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!

Open Mic Night

Imago Dei Community Loft 1302 Southeast Ankeny Street, Portland, OR, United States

Do you have a song, poem, spoken word piece, or piece of visual art you’ve been working on? Come share it with a like-minded crew of Imago folks & friends! Are you a really great audience member? We want you too! Friday, August 13th*, from 7-9pm in the Loft of the Ankeny building. *No bad luck, just some chill fun & new friends Open sign-ups for a 5-minute performance slot are from 7-7:20pm. Show starts at 7:30pm. Light snacks provided. Questions? Email arts@idcpdx.com

Free

Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter Virtual Discussion

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

When you think “call and response,” you may think of protest chants like “Whose streets?” “Our streets!”— groups of voices joining together to form a powerful rallying cry. Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter, published by Versify/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on August 17, is an essential history of Black Lives Matter centered on those voices, beginning with the movement's founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. Author Veronica Chambers of The New York Times documents the pivotal moments that galvanized Black Lives Matter, featuring stories and quotes from the activists that built upon a vision to stand up for racial justice. Nearly 100 striking New York Times photographs accompany the text, setting Call and Response apart as a visual narrative of the…

Free

Imago Dei: Open Mic Night

Imago Dei Community Loft 1302 Southeast Ankeny Street, Portland, OR, United States

Do you have a song, poem, spoken word piece, or piece of visual art you’ve been working on? Come share it with a like-minded crew of Imago folks & friends! Are you a really great audience member? We want you too! Friday, November 5th, from 7-9pm in the Loft of the Ankeny building. Open sign-ups for a 5-minute performance slot are from 7-7:20pm. Show starts at 7:30pm. Questions? Email arts@idcpdx.com

Free

PNCA Graduate Symposium 2021: Speculative Futures

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Hallie Ford School of Graduate studies (HFSGS) at PNCA is pleased to announce the 2021 Graduate Symposium theme: “Speculative Features.” This symposium will consider how contemporary artists render algorithmic harms visible and imagine speculative futures optimized for just outcomes. The two-day event will facilitate conversations on the ethical, environmental, political, social, and economic impacts of artificial intelligence and machine learning for artists, designers, makers, writers, researchers, and cultural workers. Featuring the work of Amelia Winger-Bearskin, an artist who innovates with technology to make a positive impact on her community and the environment, and Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, a scholar and curator exploring the intersections of algorithmic justice and visual art, Speculative Futures explores how artificial intelligence shapes political imaginaries of what is yet to come. SCHEDULE:…

Free

Dao Strom Reading

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

Dao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of the poetry collection, Instrument (Fonograf Editions), and its musical companion, Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (Hanoi: AJAR Press); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (Counterpoint Press) and Grass Roof, Tin Roof (Mariner Books). Her work has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, NEA, and others. She was a 2020 Oregon Literary Arts Career Fellowship recipient. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California and lives in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder and director…

Free

Submission Deadline: Old Pal: Issue 5

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Old Pal is open for submissions until April 30th, 2022! We publish poetry, fiction, critical non-fiction, audio, mixed-media, and various mediums of art. We encourage artists from all experience levels and communities to submit. Simultaneous submissions welcome, but please let us know if your submission is accepted elsewhere. Multiple genre submissions are also welcome (e.g., if you’d like to submit a combination of poems and art, or poems and a fiction piece, etc.). Contributors will be compensated upon publication. If interested, please send up to 15 pages of written work or 6 pieces of other media to submissions@oldpalmag.com.

Free

Wellspring Open Mic

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

John Carter hosts this very open mic. You’re welcome to share any of your talents from any field of art or other interest. Music and poetry, of course, but also comedy, magic, dance. You can give an art talk about a piece of visual art. You can read a chapter of your dissertation. Let’s share our creative endeavors so that we can all grow through shared inspiration. Starting in March, Wellspring will be on 2nd and 4th Sundays right after Community Art Day. Sign ups start at 6:00 or so.

Free

Wellspring Open Mic

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

John Carter hosts this very open mic. You’re welcome to share any of your talents from any field of art or other interest. Music and poetry, of course, but also comedy, magic, dance. You can give an art talk about a piece of visual art. You can read a chapter of your dissertation. Let’s share our creative endeavors so that we can all grow through shared inspiration. Starting in March, Wellspring will be on 2nd and 4th Sundays right after Community Art Day. Sign ups start at 6:00 or so.

Free

Wellspring Open Mic

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

John Carter hosts this very open mic. You’re welcome to share any of your talents from any field of art or other interest. Music and poetry, of course, but also comedy, magic, dance. You can give an art talk about a piece of visual art. You can read a chapter of your dissertation. Let’s share our creative endeavors so that we can all grow through shared inspiration. Starting in March, Wellspring will be on 2nd and 4th Sundays right after Community Art Day. Sign ups start at 6:00 or so.

Free

Refuse the Given World: Breaking Blocks Through Play

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

“When I sit down and start writing, I feel the given world recede, and I can just play.” —Sam Lipsyte Remember when you were a little kid, playing on the floor for hours and hours? Our best writing days are often imbued with that same sense of timelessness, freedom, wonder, and escape—in other words, our work often works best when it feels like play. In this generative writing course, we will tap into a playful mindset—by using silly rules, obstructions, oblique strategies, games, dreams, ephemera, constraints, and more—to unlock problematic works and/or generate new material. You will leave this class with more than a dozen techniques for starting a new project, breaking a block, or working through something sticky in a piece of writing. This…

$285