• April 18, 2024
          Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Portland Arts & Lectures 2023/24
          April 25, 2024
          Verselandia! Youth Poetry Slam Championship (2024)
          April 26, 2024
          BIPOC Reading Series April
          May 1, 2024
          One Page Wednesday: May
  • Box Office

Events, Classes, and Seminars

Our events, classes, and seminars bring the community together to hear, learn, and discuss the most compelling issues and ideas of our day. We hope you will join us in our downtown Literary Arts space, online, and at partnering venues across Portland and Oregon.

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Wednesday

Sep 14

Tuesday

Nov 1

Tuesday

Nov 1

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Tuesday

Nov 1

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Tuesday

Nov 1

Tuesday

Nov 1

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Cover to Cover   Free Events  

PBF Cover to Cover: Book Launch for A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788–1940

More than forty years after its original publication, A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788–1940, remains the most comprehensive chronology of Black life in Oregon. Join us for the official book launch, hosted by Third Eye Books Accessories and Gifts, Portland’s only black-owned bookstore.

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Tuesday

Nov 1

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Wednesday

Nov 2

Wednesday

Nov 2

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Cover to Cover   Free Events  

PBF Cover to Cover: PCC’s Carolyn Moore Book Launch with YesYes Books

Join us at 6:30 PM at the Cascade Campus of Portland Community College in North Portland (Terrell Hall 122) as we celebrate this fantastic collection by late local poet Carolyn Moore, whose estate gave rise to PCC's Carolyn Moore Writing Residency. Readers will include Oregon Poet Laureate Anis Mojgani; poet Shelley Wong, whose debut As She Appears won the Pamet Prize from YesYes Books and was recently longlisted for the National Book Award; Carolyn Moore Writing resident Baruch Porras-Hernandez; and PCC's 2022-23 HARTS Writer-in-residence, Karah Kemmerly.

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Wednesday

Nov 2

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Wednesday

Nov 2

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Thursday

Nov 3

Thursday

Nov 3

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Thursday

Nov 3

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Thursday

Nov 3

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Thursday

Nov 3

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Thursday

Nov 3

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Thursday

Nov 3

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Thursday

Nov 3

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Thursday

Nov 3

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Cover to Cover   Ticketed Events  

PBF Cover to Cover: Big Cheese / Small Cheese

In conversation with Kat Topaz of Topaz Farm on Sauvie Island, authors Jessica Gigot (A Little Bit of Land), Marilyn Milne (Cheese War: Conflict and Courage in Tillamook County, Oregon), and Tami Parr (Pacific Northwest Cheese: A History) will chat about the varied histories and practices of cheesemaking, women farmers, and small-scale agriculture in the Pacific Northwest.

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Friday

Nov 4

Friday

Nov 4

online class   Portland Book Festival   Writing Classes  

Creating Vibrant and Complex Characters

This generative workshop will focus on the skills involved in creating and sustaining vibrant and complex characters. Through a series of in-workshop prompts and exercises participants will create and bring to life vivid characters. We will focus on physical description, internal life, setting, scene, action, and dialogue to round out and bring our creations to

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Friday

Nov 4

Friday

Nov 4

Friday

Nov 4

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Friday

Nov 4

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Friday

Nov 4

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Cover to Cover   Free Events  

PBF Cover to Cover: “The Bookstour”: Literary Documentary and Bookseller Panel

Calling all lovers of indie bookstores for the Portland Book Festival’s two-part event: a screening of a new literary documentary and a panel of the city’s foremost booksellers.

When an author crosses the country visiting bookstores and promoting his online-only novel, he discovers a community of readers who buy their books locally. These readers make their case for local bookshops in the short documentary film: "The Bookstour."

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Friday

Nov 4

The logo for the Portland Book Festival Cover to Cover program, featuring an umbrella and an open book.
Saturday

Nov 5

In-person   Portland Book Festival   Writing Classes  

Starting the Memoir

John D’Agata describes memoir as “an agitation of memory,” which suggests memory-based writing as not just the expression of memory but volatile, vital consideration of memory. In this workshop, participants will look at examples of prose memoir in which the writer uses the poet’s tools of meditation, dream, and lyricism, and then do their own

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Saturday

Nov 5

Picture Book   Portland Book Festival  

Opening Singalong!

Emily Arrow opens the festival day with a singalong! Portland Book Festival General Admission Passes are required for entry into all events. Passes are $15 in advance and $25 day of Festival. Youth 17 & under, or with a valid high school ID get in FREE. All full-priced General Admission Passes include a $5 book fair

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Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

Portland Book Festival   Writing Classes   Young Adult   Youth Events  

Poetic Sculpture (High School Workshop)

The famous abstract painter Joan Mitchell once said, “My paintings repeat a feeling about Lake Michigan, or water, or fields. … it’s more like a poem, and that’s what I want to paint.” She was inspired by poet friends, too. In this workshop, we’ll write poetry and turn it into art. Participants brainstorm about a

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Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

Saturday

Nov 5

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Program: Portland Book Festival