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!

Regan Penaluna

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

As a young woman growing up in small-town Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: who are we and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academician — the first step, she believed, toward becoming a self-determined person living a life of the mind. What Penaluna didn’t realize was that the Western philosophical canon taught in American universities, as well as the culture surrounding it, would slowly grind her down through its misogyny, its harassment, its devaluation of women and their intellect. Where were the women philosophers? One day, in an obscure monograph, Penaluna came across Damaris Cudworth Masham’s name. The daughter of philosopher Ralph Cudworth and…

Free

Slamlandia

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

Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community. This event takes place in-person. Please see our Covid-19 guidelines for in-person events at Literary Arts. Hosted by Julia Gaskill. **Slamlandia usually takes place the third Thursday of the month, but will be taking place the second Thursday in April due to some scheduling conflicts. We will resume to third Thursdays after this month. Thanks!** Julia Gaskill Julia Gaskill is a professional daydreamer hailing from Portland, Oregon. Her…

Free

Angie Thomas in Conversation With Rosanne Parry

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

Superstar author Angie Thomas makes her middle grade debut with the launch of an inventive, hilarious, and suspenseful new contemporary fantasy trilogy inspired by African American history and folklore. It’s not easy being a Remarkable in the Unremarkable world. Some things are cool — like getting a pet hellhound for your twelfth birthday. Others, not so much — like not being trusted to learn magic because you might use it to take revenge on an annoying neighbor. All Nic Blake wants is to be a powerful Manifestor like her dad. But before she has a chance to convince him to teach her, a series of shocking revelations and terrifying events launch Nic and two friends on a hunt for a powerful magic tool she’s never…

Free

Lisa Dodson in Conversation With Andrea Paluso

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Many Americans take comfort and convenience for granted. We eat at nice restaurants, order groceries online, and hire nannies to care for kids. Getting Me Cheap (The New Press) is a riveting portrait of the lives of the low-wage workers — primarily women — who make this lifestyle possible. Sociologists Lisa Dodson and Amanda Freeman follow women in the food, health care, home care, and other low-wage industries as they struggle to balance mothering with bad jobs and without public aid. While these women tend to the needs of well-off families, their own children frequently step into premature adult roles, providing care for siblings and aging family members. Based on years of in-depth field work and hundreds of eye-opening interviews, Getting Me Cheap explores how…

Free

Kids’ Storytime With Stephanie Shaw

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Hen insists on doing everything alone. When Fox comes calling, Hen's friends start to worry… but should they? Hen isn't a little chick anymore. She's spread her wings and can get a job done just the way she likes it! She can grow wheat herself, she can wheelbarrow it home by herself, and she can turn it into delicious bread all by herself. No need to bother offering Hen a helping hand of any sort, thank you. She's got it covered! But then comes Fox… and Fox loves to eat all kinds of tasty things. So when Pig, Horse, and Cow discover that Fox has paid Hen a visit, should they step in and offer assistance that Hen hasn't asked for? Stephanie Shaw’s All by…

Free

Springfield Celebrates Authors: Leah Sottile and Deb Vanasse

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join two of this year’s Oregon Book Awards finalists in General Nonfiction for a talk and reading at the Springfield Public Library. When the Moon Turns to Blood by Leah Sottile is a modern-day survivalism and end-times extremism tale told through the story of Lori Vallow, and her husband, Chad Daybell. A swashbuckling narrative of treachery and obsession, Roar of the Sea by Deb Vanasse is a tale of pirates, fur seals, competing governments, and near war. Nonfiction that reads like a novel, Roar of the Sea tells how a lone activist existing in the margins prevailed against the odds to save a species. Leah SottileDeb Vanesse Leah Sottile is a journalist, podcast host and the author of the book When the Moon Turns to…

Free

Susan Gevirtz & David Abel, Works on Paper

Passages Bookshop 1801 NW Upshur, Suite 660, Portland, OR, United States

Works on Paper: Experiments in Language and Sound presents SUSAN GEVIRTZ DAVID ABEL Saturday, April 15 7:30 pm (doors open 7:00) $10-20 suggested donation; no one turned away Passages Bookshop 1801 NW Upshur, Suite 660 503-388-7665 ========================== SUSAN GEVIRTZ Susan Gevirtz will read and play voiceover soundtracks from her play Motion Picture Home recently published in the collection Burns from Pamenar Press. Motion Picture Home was written at the request of Kevin Killian who also directed it for a Poet’s Theatre jubilee in San Francisco. Named after the actual Motion Picture Home for retired stars and workers of the Hollywood movie industry in Los Angeles, it addresses the death there of Gevirtz’s grandfather, and other deaths and schisms such as divorce, wish, and liaisons between…

Free – $20

Smallpresspalooza

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

After a four-year absence, Smallpresspalooza is back! Powell's presents this marathon reading of authors published by local and national small presses for the twelfth time. This year's lineup features Marcelle Heath, Sam Rose Preminger, Nicholas Yandell & Timothy Arliss O'Brien, Craig Buchner, Benjamin Kessler, Marialicia González, Eric Tran, Alyssa Giannini, Ashley Yang-Thompson, Quinn Gancedo, X.C. Atkins, and April Alexis Hernandez. Hosted by Powell's small-press champion and publisher of Future Tense Books, Kevin Sampsell. A full Smallpresspalooza schedule is available here. Preorder a Signed Edition (Heath) Preorder a Signed Edition (Preminger) Preorder a Signed Edition (Yandell & O’Brien) Preorder a Signed Edition (Buchner) Preorder a Signed Edition (Kessler) Preorder a Signed Edition (González) Preorder a Signed Edition (Tran) Preorder a Signed Edition (Giannini) Preorder a Signed…

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