 9am - 2pm Pacific Time. / 2023 Sessions: First Saturday of every month, 9am -12pm Pacific Time . . .…

$899 – $914

Lauren Fleshman in Conversation With Robin Romm

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

Lauren Fleshman has grown up in the world of running. One of the most decorated collegiate athletes of all time and a national champion as a pro, she was a major face of women’s running for Nike before leaving to shake up the industry with feminist running brand, Oiselle, and now coaches elite young female runners. Every step of the way, she has seen the way that our sports systems — originally designed by men, for men and boys — fail young women and girls as much as empower them. Girls drop out of sports at alarming rates once they hit puberty, and female collegiate athletes routinely fall victim to injury, eating disorders, or mental health struggles as they try to force their way past…

Free