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!

Denis Kitchen Lecture: Will Eisner Week 2019

PSU Lincoln Recital Hall 1620 S. Park Avenue, Portland, OR, United States

Celebrate the life and legacy of comics legend Will Eisner, father of the graphic novel, creator of The Spirit, and one of the most influential comics authors of all time! Denis Kitchen, Eisner’s longtime publisher, agent, and friend, will discuss Eisner’s lifetime in comics and share some personal stories about Will. In addition to his work as a publisher, Kitchen is a veteran cartoonist, comics scholar, exhibition curator, and founder of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. In 2015, Kitchen was elected to the Will Eisner Comics Industry Hall of Fame. This event will be in Room 75.

Free

Portland Comic Book Month 10th Anniversary celebration at City Hall

Portland City Hall 1221 SW 4th Ave, Portland, OR, United States

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Portland Comic Book Month, Commissioner Chloe Eudaly is honored to host an opening party and art exhibit at City Hall on First Thursday April 4, 2019. Portland City Hall (1221 SW 4th Ave) will be transformed into a mini-convention with more than 20 tables featuring local comic book creators, publishers, educators, nonprofits, and collectives, showcasing the range of talent and diversity in the Portland comics community. Commissioner Eudaly’s office will also host an art exhibit featuring 25 local comic book artists. The opening event, which runs 5pm-9pm, is free and open to all ages. Commissioner Eudaly will make a special proclamation at 6pm, followed by live drawing by local artists. Pizza will be provided by local sponsors Sizzle Pie.…

Free

Will Eisner and the Business of Comics

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

In honor of Will Eisner Week, PSU hosts this panel discussion featuring Dark Horse Comics founder Mike Richardson, IDW's Ted Adams, and moderator Charles Brownstein of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Free

Comics Publishing

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

What does a career in comics publishing look like? Join alumni from the PSU book publishing program and comics certificate as they talk about comics publishing in Portland: their career trajectories, thoughts on the latest developments in comics, and time as students at PSU. Featuring: Jenny Blenk - Assistant Editor at Dark Horse Melissa Gifford - Content Manager at Image Comics Konner Knudsen - Assistant Editor at Dark Horse Comics Erika Schnatz - Senior Production Artist at Image Comics

Free

Captions and Corpses: How to read an EC Comic

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join PSU's Comics Studies program for a talk with Professor Qiana Whitted. In her talk, Prof. Qiana Whitted draws from her recent book on EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest to explore the 1950s publisher’s effort to distinguish between “entertaining” and “educational” reading practices that were mindful of the public’s anxieties over how comic books could influence young readers. Her discussion will consider the ways that EC’s writers and artists arranged the verbal and visual dynamics of the comics page to steer the potential impact of notorious crime and horror titles such “The Whipping” and “The Guilty.” Evaluating these creative choices raises important questions about the taboo combination of explicitness, incredulity, and reading pleasure that EC branded as “shock comics," engaging complex social messages amid the…

Free

Making Comics with Ebony Flowers

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join award-winning comics creator Ebony Flowers, author of Hot Comb, for a hands-on and generative workshop. Participants will develop their ability as a writer, picture-maker, and observer while exploring spontaneous storytelling practices. By the end of the workshop, each participant will have a working draft of a short creative non-fiction comic. No drawing experience necessary! The synchronous workshop will be held on April 28 at 4pm on Zoom. An additional asynchronous (complete at your own pace) workshop will be available to registrants on April 5. Register here. Meet Your Instructor: Ebony is a cartoonist and an ethnographer. She was born and raised in Maryland. She holds a BA in Biological Anthropology from the University of Maryland College Park and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the…

Free

PSU Comics Studies Info Session

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Do you love comics? Would you like to know more about how you can study and make comics at PSU? Please join us for an informational meeting on November 3rd at 5pm with Dr. Susan Kirtley. We’ll discuss the classes being offered, upcoming events, and requirements for the certificate. There will also be time for questions and conversation.

Free

Solve for X: How X-Men Comics Got a New Identity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The X-Men comic books of the past three years—the "Krakoan era"—have reinvented the long-running, impossibly rococo superhero franchise, devising ingenious solutions to its longstanding narrative and design problems. Douglas Wolk will present a whistle-stop tour of six decades' worth of Marvel's mutant comics, and discuss how "Head of X" Jonathan Hickman, designer Tom Muller, artists Pepe Larraz and R.B. Silva, colorist Marte Gracia and their collaborators overhauled the X-Men line in 2019. Douglas Wolk is the author of All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told, and teaches comics history at Portland State University. He’s written about comics and music for magazines, newspapers and web sites including Time, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, The Believer, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice,…

Free

A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN JENNINGS AND DAMIAN DUFFY

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join Comics Studies and the Portland Center for the Humanities at PSU for a conversation with John Jennings and Damian Duffy, co-collaborators on Black Comix Returns and the graphic novelization of Octavia Butler's prescient dystopian novel Parable of the Sower. John Jennings is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside. Jennings is co-editor of the Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of the Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. Jennings is also a 2016 Nasir Jones Hip Hop Studies Fellow with the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. Jennings' current projects include the horror anthology Box of Bones, the coffee table book Black Comix Returns (with Damian Duffy), and the Eisner-winning, Bram Stoker Award-winning, New York…

Free

A Conversation with Comics Creator Maia Kobabe

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

To join us for this lively event, please register here. On Monday, March 13, Portland State University hosts Will Eisner Week 2023, celebrating sequential art and freedom of expression in a no-holds-barred conversation with creator Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir), author and illustrator of Gender Queer, the US’s most banned book of 2022! The Zoom discussion will be moderated by Dr. Susan Kirtley, director of PSU’s Comics Studies program, in conjunction with the department of English, the department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, and the Center for Urban Studies. Winner of the comics industry’s Ignatz Award, the American Library Association Alex Award, and the Stonewall Books Award, Maia Kobabe is a nonbinary, queer author and illustrator from the Northern California Bay Area,…

Free