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!

The Study and Practice of Autofiction

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This course is for all levels of writers and readers; the only requirement is a desire to take a deep dive into the unique art of autofiction (autobiographical fiction). We will read and discuss excerpts from contemporary authors who write within the genre, such as Lucia Berlin, Tao Lin, Edouard Louis, Chris Kraus, Garth Greenwell, Zinzi Clemmons, Ayak Akhtar and others, in addition to weekly craft essays on the genre. There will be an opportunity to submit either one or two short excerpts of yourwriting (can be from a short story or novel-in-progress) to be workshopped during the. This course is generative, so participants should plan to submit at least 1500 words per week. Most importantly importantly, the goal of this course is to be…

$285

Delve Readers Seminar: Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague: Fairy-tale, History, Allegory

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Explore Orhan Pamuk’s new novel, Nights of Plague, an epic narrative which depicts the outbreak of the bubonic plague in the late Ottoman era during the reign of the despotic Sultan Abdülhamid II. Presented as an historical novel, Nights of Plague’s diseased universe resonates with our current world, hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Pamuk’s signature style manifests itself through multiple narrative mediations, leading to an open-ended representation of history. Published in the original in 2021, the English translation of Nights of Plague is scheduled to appear in early October 2022. Texts Nights of Plague, Orhan Pamuk. translated by Ekin Oklap. Penguin-Randomhouse. October 4, 2022. The book can be preordered. It will be also available in Ebook and Audiobook formats. Access Program We want our writing…

$245

BIPOC Reading Series – October

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This bimonthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color. Come listen to our featured readers, or sign up to share your work in our open mic. Readings will be followed by a short community discussion. The theme for October is “Shadow.” Click here to register for this event. This event is open to everyone, but only people who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color will be invited to read. If you have any questions, please contact our host Jessica at  jessica@literary-arts.org.  

Free

Trivia Night

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

Trivia is conducted hybrid online and in person. Join us at the bar or join us through Zoom. This is one of our most popular events. Come early to make sure you get a table, and come early so that you can order food and drinks and get settled in time. It is also important to come up with a clever team name. If you come as a single person or a pair and are looking to make new friends, let us know and we will place you with welcoming regulars, or we might place you with other new folks. Trivia night is a great way to make new friends, and they will be sure to be good people since Publiners are quality folks. The…

Free

Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms This workshop is virtual, PST Register here Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms In this 6-week class, we will experiment with short form creative writing. Our focus—whether it’s flash fiction, lyric essay, prose poetry, or hybrid—will be on the art of compression. Each week, participants will be given a writing exercise, a short reading, and two workshop submissions from their peers. Class time will include workshop as well as discussion of readings and craft. Our workshop will be guided by observations, questions, and possibilities. We will be thinking less about how to “fix” a piece of writing and more about what we see, our curiosities, and how to recognize hidden opportunities. Each participant will receive feedback from…

$80 – $200

In-Store Poetry Reading: Riley Danvers, Xylophone Mykland, Ahuva S. Zaslavsky, Nastashia Minto

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcome local poets Riley Danvers, Xylophone Mykland, and Ahuva S. Zaslavsky for readings from their new collections, published by Portland's own First Matter Press. They will be joined by fellow local poet Nastashia Minto, who will be reading a selection of new poems. This in-store reading is first come, first served. Please be mindful of any store health policies that might be in effect on the night of the reading. About Even the Air, Too Heavy: When the body becomes a monument of loss, the self must navigate a vast internal space, not on the world's timeline, but in its own circadian cadences. Riley Danvers's collection Even the Air, Too Heavy wayfinds through the emptiness of miscarriage with words and experimental forms that…

Free

Writing About Parenthood

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this generative workshop, led by an editor at Literary Mama, we’ll mine our parenting experience for writing inspiration, while celebrating and honoring the integral role we play in the lives of others. This workshop is perfect for all levels and will include imaginative prompts, short readings, activities that will serve as catalysts for creativity, and optional opportunities to freshly-written work and receive encouraging feedback. Participants will learn fresh perspectives and new angles and approaches for developing material on this rich topic. The workshop will include a taste of SoulCollage®, an expressive arts method, through which we’ll create our own collaged cards surrounding the theme of parenting, then use them as writing prompts. (No artistic ability required.) Participants will have the opportunity to share their…

$75

The Break with Kaveh Akbar

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, “The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though many of the activities and discussions orbit or are inflected by recovery themes (Akbar has been in active recovery for eight years), participants are not required to self-identify as being in recovery to participate.” Register at: https://www.portlandalano.org/the-break Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar is a poet, teacher and the poetry editor for The Nation. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Paris Review, Poetry, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. His newest book, Pilgrim Bell, was published by Graywolf in 2021; he is also the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James,…

Free

TAP@PBF: Keep Swimming

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Stay tuned for a special podcast-only Portland Book Festival episode of Literary Arts’ The Archive Project! Karen Eva Carr (Shifting Currents: A World History of Swimming) and Bonnie Tsui (Why We Swim) in conversation, moderated by OPB’s Paul Marshall. This event is podcast only, and will be released on The Archive Project wherever you get your podcasts as part of the 2022 Portland Book Festival.  

Free

Poetry Through Divination

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this online three-part workshop, participants will explore various methods of using the Tarot and other simple forms of divination as prompts for poems. We will allow ourselves to be guided intuitively in our creations, suppressing the urge to control the process intellectually. Session One will be purely generative, focusing on starting and progressing new poems. In Session Two participants will work with the poems they started from prompts, developing them into cohesive pieces. Partly this will be through introducing a rational/intellectual component to raw materials that were derived from intuitive processes, but further divinatory and chance methods will also be part of our revision practices. In Session Three, students will share and discuss their polished work. Materials: any Tarot deck, your favorite book, pen…

$155