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!

Delve Readers Seminar: Imagining the Future: Dystopic and Utopic Fiction

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Many of us have described the past year as “apocalyptic” or “dystopian.” We’ve been living through a global pandemic, a critical presidential election, ravaging wildfires, and a national reckoning with our country’s legacy of racism and police violence. Utopic and dystopic fiction can help us make sense of our experience and ask questions about our future. In this seminar we’ll read three works of utopic and dystopic fiction written by women authors. In our reading and discussion of each text, we will focus on a few core questions: Who are we, as a society? Who do we want to be? What gets in the way of becoming the society we dream of? What do fictional dystopias and utopias teach us about what we fear and…

$240

Science Fiction Book Club (Remote)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The Books Around the Corner Science Fiction Book Club meets monthly on the third Tuesday of every month at 6:30PM. We would like to extend an invitation to all of our science fiction loving customers. Join us March 16th for our Books Around the Corner Science Fiction Book Club. We will discuss our first graphic novel for this group On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden. About the Book: Two timelines. Second chances. One love. A ragtag crew travels to the deepest reaches of space, rebuilding beautiful, broken structures to piece the past together. Two girls meet in boarding school and fall deeply in love--only to learn the pain of loss. With interwoven timelines and stunning art, award-winning graphic novelist Tillie Walden creates an inventive world,…

$15 – $25

Attic Institute: SPRING Online: Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop w Ruben Quesada

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

It Came from Outer Space: This class will focus on writing new poetry. In this workshop we will challenge our notions of ekphrasis by focusing our attention on sci-fi films to generate our poems. While the Greek term ekphrasis translates simply as ‘a vivid description’ of a thing, the long-established tradition of ekphrastic poetry opens the door to a wide range of creative approaches for poets to engage with a work of art in another medium. Ekphrastic poems utilize a myriad of forms and strategies, and they respond to, incorporate, investigate, embellish, interpret and/or reflect upon a vital work of art—usually either a painting, photograph, or sculpture. You will be expected to view one or more of the films from the list below as the source of artwork.…

$215 – $242

Books Around the Corner: Science Fiction Book Club (Remote)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us April 20th at 6:30pm for our Science Fiction Book Club. We will discuss Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor. About the Book: The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa----a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past. Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks--alone, except for her fox companion--searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers. But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion? TO ATTEND: 1) Purchase the…

$19.99

Science Fiction Book Club (Remote)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us May 18th at 6:30pm for our Science Fiction Book Club. We will discuss Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell. About the Book: "Sparks fly" (NPR) in Everina Maxwell's gut-wrenching and romantic space opera debut. Prince Kiem, a famously disappointing minor royal and the Emperor's least favorite grandchild, has been called upon to be useful for once. He's commanded to fulfill an obligation of marriage to the representative of the Empire's newest and most rebellious vassal planet. His future husband, Count Jainan, is a widower and murder suspect. Neither wants to be wed, but with a conspiracy unfolding around them and the fate of the empire at stake they will have to navigate the thorns and barbs of court intrigue, the machinations of war, and…

$24.99

Books Around the Corner: Science Fiction Book Club (REMOTE)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us July 20th at 6:30pm for our Science Fiction Book Club. We will discuss We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker. About the Book: Everybody's getting one. Val and Julie just want what's best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, they reluctantly agree. This is the future, after all. Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues, leaving Val and Sophie part of the shrinking minority of people without the device. Before long, the implications are clear, for the family and society: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse?…

$16.00

Science Fiction Book Club (REMOTE)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us Tuesday August 17th at 6:30pm for our Science Fiction Book Club. We will discuss A Psalm for the Wild-Built ( Monk & Robot, 1 ) by Becky Chambers. About the Book: In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk & Robot series gives us hope for the future. It's been centuries since the robots of Earth gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question…

$20.99

Science Fiction Book Club (REMOTE)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us September 21st at 6:30pm for our Science Fiction Book Club. We will discuss Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace. About the Book: "Twenty minutes to power curfew, and my kill counter's stalled at eight hundred eighty-seven while I've been standing here like an idiot. My health bar is flashing ominously, but I'm down to four heal patches, and I have to be smart." New Liberty City, 2134. Two corporations have replaced the US, splitting the country's remaining forty-five states (five have been submerged under the ocean) between them: Stellaxis Innovations and Greenleaf. There are nine supercities within the continental US, and New Liberty City is the only amalgamated city split between the two megacorps, and thus at a perpetual state of civil war as the…

$26.99

Science Fiction Book Club (REMOTE)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us Tuesday October 19th at 6:30pm for our Science Fiction Book Club. We will discuss Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. About the Book: Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in Ryka Aoki's Light From Uncommon Stars, a defiantly joyful adventure set in California's San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.   Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.   When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.   But in a donut shop…

$25.99

2021 Tin House Virtual Craft Intensive: Seeding a Speculative World, with Dominica Phetteplace

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This class will explore the joys of creating a world that departs from our agreed-upon reality in significant ways. Science-fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism and other genres have exciting storytelling potential arising from the way characters interact with their surroundings. This class will focus on character and world building exercises that set up narratives with depth and momentum. Tin House is proud to announce our latest virtual Craft Intensives Series. A series of 3-hour-long masterclasses lead by  Tin House Residents and Tin House Books Authors, these Intensives combine close reading, discussion, and in-class writing to offer a potent dose of inspiration and explore what makes writing work when it works. Join us! Applying Admissions are rolling—first come, first served—and will fill fast! You do not…

$75