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!

“From South Street to Not Doctor Street: Historicism and the African American Novel” with Kenneth Warren

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for "From South Street to Not Doctor Street: Historicism and the African American Novel," a lecture with Kenneth Warren. Prof. Warren's lecture will be followed by a question and answer session. Kenneth Warren is Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English at The University of Chicago. His work focuses on American and African American literature from the late nineteenth through the middle of the twentieth century, in particular the way debates about literary form and genre articulate with discussions of political and social change. He is the author of three books: What Was African American Literature? (2010), So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism (2003), and Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism (1993).

Free

The George Floyd Rebellion and the Power of Black Lives Matter

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Please join us for a talk by Cedric Johnson, faculty in Black Studies and Political Science at University of Illinois, Chicago. Professor Johnson will be discussing his new book, The Panthers Can't Save Us Now: Debating Left Politics and Black Lives Matter (Verso). Cedric Johnson is Professor of Black Studies and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  His teaching and research interests include African American political thought, neoliberal politics, and class analysis and race. His most recent book, The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now (Verso, 2022), reprises the debate surrounding his eponymous essay, which cautioned against the perils of nostalgia and ethnic politics during Black Lives Matter’s first wave.  Johnson’s book, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics (University of Minnesota…

Free

Hawai’i Is My Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific

PSU Native American Student and Community Center 710 SW Jackson St, Portland, OR, United States

Please join us for a talk by Nitasha Tamar Sharma, Professor of African American Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. Professor Sharma will be discussing her new book Hawai'i is my Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific (Duke University Press, 2021). A comparative race studies scholar, Nitasha Tamar Sharma is a professor of African American Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University, where she was the Charles Deering Professor of Teaching Excellence. Hawai'i is my Haven is an ethnography that maps the context and contours of Black life in the Hawaiian Islands to highlight the paradox of Hawaiʻi as a multiracial paradise and site of unacknowledged antiBlack racism. Dr. Sharma is also the author of Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global…

Free

Colonial Domesticity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This lecture considers the centrality of forms of domesticity, such as family, kinship, and schooling, to the social reproduction of colonialism and racial capitalism in the United States. Colonial and capitalist social relations are materially reproduced through feminized household, care work, and biological labor. While homes and households are primary sites for the invisible and mostly unwaged labors of colonized, racialized, and immigrant women that reproduce human being, social reproduction takes place on plantations, in schools, factories, on assembly lines, in hospitals and prisons and in other institutions, at both intimate and global scales. Lisa Lowe is Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies at Yale University, Director of Graduate Studies, and an affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. An interdisciplinary scholar whose work is…

Free

Omar El Akkad on Writing the Codacene: Literature in an Age of Endings | 57th Annual Nina Mae Kellogg Lecture

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

Vanport Room (SMSU 338) The English Department presents the 57th Annual Nina Mae Kellogg Lecture, "Writing the Codacene: Literature in an Age of Endings," with Omar El Akkad. What does it mean to tell stories in a moment where it seems so much of what the world once was, it is unlikely to ever be again? Every generation must grapple with its own conception of apocalypse, and literature is no stranger to the end of the world. In this talk, journalist and author Omar El Akkad discusses some of the reporting assignments, novels and works of non-fiction that have influenced his writing, and the uncertain space many contemporary authors must inhabit when writing about a world mid-calamity. Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born…

Free

Hilary Plum

PSU - Shattuck Annex 1914 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Hilary Plum (she/her) is the author of several books, including the essay collection Hole Studies (Fonograf Editions, 2022), the novel Strawberry Fields (Fence, 2018), and the work of nonfiction Watchfires (Rescue Press, 2016), which won the GLCA New Writers Award. A collection of poetry, Excisions, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2023. She teaches at Cleveland State University and is associate director of the CSU Poetry Center. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press. Recent work has appeared in Granta, Astra, American Poetry Review, College Literature, and elsewhere.

Free

Oregon BIPOC Publishing Event: Pitching, Submitting, & Proposing

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

Literary Arts, Ooligan Press, and Portland State University’s English Department partner to present the Oregon BIPOC Writers Publishing Event. This event is designed for writers who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color to connect to the publishers and authors seeking to hear their voices. Pitching, Submitting, & Proposing: How to Make Money as a Writer  Join us for a panel discussion featuring local editors and grantors, as they discuss what makes for a successful pitch, submission, and grant proposal. Featuring Kelly Zatlin, Amy Lam, Karina Agbisit, and Jennifer Perrine. This event takes place in-person. Please see our Covid-19 guidelines for in-person events at Literary Arts. If you have any questions about this event, contact Jessica Meza-Torres at jessica@literary-arts.org. Jennifer Perrine Jennifer Perrine is the author of four…

Free

Oregon BIPOC Publishing Event: What to Expect When You’re Expecting (a Book!)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Literary Arts, Ooligan Press, and Portland State University’s English Department partner to present the Oregon BIPOC Writers Publishing Event. This event is designed for writers who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color to connect to the publishers and authors seeking to hear their voices. What to Expect When You’re Expecting (a Book!) Ever wonder what working with an editor is like? Have questions about how to navigate this relationship? This virtual workshop will feature writer-editor duo, Laura Stanfill and Ari Honavar sharing their experience working together and what made their partnership successful. This event is virtual. Click here to register in advance. If you have any questions about this event, contact Jessica Meza-Torres at jessica@literary-arts.org. Ari Honarvar Ari Honarvar is the founder of Rumi with…

Free

Transmit Culture: Libraries in the Publishing Ecosystem

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

What is the role of the library in the book ecosystem in 2022? Come hear a panel of industry experts discuss the changing relationship between libraries and publishers and authors, the controversies surrounding libraries in the book ecosystem, and career opportunities for those interested in working with libraries. Join the Zoom webinar: pdx.zoom.us/j/82587833760.

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