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!

Risograph Basics @ Outlet!

Outlet 2500 Northeast Sandy Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

About the Workshop Welcome to our Risograph Basics course: a printing, collage, experimentation, and mark making extravaganza! Get to know Outlet and our RISO sisters (Barbara, Janet, Corita, and Tina) and learn the basics of this fun and unique print method! This workshop is a great place to start if you’re new to riso, or if you’d like a refresher! We’ll take a deep dive into risograph history, an overview of how these machines work, the stencil-duplicator process, and the quirks and fun (sometimes unpredictable) outcomes of riso printing. The main focus of this class is EXPERIMENTATION. We’ll share print and zine inspiration, favorite mark making tools and how to use them for riso, and we’ll walk through a print demo on two of our…

$100 – $125

Chelsea Bieker: Book Launch for Paperback of Heartbroke

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Please join us to celebrate the launch of the paperback edition of Heartbroke, with the author Chelsea Bieker in conversation with fellow author Genevieve Hudson. Heartbroke is a defining book of Californian stories where everyone is seeking or sabotaging love. United by the stark and sprawling landscapes of California's Central Valley, the characters in these stories boil with reckless desire. A woman steals a baby from a shelter in an attempt to recoup her own lost motherhood. A phone-sex operator sees divine opportunity when a lavender-eyed cowboy walks into her life. A mother and a son selling dream catchers along a highway that leads to a toxic beach manifest two young documentary filmmakers into their realm. And two teenage girls play a dangerous online game…

Free

National Poetry Month: FREE Movie Night! Slam featuring poet Saul Williams

The Headwaters Theatre 55 Northeast Farragut Street #9, Portland, OR, United States

April is National Poetry Month! Come enjoy a free movie and stay for the open mic! Tonight's film will be Slam (1998) featuring poet Saul Williams. A little about Slam and Saul Williams: Slam is a 1998 American independent drama film directed, co-written and co-produced by Marc Levin and starring and co-written by Saul Williams and Sonja Sohn. It tells the story of a young African-American man whose talent for poetry is hampered by his social background. Saul Stacey Williams (born February 29, 1972) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, musician, poet, writer, and actor. He is known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop, and for his lead roles in the 1998 independent film Slam and the 2013 jukebox musical Holler If…

$10

Jessica Gigot and Ann Stinson

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

It is always a joy to welcome authors from Oregon State University Press to the store, and tonight we have two of them! Please join us to hear Ann Stinson and Jessica Gigot discussing their most recent books, The Ground at My Feet and A Little Bit of Land, respectively. Ann Stinson grew up on her family’s tree farm in southwestern Washington state, on a ridge above the Cowlitz River. After building a life in New York and Portland, she returned home at the age of fifty, when her brother’s death from cancer left her manager and co-owner of three hundred acres planted in Douglas fir, western red cedar, and ponderosa pine. The Ground at My Feet is a memoir about loss and grief as…

Free

Portland Poetry Slam Presents: Roxy Allen

Tiny's Coffee - NE MLK Jr 2031 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

We will see you this Sunday with a feature from Roxy Allen! Sign up for our Poetry Slam or Open mic! Open to all!

Free

Katherine Corcoran in Conversation with Tim DuRoche

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

We are pleased to welcome journalist Katherine Corcoran in conversation with Tim DuRoche, Director of Programs at WorldOregon, discussing her book In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, A Cover-Up, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press, published by Bloomsbury. In the Mouth of the Wolf is a true crime story that examines the ongoing epidemic of journalist killings through the story of one legendary reporter, Regina Martinez, and her untimely death in 2012. A fearless journalist out of Mexico’s Gulf Coast state of Veracruz who wrote for the magazine Proceso, Martinez spent decades laying out the corruption and abuse underlying Mexican politics, and constantly fought to report the truth and give a voice to those without one in the country. A behind-the-scenes…

Free

Poets & Popcorn

Alberta Abbey 126 NE Alberta Street #205, Portland, OR, United States

Event starts at 5:30 All ages welcome. Free parking is available in the lot across the street until full. A creative writing workshop, open mic, and film screening community event at The Abbey. Poets and writers will engage in a 1-hour cross-genre / poetry writing workshop in conversation with the themes, subjects, and ideas of the selected film. A 45-minute community open mic will follow, inviting attendees to share new creative work and build literary community with each other. A free admission community film screening will conclude the event, encouraging donations and concession stand purchases beforehand. Workshop participants will be additionally encouraged to engage with the film as an ekphratic inspiration to continue their workshop drafts at a future date. Each stage of the event…

Free

Marcy Cottrell Houle, Forest Park: Exploring Portland’s Natural Sanctuary

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

We think Marcy Cottrell Houle is a wonder. With each of her books she brings such clarity and useful information to us all. So we are exceptionally happy to have her in the store to present her latest book: Forest Park: Exploring Portland's Natural Sanctuary, a gorgeously illustrated book published by Oregon State University Press. Situated in the rugged hills west of downtown Portland, Forest Park is the nation's premier urban natural sanctuary. It supports essential habitat for hundreds of native plants and animals, including species at risk, and is one of the largest city parks in the world, offering miles of outstanding hiking trails within minutes of downtown. Forest Park showcases this treasure in a new light, offering a compendium of the most up-to-date…

Free

Independent Bookstore Day!

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Come join the party! We're celebrating the tenth anniversary of Independent Bookstore Day and indie bookstores across the country, and of course we are celebrating YOU, who have kept this little neighborhood bookstore thriving for more than thirty years of slinging books and sharing stories. We will be providing more details about the party in the weeks to come, but you can be assured it will involve a BIG sale, live music, the spinning wheel of magical joy, and, of course, tote bags. Please come join us to celebrate all things book-ish!

Free

Jewish Poetry Book Club at EJC

Eastside Jewish Commons 2420 NE Sandy Blvd., Portland, OR, United States

Love to read poetry? Drawn to Jewish poets writing in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish in translation? Let's lift the poetry off the page with some communal meaning-making. Jion us on some first Wednesdays 12:30 - 2 PM at the Eastside Jewish Commons, 2420 NE Sandy. June 7, 2023 September 6, 2023 December 6, 2023 Bring copies of two poems by your favorite Jewish poet to read together on June 7th. From there we will assemble and vote on which poets' books to read for the year. Bring your lunch. Please plan on making a small donation to EJC each time we meet. $3 - $10 is suggested. No one turned away for lack of funds. Under the instigation but not tutelage of Betsy Fogelman Tighe.…

$3 – $10