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...
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-ups4:30 – 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...
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...
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 Drawing from both beloved and previously unpublished Brian Doyle...
Cozy up for a night of poetry as acclaimed writers Ellen Waterston and Jeff Fearnside share their latest collections. Completed while travelling the state during her first year as Oregon’s Poet Laureate, the poems in Waterston’s As Far as I Can Anthem enlist the people and places across Oregon to inform, challenge and inspire readers in vital and unexpected ways. Fearnside’s most recent book, Lake: Love Poems , is focused on the concept of place, specifically Central Asia, where he lived for four years, and Oregon, his home for the past 13 years. The poems are connected by the thread of his courtship with and marriage to the woman who has experienced these places with him, his life partner Valentina. Ellen Waterston is an award-winning author and columnist who has dedicated herself to writing and advocating for the literary arts in the high desert region of Oregon, all the while continuing to write poetry and nonfiction works that have evolved into essential reading about Oregon and the West. She has published five poetry and four literary nonfiction titles, including We Could Die Doing This and Walking the High Desert . In 2024, Waterston was named to a two-year term as the 11th Poet Laureate of Oregon and received both the Soapstone Bread and Roses Award and the Stewart H. Holbrook Award. Waterston is the founder of the Writing Ranch and the annual Waterston Desert Writing Prize. Jeff Fearnside is the author of three full-length books and two chapbooks of poetry and prose, including the essay collection Ships in the Desert , which won a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award and the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award in Prose from the Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop. His story collection A Husband and Wife Are One Satan won the Orison Chapbook Prize. Free tickets are available here .
Su-Han Yang, Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Associate Conductor Oregon Symphony Pam Mahon, Narrator Dance WestPacific Youth ChoirGRIEG Suite No. 1 from Peer Gynt, Op. 46 MUSSORGSKY (ARR. RIMSKY-KORSAKOV)Night on Bald MountainBRITTENWelcome Ode, Op. 95 Caroline SHAW (Story by Alice MCLERRAN)The Mountain That Loved a BirdBEETHOVEN 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...
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...
Oregon Jewish Voices 2026 November 5, 2026 Admission: $10 general admission, $5 for members with code on back of membership card Location: OJMCHE Auditorium Share × " class="share-btn"> Share on Facebook &text=Oregon Jewish Voices 2026" class="share-btn"> Share on Twitter Email Thursday, November 5 | 7pm start time, doors open at 6:30pm Started in 1999 and organized by writer Willa Schneberg, this annual event features readings by prominent Oregon Jewish poets and writers. The writers in the 2026 program span a range of genres, including fiction, poetry, playwriting, and nonfiction. Each author will share selections from their work. About the Speakers Ayelet Amittay is a poet and psychiatric nurse practitioner in Eugene, Oregon. Her first book, The Eating Knife , is an extended Midrash on the Akedah—the binding of Isaac. It was published by Fernwood Press in 2025. Her chapbook, Therapy Room , won second place in the 2024 3-Day International Chapbook Contest. Ayelet’s poems appear in Gulf Coast , Michigan Quarterly Review , Rattle , Critica Press , Tupelo Quarterly , Pleiades , and others. She received fellowships from the Yiddish Book Center and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing . Find her at www.ayeletpoet.com or on Instagram @ayeletpoet. Rachel Attias is a writer, educator, and editor based in Portland. Her writing has appeared in n+1 , Porter House Review , X-R-A-Y, and more, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. She holds an MFA from Oregon State University, and teaches writing at Portland Community College and around the Pacific Northwest. She is also part of Art/Lab’s 2026 Fellowship Cohort, which empowers Portland-area Jewish artists and culture bearers. Her writing is concerned with present and ancestral relationships, our changing natural world, memory, time, and everyday absurdity. Find Rachel at www.rachelattias.com . Daniel Isaiah Elder Daniel Isaiah Elder writes fiction and nonfiction. He was awarded a 2026 Susan Kamil Emerging Writers Prize and received a Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Writer fellowship, as well as an Art/Lab fellowship for Jewish writers. He works as a bookseller at a small independent bookstore, and at Lidia Yuknavitch’s alternative workshop organization, Corporeal Writing. His essays and fiction have appeared in The Rumpus, Catapult, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Witch Craft Magazine, and many more. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his partner and their blended family
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...