Portland Art Museum

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!

4:30 – 6 p.m. — Free, pre-show, pop-up performances will take place throughout the Museum’s galleries. Performers are poet and rapper Dessa, bestselling children’s author Mac Barnett, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Ed Park, and Portland comedian Mx. Dahlia Belle.

Free First Thursday tickets can be reserved online one week in advance and are also available at the door.

7 p.m. — Enjoy a fully seated, ticketed Live Wire taping hosted by Luke Burbank with announcer Elena Passarello, featuring a blend of interviews, comedy, and music performed live for the audience, then edited into an episode for broadcast to over 200 public radio stations nationwide. Performers are poet and rapper Dessa, bestselling children’s author Mac Barnett, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Ed Park, and Portland comedian Mx. Dahlia Belle. Doors will open at 6:30pm.

GA Tickets are $15. Preferred Seating is $40. Discounts available to Portland Book Festival passholders.

Dessa is a singer, rapper, and writer who fell in love with language as a toddler—and just never got over it. Now, she works in fields that traffic in words: she’s recorded rap bangers as part of the fiercely independent Doomtree collective, released a live album with the Grammy-winning Minnesota Orchestra; contributed to The New York Times and National Geographic Traveler; delivered a TED Talk on the intersection of romance and neuroscience that’s notched more than 4 million views; hosted 2 seasons of behavioral science podcast Deeply Human (BBC/American Public Media); and published a memoir recounting most of the above called My Own Devices (Penguin Random House).

Mac Barnett, the 2025–2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, is a New York Times bestselling author of stories for children. Mac’s books have won many prizes, including two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children’s Book Awards, three E. B. White Read Aloud Awards and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, as well as several international prizes. He lives in Oakland, California. His latest book, illustrated by X. Fang, is Tom Nancy: The Sheep Who Swapped Brains with a Boy. From two of the most exciting picture book makers today comes a hilarious trickster tale and Freaky Friday switcheroo story: a sneaky, cheeky sheep named Tom Nancy has a brain swap proposal for an innocent farm boy named Felix that will change both of their lives forever. Laugh-out-loud, subversive, and totally unexpected.

Ed Park is the author of the novels Personal Days and Same Bed Different Dreams. He is a founding editor of The Believer, and has worked in newspapers, book publishing, and academia. His writing appears in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Profound, wily, and beautifully wrought, his new book Three Tenses: A Transmission from the Nineties is a meeting of memory and myth, confession and obfuscation, coalescing to offer a singular picture of creativity in action.

The princess of Portland comedy, best known for her breakout performance on the popular Netflix special Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda, Mx. Dahlia Belle has been compared to a Swiss Army knife—different tools to extract sharpness, softness, vulnerability, hope, and wicked wit. She’s been declared one of “11 Trans Comedians… Funnier Than Dave Chappelle” by Out Magazine, repeatedly featured on NPR, and has written for Cosmopolitan Magazine, The Guardian, The Stranger, and Portland Mercury. Her live performances have included NW Black Comedy Festival, Upper Left Comedy Festival, SF Sketchfest, and an awkward conversation with John Waters and Piers Morgan. In the upcoming live taping of her comedy special Affirmed at Polaris Hall on November 22nd, Mx. Dahlia Belle delivers 60 new minutes of stand-up to celebrate and affirm being human in the modern world through a combination of the wholesome and mundane, anecdotes about house cats, liscivious foibles of the LGBT community, and an unapologetic account of her personal journey with gender-affirming care, all delivered with her trademark free form wit.

Free First Thursdays at the Museum and PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater aligns with the revitalization of the long-standing Portland art galleries’ tradition of opening their doors for openings, receptions, and events on the first Thursday of each month. In recent months art and culture organizations have joined to bring back this popular activity, including the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education in the North Park Blocks.

Generous support provided by Art Bridges Foundation’s Access for All program.

Live Wire teams up with the Portland Art Museum during First Thursday and the Portland Book Festival. From 4:30 to 6 p.m., complimentary pop-up performances roam the museum galleries, no ticket needed. At 7 p.m., host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello lead a seated, ticketed taping with poet and rapper Dessa, children’s author Mac Barnett, Pulitzer Prize finalist Ed Park, and Portland comedian Mx. Dahlia Belle. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.. Portland Book Festival passholders get 10% off.

BOOK FEST IS SOLD OUT.

For more than a decade, Portland Art Museum has been proud to partner with Literary Arts and serve as a home base for the Portland Book Festival, bringing thousands of writers, readers, and book lovers downtown for one of the city’s biggest literary celebrations.

Festival activity fills the PAM campus and Cultural District throughout the day, making it an especially lively time to visit.

How does PAM ticketing work on Portland Book Festival Day?

With regular Museum admission (including PAM member admission), visitors can enjoy the galleries along with select festival activities happening in them, including:

• Pop-up author readings thematically paired with artworks, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.
• KMHD Jazz Radio Listening Lounge in Gallery 300, 12–4 p.m.

PAM members receive their usual free Museum admission; a Festival Pass is required for full festival access.

Visit the Portland Book Festival website for the complete schedule.

PLUS PLUS Bizarre Bazaar is a brand new market bringing together a curated group of artists, publishers, exhibitors, game designers, community organizations, indie distributors, and creative collectives. It is free and open to the public. Stop by to browse and shop artist editions, books, comics, zines, physical media, prints, apparel, games, and more- then stick around to connect with the people who make it all happen!

• Video.Store.Age (indie film distributor)
• Midslumber Media (horror film shop and also books!)
• Cryptic Trinket Studio (animation / stop motion)
• Spencer Garland (VR Artist)
• Hungry Mantis (VR Artist)
• Fumerie Parfumerie (scent+film)
• Mind Marrow (scent + book + film)
• MENOPUNKS (doc + podcast)
• Estella Tse (VR/AR)
• Women In FIlm (film org /collective for women)
• NW Docs (doc org)
• Open Signal (community media center)
• AE PDX (motion design and animation community org)

• LIMINAL Music (record and music shop inspired by japan + more)
• KOOP radio (community radio hub)
• Tape Op Magazine (music recording magazine)

• Buckman Journal (publisher of artists and illustrators)
• Floating World Comics (comics shop)
• Nathan Mckee (paper cut/ layered images and screen prints)
• Sketchy People (illustrators)
• Kory Bing Illustration (risographs, zines, mostly about animals alive and extinct)
• Studio Mantissa (comics)
• S Mirk Comics (queer/nonbinary zines and comics maker/teacher)

• MADRE Linen (artisen linens/hometextiles)
• Mai Ide (the art of mending, sewing and kintsugi)

• Grilka Press (screen printers)
• Broccoli (art magazine)
• Storyboard Books + Art Supplies (book and art supplies for storytellers)
• Selected Stories (book store)
• Microcosm Publishing (beloved indie publisher)
• Sous les pavés la page (secondhand books and periodicals)

• Pink Tiger Games (founder/creator of former XOXO festival, pink tiger is primarily card games)
• PIGSquad (coming with three tables and an interactive projector)

• Nucleus Portland (contemporary art gallery)
• Mardeluna (art prints, apparel, plushies, giant mascot costumes)
• Lil Planets (360 photography art)
• Lauren Johnson Fine Art (cyanotypes, film+digital+watercolor images)
• Indui (fantasy art)
• Art Headliner (has murals all over NE portland that are rad!)
• Hustle Home Decor (electric colored sun catchers and mirror art)
• Swana Rose Center (Southwest Asia +North African art/culture community org)

• Portland Art Museum
• PAM CUT // Center for an Untold Tomorrow
• Kickstarter
• Portland Films and Events