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!

Live Wire: Portland Book Festival Edition with Gary Shteyngart, Omar El Akkad, Atsuko Okatsuka, The Lowest Pair.

Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR, United States

GARY SHTEYNGART Gary Shteyngart is not afraid to get satirical when the situation calls for it. An American writer born in Leningrad, Shteyngart’s prose is filled with blistering humor and sharp societal observations powered by masterful storytelling. His work is acclaimed and awarded, best-selling and blurbed, read and translated into twenty-six languages. Our Country Friends is the story of eight friends, one country house, four romances, and six months in isolation to explore love, friendship, family, and betrayal. Twitter • Buy 'Our Country Friends' OMAR EL AKKAD Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He began his journalism career at the start of the war on terror, and, over the following decade, he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and many other locations around the…

$30 – $45

Telltale Presents: Let’s Go Home

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Hey, champ! Thanks for checking out Telltale. We are a monthly curated storytelling event for people that like to get vulnerable and take no shit. We are into genuine connection, laughter, heartbreak, poignant moments, and community building. We are solidly in our 5th season. Although we have generally gone back to doing our shows in person at The Chapel Theatre, there wasn't an available date for us for November that worked for the crew, so we're going to do a one off ZOOM ONLY show. No in person version. (We will be back to livestreaming and being in person in December though!) So let's pretend it's winter 2020 (gross....) and do this one more time. At Telltale, you can expect about 8 performers sharing something…

Free

Book Release Party: Thomas Lucky Richards

Mother Foucault's Bookshop 523 SE Morrison St, Portland, OR, United States

I will be reading from my newest book, Thirst for Beginners: poems, prose, and quizzes. My special musical guests will be Larry Yes!

Free

Submission Deadline: De-Canon + Fonograf Ed. Hybrid-Lit Anthology

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

De-Canon resumes its mission of “de-canonizing” by teaming up with Fonograf Editions to publish an anthology of hybrid-literary works by women and nonbinary BIPOC writers. This anthology will explore multimodal forms of writing that navigate the restless intersections of writing, visual art, and other media, and that innovate in their contemplations – and complications – of language and form. Submissions are open from October 1st to December 15, 2021. What is hybridity? What does it mean, and why does it matter now, to pay heed to hybrid modes of writing and art, to confluences of aesthetic mediums, to processes that make visible the seams and in-between spaces of the realms we ‘make’ in? How does the hybrid form potentially re-define “writing”? And, what fuels a…

Free

Telltale Presents: You Won’t Get What You Want

Chapel Theatre 4107 SE Harrison St, Milwaukie, OR, United States

Hey, champ! Thanks for checking out Telltale. We are a monthly curated storytelling event for people that like to get vulnerable and take no shit. We are keen on connection, laughter, heartbreak, poignant moments, and community building. We are in our fifth season now, which is wild. After a number of zoom shows, and then a number of outdoor summer shows.... we are officially back inside the Chapel Theatre, with an all vaccinated staff, vaccinated performers, and a vaccine card requirement at the door, as well as many assertive reminders about wearing your mask properly. We are just doing our best with what we have. At Telltale, you can expect about 8-10 performers sharing something with you, in the way that feels right to them--so…

Free – $10

Dao Strom Reading

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Dao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of the poetry collection, Instrument (Fonograf Editions), and its musical companion, Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (Hanoi: AJAR Press); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (Counterpoint Press) and Grass Roof, Tin Roof (Mariner Books). Her work has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, NEA, and others. She was a 2020 Oregon Literary Arts Career Fellowship recipient. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California and lives in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder and director…

Free

Reagan M. Sova Reading and Music

Revolutions Bookshop 8713 N Lombard St, Portland, OR, United States

Mark your Calendars For May 5th at 7:00 PM with Reagan M. Sova and musical guests Sunday Mornings and Abbot Daimler! We’re super excited to hear Reagan read and Play music from his new book ; Wildcat Dreams in the Death Light published by @firsttoknock Wildcat Dreams in the Death Light is an incantatory work of narrative poetry. Infused with hobo melancholy, Jewish lore, bloodshed, and hilarity, this poem is nothing short of a contemporary masterpiece. It traces young Mort Sloman’s odyssey to honor his jockey uncle—the only dead man ever to have won a horse race. But before Mort can organize a worthy funeral, he must acquire “the Locksmith keys”—a form of esoteric knowledge beyond the understanding of even graybeard rabbis. Undeterred, Mort sets…

Free

Notes and Motes: improvised jazz and surreal poetry

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

Notes & Motes: The Vlatkovich Trio Plus One Michael Vlatkovich - trombone Chris Lee - percussion Shao Way Wu - Bass Casey Bush - poet

Free

Crossings | with Performance Works NorthWest & Buckmxn Journal

Performance Works NorthWest 4625 SE 67th Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Crossings is a multi-disciplinary production seeking discovery through collaboration. Three teams—each featuring a dancer, musician, and poet—will combine skills and insights to present a new brew of performance. The three collaborating organizations, Performance Works NorthWest, Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble, and Buckmxn Journal, place the creative impulse completely in the hands of the artists, intentionally selecting creators who are also adept performers. This is a grand confluence focused deliberately on collaboration—dancers Sophia Tweed Ahmad, Danielle Ross, and Akela Jaffi; musicians Michael Gamble, Machado Mijiga, and Cyrus Nabipoor; and poets Rich Perin, Emmi Greer, and Carolyn Supinka; don’t know each other but will dare to create together. We can’t tell you what these artists will do just yet, and we like it that way. But we do…

$5 – $35

Wellspring Open Mic

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

John Carter hosts this very open mic. You’re welcome to share any of your talents from any field of art or other interest. Music and poetry, of course, but also comedy, magic, dance. You can give an art talk about a piece of visual art. You can read a chapter of your dissertation. Let’s share our creative endeavors so that we can all grow through shared inspiration. Starting in March, Wellspring will be on 2nd and 4th Sundays right after Community Art Day. Sign ups start at 6:00 or so.

Free