23,000 READERS ENGAGED

From Literary Arts’ 2023/24 Annual Report

From the concert hall to the classroom, world-renowned authors interacted with our communities throughout the season. Our 2023–24 season of events featured more than 150 authors at Portland Arts & Lectures, Special Events, and Portland Book Festival. We loved welcoming audiences in the concert hall, the festival stages, the Literary Arts event space, and on the radio.

Portland Arts & Lectures

Thousands of subscribers and hundreds of high school students gathered in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall to hear from some of our greatest contemporary writers and thinkers: Zadie Smith, Mary Beard, David Grann, Charles Yu, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. In addition to the lectures, authors engaged with readers and writers of all ages in sessions with professional writers and meetings with public high school students.

“Literary Arts is all the things! The staff brings so much intelligence, warmth, care and skill, building events, excitement and, above all, a community. I am deeply impressed and inspired by what they do.”

— Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown, winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction

Click here for the 2023/24 season lineup.

The Archive Project

Our radio show and podcast The Archive Project broadcasts a wide range of Literary Arts programming, including recordings from Portland Arts & Lectures, Portland Book Festival, Everybody Reads, special events, and Verselandia! Our tenth season premiered in November 2023. Listen every Sunday at 7:00 p.m. on OPB radio and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Everybody Reads 2024

In partnership with Multnomah County Library and the Library Foundation, this year’s Everybody Reads program featured Gabrielle Zevin and her bestselling novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. The library distributed over 16,000 paperback, eBook, and audio copies of the book as part of the program, and during her time in Portland, Zevin met with students at Grant High School.

Portland Book Festival

On Saturday, November 4, 2023, Portland Book Festival featured more than 100 presenters in conversation about new books, from bestselling authors to exciting debuts. Presenters included bestselling novelist Naomi Alderman, picture book superstars Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast, hometown hero Mitchell S. Jackson, Oregon poet laureate Anis Mojgani, Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, and many more. The day also featured food trucks, a book fair, and pop-up readings in the Portland Art Museum galleries.

Delve Readers Seminars

Delve participants gathered weekly to read and discuss works by Henry James, Ursula K. Le Guin, Cormac McCarthy, Marcel Proust, Zadie Smith, and other writers.

“Our Delve Guide’s ability to balance conversational leadership with open spaces for healthy dialogue is very important to cultivating the vibrant atmosphere that most attracts me to these Literary Arts events. Learning from someone like this makes me thankful for Delves, which are some of my very favorite things about Portland.”

— Delve participant

View a list of upcoming Delve Readers Seminars here.

Special Events

Literary Arts is honored to have hosted special events with many remarkable authors and organizations. In fall 2023, we hosted best-selling author Ann Patchett discussing her new novel, Tom Lake, with Cheryl Strayed; and Barbara Kingsolver spoke about her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Demon Copperhead, with Jess Walter. We hosted The Moth Mainstage in December 2023, and in April 2024 we co-presented an author visit as part of Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow with Gabrielle Zevin.

Committed to Equity

  • Portland Book Festival lineup featured 50% BIPOC presenters (on-stage authors, moderators, and pop-up authors).
  • Free and reduced-price tickets were offered for all programs, including through Arts for All and the Multnomah County Library’s Discovery Pass program. Youth tickets were free for Portland Book Festival, Everybody Reads, and Verselandia!.
  • Portland Book Festival featured a bilingual story time with Adventures in Spanish, and a bilingual pop-up event with Cross-Stitch author Jazmina Barrera.

Read the full report below.

Click here for a PDF version of the report.