Events
Join us for live events, reading seminars, and writing classes.
Featured Events
November 2019
Pop Up Events
Pop-up: YesYes Books presents Diannely Antigua & Brandon Courtney
Sat, Nov 9, 2019 from 3:45 pm - 4:00 pm
Poets Diannely Antigua (Ugly Music) and Brandon Courtney (This, Sisyphus), pop-up in the Portland Art Museum galleries with their poetry collections, out from YesYes Books this year. Antigua and Courtney are paired with the artwork Allegory of Poetry by Jean François de Troy; found in the European Art Gallery, on the 2nd floor of the Portland Art Museum. Please reference the Portland Art Museum Map to find this location. About Ugly Music: Diannely Antigua’s debut collection Ugly Music is a cacophonous symphony of reality,…
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Portland Book Festival Main Stage
Dark Magic: Folklore & Fantasy
Sat, Nov 9, 2019 from 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Unexpected connections, unexplained power, and secrets unearthed in three fantastical novels that delve into various folklore and myth. In The Candle and the Flame, Nafiza Azad introduces Fatima, a messenger living in the fantastical Silk Road city of Noor, where humans and the mystical djinn coexist. Shea Ernshaw’s Winterwood is a dark fairy tale of a witch, a boy, and a magical wood. A new epic fantasy trilogy begins with Katy Rose Pool’s debut There Will Come a Darkness, which…
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Portland Book Festival Main Stage
Strange Places: Middle Grade Novels
Sat, Nov 9, 2019 from 4:10 pm - 5:00 pm
Stories featuring characters trapped in strange lands: an alien warlord cat exiled from his home planet to Earth, and a young girl who steps through a portal to a strange world in seach of her mother. In Emily Chenoweth’s new installment of Klawde: Evil Alien Warlord Cat, The Space Dog Cometh, Klawde—a cat who is an emperor from another planet exiled to Earth, and Raj Banerjee’s best friend—must face a new challenger sent to Earth to settle the intergalactic score:…
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Portland Book Festival Main Stage
Words & Pictures: Making Children’s Literature
Sat, Nov 9, 2019 from 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm
Janice Bond, author of A Zebra Plays Zither; Vicki Conrad, author, and David Hohn, illustrator of Just Like Beverly!; and Samantha R. Vamos, author of The Piñata that the Farm Maiden Hung discuss making picture books with Mark Savage of Powell’s bookstore. Attendees 17 years of age and younger and/or with valid high school ID enjoy free admission. Advance Portland Book Festival passes available now.
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Portland Book Festival Main Stage
Between the Lines: Harper Lee and Boris Pasternak
Sat, Nov 9, 2019 from 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Murder, espionage, and two of the greatest writers of the twentieth century: Harper Lee and Boris Pasternak. Two new books combine the real-life stories: behind the book Harper Lee never wrote, and one of the greatest love stories of the twentieth century, Doctor Zhivago. In the 1970s, Harper Lee traveled back to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood. In Furious Hours, Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the…
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Portland Book Festival Main Stage
Stranger Things: Fiction from the Edge
Sat, Nov 9, 2019 from 4:45 pm - 5:45 pm
Three books that explore the liminal spaces – between waking and dreaming, between genre, between reality and fantasy. In his graphic novel The River at Night, Kevin Huizenga delves deep into consciousness. What begins as a simple, distracted conversation between husband and wife, Glenn and Wendy Ganges—him reading a library book and her working on her computer—becomes an exploration of being and the passage of time. Bestselling and award-winning author Molly Gloss’s first career retrospective of her short stories, Unforeseen, navigates…
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Portland Book Festival Main Stage
Rainbow Rowell: Wayward Son
Sat, Nov 9, 2019 from 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Rainbow Rowell is the best-selling author of Eleanor & Park, Fangirl, and Carry On. Her new book, Wayward Son, is the sequel to Carry On, and is a book for anyone who ever wondered what happened to the Chosen One after he saved the day; for everyone who was more curious about the second kiss than the first… Simon Snow’s hero’s journey might be over, but his life has just begin. Rowell will be interviewed by Jasmine Guillory, author of Royal…
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Portland Book Festival Main Stage
Indivisible: Politics & Protest
Sat, Nov 9, 2019 from 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Three poets offer personal perspectives on the state of the nation. In Hybrida, Tina Chang confronts the complexities of raising a mixed-race child during an era of political upheaval in the United States, ruminating on the relationship between her son’s blackness and his safety, exploring the dangers of childhood in a post–Trayvon Martin era, and invoking racialized roles in fairy tales. Shadowlands: Fear and Freedom at the Oregon Standoff by Anthony McCann is a clarifying, exhilarating story of a nation…
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Portland Book Festival Main Stage
Dangerous Love: Desire & Obsession
Sat, Nov 9, 2019 from 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
These poets confront the trauma of the past—the personal past and the shared past—while celebrating desire and love. Ugly Music, the debut collection from Diannely Antigua, explores reality, dream, trauma, and obsession, and how to create an identity informed by and in spite of the past. Jericho Brown’s The Tradition, longlisted for the National Book Award, details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal in poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness,…
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Portland Book Festival Main Stage
Facing the Past: Middle Grade Novels
Sat, Nov 9, 2019 from 5:10 pm - 6:00 pm
Stories of two very different young women who find themselves in unknown places, where they realize they must face their past to understand their present. In Dylan Meconis’s graphic novel Queen of the Sea, Queen Eleanor is exiled by her sister to a tiny island, where she must grapple with the truth of her own past as well as threats to her life. In award-winning and best-selling author Renée Watson’s new novel, Some Places More Than Others, Amara searches for…
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Ticketed Events
2019/2020 Portland Arts & Lectures: Amor Towles (Sold Out)
Thu, Nov 14, 2019 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
On November 14, we welcome Amor Towles, author of the New York Times best sellers Rules of Civility and A Gentleman in Moscow.
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Free Events
Slamlandia
Thu, Nov 21, 2019 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam which meets on the second Thursday of each month. This mic provides a space that is creative, fun, and welcoming to all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in the community.
Find out moreDecember 2019
Free Events
Author’s Guild Reception
Thu, Dec 5, 2019 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
New Authors Guild ambassadors Cai Emmons and Gillian Klucas will be there to greet you as we launch our very first Portland Chapter event. Enjoy drinks and light refreshments as you get to know your fellow Portland authors. At this meeting we'll connect and plan ways we can help ensure a fruitful future for Portland's writing community. Please let us know if you plan to come by emailing portlandchapter@authorsguild.org
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Ticketed Events
The Moth Mainstage in Portland
Tue, Dec 10, 2019 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
The Moth returns to Portland this December! This extraordinary performance will sell out quickly, so reserve your seats early and experience unforgettable stories told live.
Find out moreFree Events
Slamlandia: December
Thu, Dec 12, 2019 from 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam which meets on the second Thursday of each month. This mic provides a space that is creative, fun, and welcoming to all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in the community.
Find out moreJanuary 2020
Writing Classes
Building a Writing Habit
Sun, January 5 from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
For writers at all levels Using The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron as a resource, this workshop gives writers the tools to establish a disciplined writing practice full of healthy habits so they can keep writing. Class time will be spent in discussion, writing and learning strategies for establishing a consistent writing practice. Kristina Tate is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. She has lived in Arizona, San Francisco, South Lake Tahoe, New York City, Australia and elsewhere. Her work…
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Writing Classes
January Writer of Color Sunday Morning Workshop
Sun, January 5 from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
For writers of color at all levels Searching for a space to create new work with fellow writers of color? This two-hour workshop meets once a month on Sundays. Writers can register for one or more sessions. A variety of prompts will be presented as avenues for generating and sharing new work in an informal setting. Open to writers of color at all levels writing in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. You can also bring your own prompts and questions about…
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January Writer of Color Sunday Afternoon Workshop
Sun, January 5 from 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm
For writers of color at all levels Searching for a space to create new work with fellow writers of color? This two-hour workshop meets once a month on Sundays. Writers can register for one or more sessions. A variety of prompts will be presented as avenues for generating and sharing new work in an informal setting. Open to writers of color at all levels writing in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. You can also bring your own prompts and questions about…
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Delve Readers Seminars
Fear and Freedom In A Time of Distrust: Zadie Smith and Hunter S. Thompson
Mon, January 6 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Where have the gonzo journalists gone? Who is proudly owning the biases of their bylines? What use to a readership is a novelist turning to journalism? Why do we invest trust in certain writers above others? How has social media changed authors’ abilities to construct personas? Zadie Smith and Hunter S. Thompson are an unlikely pairing. Their arrivals to world fame coming from London and Louisville respectively. Thompson wrote through the 60s to his death in 2005; Smith writes today.…
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Youth Events Free Events
Writers in the Schools End of Residency Reading
Tue, January 7 from 5:30 pm
Hear students from Grant High School share their creative writing during this live reading event! These students participated in our semester-long Writers in the Schools (WITS) creative writing residencies. Each residency is unique, tailored to support, deepen, and extend existing curriculum, and to contribute to student achievement in reading and writing. WITS teachers will also be reading at the event.
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Delve Readers Seminars
Family, Identity, and Womanhood in the work of Min Jin Lee
Wed, January 8 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
This seminar is offered exclusively for people of color. Seminar participants will receive one complimentary admission to Literary Arts’ Portland Arts & Lectures event with Min Jin Lee on January 15. “We cannot help but be interested in the stories of people that history pushes aside so thoughtlessly.” ― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko Whether it’s the children of immigrants living in America or Korean immigrants in 20th century Japan, Min Jin Lee’s characters are people whose stories have not been…
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Delve Readers Seminars
Historical Imagination and the Modern Turkish Novel
Thu, January 9 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
This Delve explores two pivotal examples of historical fiction in contemporary Turkish literature, Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi (2009) and Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red (2001). Shafak’s novel transports the reader to the golden age of the Anatolian city Konja, the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate in the mid 13th century. Among the many refugees who settled in this cultural crossroads was the family of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, the mystic poet and the…
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Free Events
Slamlandia: January
Thu, January 9 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets on the second Thursday of each month. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community. January's Slamlandia features Ken Yoshikawa
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Writing Classes
Elements of Story
Sat, January 11 from 10:00 am - 12:30 pm
for writers with some experience This workshop is ideal for writers with an early draft of a story, an in-progress story that has stalled, or an idea for a story that hasn’t quite found its form. We’ll take in-depth looks at basic elements of craft, from plot and dialogue to point of view and voice, exploring ways to weave these elements into our own work. Each week, we will share our stories in a supportive, creative workshop setting, with an…
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Delve Readers Seminars
Octavia Butler’s Kindred
Tue, January 14 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
With the growing interest in speculative fiction, several writers have worked to deconstruct popular tropes to examine contemporary social issues. Octavia Butler’s modern classic, Kindred, is a science fiction novel that uses time travel to reposition the slave narrative as a speculative work. The story begins when the main character, Dana, is transported to the antebellum South. There, the book creates a story that explores history and family legacies while deconstructing ideas of slavery. Octavia E. Butler is a multiple…
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Writing Classes
Collisions: Short Story Workshop
Tue, January 14 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
For writers at all levels In this fiction workshop, we will explore how to use all manner of combustible collisions, both small and large, as generative fuel. Have a slew of disparate ideas stewing in your brain? We’ll investigate the power of unexpected pairings—how colliding seemingly unrelated images or ideas can spark something entirely original and point your work forward. You will build your own stories and receive the focused attention of a workshop environment. All levels Josha Nathan is…
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Youth Events
WITS Student Reading: Benson High School
Wed, January 15 from 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
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Ticketed Events
2019/2020 Portland Arts & Lectures: Min Jin Lee (Sold Out)
Wed, January 15 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
The 35th season of Portland Arts & Lectures features some of the most engaging writers at work today. They are novelists, essayists, and journalists whose award-winning works cover the most compelling issues of our time. The series continues on January 15 with Min Jin Lee, whose latest novel, Pachinko, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017. The 2019/2020 season is sold-out. Please check back in May 2020 for next season’s lineup. Thank…
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WITS Student Reading: Grant High School
Wed, January 22 from 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
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Delve Readers Seminars
Women Write the West: Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Proulx and Claire Vaye Watkins
Wed, January 22 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
In this six-week seminar, we will explore the works of award-winning contemporary writers Leslie Marmon Silko, Annie Proulx, and Claire Vaye Watkins and how they confront, disrupt, challenge, and complicate the dominant narrative of the West. Leslie Marmon Silko’s now classic novel Ceremony weaves desert landscape and tribal origin stories into a tale of a returning war veteran’s trauma and healing. In Close Range: The Wyoming Stories, the first of three short story collections unified by setting, Annie Proulx tells…
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Youth Events Free Events
WITS Student Reading: Madison High School
Thu, January 23 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
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Writing Classes
Memoir Writing: It happened to me and I’m here to tell it
Sun, January 26 from 2:00 pm - 4:30 pm
In this workshop we will explore how to go about making specific events from our lives into intriguing, relatable, and solid memoirs. We will spend time exploring memoir samples, building a writers' toolbox of skills such as scene writing, dialogue, characterization, how to navigate the ladder of abstraction, and setting. We will also share work in a safe and constructive setting.
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Free Events
James X Preview
Thu, January 30 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Corrib Theatre will give a sneak preview of their upcoming play James X by Gerard Mannix Flynn, which plays February 13 – March 1, 2020 at New Expressive Works (corribtheatre.org) Plaintiff James X confronts the defendants, Church and State, for injustices they perpetrated throughout his childhood. While awaiting his trial, James examines his confidential state files compiled over the previous 45 years, and takes us on a journey through the schools, courts, health boards, industrial schools, psychiatric hospitals, and prisons.…
Find out moreFebruary 2020
Writing Classes
Exploring the Lyric Essay
Sun, February 2 from 10:00 am - 1:00 pm
Four-week Class: In this workshop, we’ll experiment with lyric essay techniques and structures, read a variety of examples that employ these techniques, and craft our own lyric essays on subjects of our choosing.
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Writing Classes
The Writers’ Gymnasium: The Writing Workout
Sun, February 2 from 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Four-week Class: This prompt-driven generative workshop will give writers an opportunity to flex their literary muscles. Classes will provide an intimate, structured, and supportive time to broaden basic and complex writing skills.
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Youth Events Free Events
WITS Student Reading: Wilson High School
Wed, February 5 from 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Culmination of the Wilson High School Writers in the Schools (WITS) residencies. Listen to Wilson students read their original creative writing to peers, parents, and community members.
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Free Events
Oregon Book Awards Author Tour: Kenneth R. Coleman
Sat, February 8 from 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Springfield Public Library, with support from Literary Arts, is proud to host Oregon Book Award Author Kenneth R. Coleman as part of Springfield Celebrates Authors 2020! Coleman’s first book “Dangerous Subjects: James D. Saules and the Rise of Black Exclusion in Oregon” won the 2019 Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction awarded by Literary Arts. Dangerous Subjects describes the life and times of James D. Saules, a black sailor who was shipwrecked off the coast of Oregon and settled…
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Writing Classes
To Invent What We Desire
Sun, February 9 from 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
One-day Workshop: It’s easy to become separated from our writing, and sometimes we don’t know how to return from that stuck place. This course explores experiences of being lost—and ways of getting found.
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Slamlandia
Thu, February 13 from 6:30 pm
Poetry Open Mic & Slam Join us on FEBRUARY 13TH for a Thursday Poetry Open Mic and Slam! Doors and sign-ups are at 6:30 PM Get there on time to get a spot in the open mic or slam! Show begins at 7:00 PM This is the last a qualifying slam to get into the semi finals. February's Slamlandia features Cheryl Maddalena Cheryl Maddalena is a poet, mom, engineer, and psychologist... but not all at the same time. Known for…
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February Writer of Color Sunday Morning Workshop
Sun, February 16 from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
One-day Workshop: Open to writers of color at all levels writing in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. This two-hour workshop meets once a month on Sundays. Writers can register for one or more sessions. A variety of prompts will be presented as avenues for generating and sharing new work in an informal setting.
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Ticketed Events
2019/2020 Portland Arts & Lectures: Susan Orlean
Thu, February 20 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
The 35th season of Portland Arts & Lectures features some of the most engaging writers at work today. They are novelists, essayists, and journalists whose award-winning works cover the most compelling issues of our time. On February 20, we will host Susan Orlean, author of eight books, including her most recent, The Library Book, a New York Times best seller and a Washington Post Top 10 Book of the Year for 2018. The 2019/2020 season is sold-out. Please check back in May 2020 for next season’s lineup.…
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