Arts & Media❯Readings

Overview Portland Art Museum invites the community to join a Free First Thursday event, offering free admission to the museum for all, plus a Live Wire event as part of the Literary Arts Portland Book Festival. Visitors can take in the afternoon gallery pop-ups, the evening show, or both! Free First Thursday + Museum pop-ups 4:30 – 6 p.m. — 4:30-6:00pm — Free, pre-show, pop-up performances will take place throughout the Museum’s galleries. Performers are poet and rapper Dessa, bestselling...

Join Mary Miller Doyle and friends for a presentation of Wonder Is a Lovely Place to Be: 365 Days of Wit, Wisdom, and Irrepressible Imagination by Brian Doyle and Mary Miller Doyle. Drawing from both beloved and previously unpublished Brian Doyle...

Lisa Hanawalt reads from her new memoir at Portland Art Museum in the Prints & Drawings gallery.

Su-Han Yang, Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Associate Conductor Oregon Symphony Pam Mahon, Narrator Dance West Pacific Youth Choir GRIEG Suite No. 1 from Peer Gynt, Op. 46 MUSSORGSKY (ARR. RIMSKY-KORSAKOV) Night on Bald Mountain BRITTEN Welcome Ode, Op. 95 Caroline SHAW (Story by Alice MCLERRAN) The Mountain That Loved a Bird BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, "Choral" John WILLIAMS Flying Theme from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Alice McLerran’s classic children’s book The Mountain that...

Singer, rapper, and author Dessa joins the Oregon Symphony for an evening of soaring song ballads, writerly pop songs, and rap anthems. Don’t miss this landmark performance, presented in collaboration with Literary Arts as an extension of the...

The Literary Arts Bookstore is pleased to welcome Kimberly Blaeser to celebrate her latest book Red Ants. Blaeser will be joined in conversation by Christopher Diaz. About the book: This bold and genre-defying prose debut by the prizewinning poet...

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World (2026) Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer. 1hr 31min. Not Rated. If poetry had a pop icon, Mary Oliver would be it. Best-selling poet and Pulitzer Prize-winner, lover of dogs and long walks in the woods, queer and out but intensely private—Oliver’s poems inspire liberals and conservatives, atheists and believers, naturalists and urbanites. She was America’s unlikely, contemporary mystic, stalking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly fifty...

Closing out the Portland Book Festival with a special edition Soju Party, celebrating Korean food, drinking culture, and Irene Yoo’s James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Soju Party: How to Drink (and Eat!) Like a Korean, as part of Portland Book...