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!

PNCA Low-Residency MFA Program Summer 2020 Residency Classes & Readings Open to the Public

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

As part of the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program, PNCA offers talks, discussions, and readings by acclaimed writers and artists, July 24th to August 3rd. Everything is free and open to the public. All events this summer are hosted via Zoom. The passwords for all faculty classes are 515000. CLASSES Saturday, July 25 10am: Unsafe is Not a Feeling: How Writing Contends with the Illusion of Safety Sara Jaffe https://pnca.zoom.us/j/98345715004?pwd=OVVOLysrZUh5S0hxS0d5QlBHUDZMUT09 2pm: Winter Poop, Spring Revivals, Summer Fires, and Fall Marigolds Alison C Rollins https://pnca.zoom.us/j/98224439656?pwd=TnNGWkJmQUZaTWlOOXFhZjlhUnJudz09 Sunday, July 26 10am: THE ART OF WEALTH (in life & in literature) Vi Khi Nao https://pnca.zoom.us/j/95075415254?pwd=YVd4ZVJON3YrZHIrdWF1MXN4WmkwZz09 Monday, July 27 10am: Outsider Ecopoetics Tyrone Williams https://pnca.zoom.us/j/95516376236?pwd=T1EycmFvM05STEJlN1JPZ3k3WVY3dz09 11am: Feminism / Queer Theory Shawna Liption and Sloane McNulty https://pnca.zoom.us/j/97573944766?pwd=Y0NZeEtETmxZdDFRczRrYU0wdEJLdz09 Tuesday, July 28…

Free

Portland Book Festival: Opening Day

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join Literary Arts for the annual Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America, taking place online November 5-21, 2020, with digital events streaming at different times throughout the day. The digital festival will feature author events for all ages, pop-up readings, and writing classes. Come together with your community and celebrate our shared passion for books. Subscribe to our monthly e-news and continue to check online for the latest news. The schedule is here! You can RSVP to events to receive reminders and add to your calendar. Be sure to register at PDXBookFest.org, our custom live streaming site, and tune in starting November 5. The 2020 Festival is free to attend, no passes are required. Register to watch at PDXBookFest.org. If you’d like to support the work we do…

Free

OR e-Con

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Although we won’t be in person this year as we had, we’re excited to host a *free* virtual mini-con on our con dates, November 13-15, 2020, called OR-e-Con! This event will be hosted online via ZOOM, with access links being provided to the Orycon mailing list. TO REGISTER AND RECEIVE THE ACCESS LINK: We will be giving access links for the Zoom rooms to the OR e-Con mailing list. To sign up for our mailing list, please email: announceadmin@orycon.org While this will be a free event, we will be requesting donations both to cover the costs of the virtual event and for use elsewhere in the organization. Volunteers are also needed for this event, and you can request more information by contacting volunteers@orycon.org. AUTHOR GUEST…

Free

PDX Playwrights: AN EVENING WITH OSCAR AND NOEL – by Thomas Mason and Craig Mason

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Two theater icons meet in the afterlife. Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward, one pilloried for being gay and the other the ultimate symbol of cool sophistication. Hear what they have to say on all manner of things, scandal, play writing, coming out. This one-act play is definitely not in hell, but maybe in heaven, maybe in purgatory. At 7 pm Pacific Time, please join us using this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83860730981?pwd=YzRDd0xNUmNOYngxa3BTUUE4K1RRUT09 Meeting ID: 838 6073 0981 Passcode: 725789 One tap mobile +16699006833,,83860730981#,,,,*725789# US (San Jose) Dial by your location +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcAo2emuE NOTE: When our readings are conducted as virtual sessions, readers usually have been pre-cast by the playwrights. Fellow writers, actors and listeners are warmly invited to participate…

Free

David Duchovny in Conversation With Kristi Turnquist

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

David Duchovny’s The Reservoir (Akashic) follows an unexceptional man in an exceptional time. We see our present-day pandemic world and New York City through the eyes of a former Wall Street veteran, Ridley, as he, in his enforced quarantined solitude, looks back upon his life. He examines his wins, his failures, the gnawing questions — his career, his divorce, his estranged daughter — and wonders what it all means and who he really is. Sitting and brooding night after night, gazing out his huge picture window high above the Central Park Reservoir, Ridley spots a flashing light in an apartment across the park as if a lonely quarantined person is signaling him in Morse code. His determination to find out who this mystery woman is,…

Free

Maria Adelmann in Conversation With Steve Almond

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina's love story will shock them all. Though the women start out wary of one another, judging each other’s stories, gradually they begin to realize that they may have more in common than they supposed… What really brought them here? What secrets will they reveal? And is it too late for them…

Free

Zach Mangan in Conversation With Jim Meehan

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

Explore the artistry of Japanese tea from cultivation to cup in Stories of Japanese Tea (Princeton Architectural Press), a comprehensive illustrated guide to the tea industry from Zach Mangan, founder of Kettl, a New York City- and Fukuoka, Japan-based tea and teaware company. Stories of Japanese Tea includes Japanese growers, their craft of tea-making, and how the tradition of tea has had an influence on cuisine, art, and health. Mangan’s visual exploration of one of the world's most popular beverages tells the stories of tea and tea-making in Japan: how it is grown, harvested, and processed, as well as how it is prepared and enjoyed. Through interviews with tea growers, information on health benefits from Dr. Andrew Weil, and amazing recipes from Japanese chefs and…

Free

Nick Seabrook

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

A redistricting crisis is now upon us. Nick Seabrook’s surprising, compelling new book, One Person, One Vote (Pantheon) tells the history of how we got to this moment — from the Founding Fathers to today’s high-tech manipulation of election districts — and shows us as well how to protect our most sacred, hard-fought principle of one person, one vote. Here is THE book on gerrymandering for citizens, politicians, journalists, activists, and voters. Seabrook, an authority on constitutional and election law and an expert on gerrymandering, begins before our nation’s founding, with the rigging of American elections for partisan and political gain and the election meddling of George Burrington, the colonial governor of North Carolina, in retaliation against his critics. Seabrook writes of Patrick Henry, who…

Free

Lars Horn in Conversation With Elena Passarello

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

Lars Horn’s Voice of the Fish (Graywolf), the latest Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize winner, is an interwoven essay collection that explores the trans experience through themes of water, fish, and mythology, set against the backdrop of travels in Russia and a debilitating back injury that left Horn temporarily unable to speak. In Horn’s adept hands, the collection takes shape as a unified book: short vignettes about fish, reliquaries, and antiquities serve as interludes between longer essays, knitting together a sinuous, wave-like form that flows across the book. Horn swims through a range of subjects, roving across marine history, theology, questions of the body and gender, sexuality, transmasculinity, and illness. From Horn’s upbringing with a mother who used them as a model in photos and art…

Free

Dan Chaon in Conversation With Shawn Vestal

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Sleepwalk (Henry Holt) is a high speed and darkly comic road trip through a near-future America with a big-hearted mercenary, from beloved and acclaimed novelist Dan Chaon. Sleepwalk’s hero, Will Bear, is a man with so many aliases that he simply thinks of himself as the Barely Blur. At 50 years old, he’s been living off the grid for over half his life. He’s never had a real job, never paid taxes, never been in a committed relationship. A good-natured henchman with a complicated and lonely past and a passion for LSD microdosing, he spends his time hopscotching across state lines in his beloved camper van, running sometimes shady often dangerous errands for a powerful and ruthless operation he’s never troubled himself to learn too…

Free