Thursday 4/23: Maggie Messitt and Rene Denfeld read from their respective new books, The Rainy Season and The Enchanted. Broadway Books, 7 p.m., free.
Calyx literary journal celebrates National Poetry Month with a reading featuring poetry by Hannah Baggott, Qwo-Li Driskill, Amy MacLennan, Tammy Robacker, and Connie Eggers. The reading will be followed by an open mic. Imagine Coffee, 7 p.m., free.
David Meltzer and Julie Rogers welcome the community to an evening of poetry and a talk based on Meltzer’s newly re-issued Two Way Mirror: A Poetry Notebook. Angst Gallery, 8 p.m., free.
Friday 4/24: Publishing emerging women’s voices in poetry, Dancing Girl Press will host a lineup of writers from the Pacific Northwest that have been a part of their chapbook series, including Trina Burke, Susan Denning, Laura Christina Dunn, Ally Harris, Amber Nelson and Jane Wong. In Other Words, 7 p.m., free.
Heidi Julavits reads from her meditation on youth, time, self, and aging in The Folded Clock. Powell’s City of Books, 7:30 p.m., free.
Saturday 4/25: Identifying barriers both physical and emotional, Eugene photographer Terri Warpinski and Portland poet Laura Winter collaborated on the project Liminal Matter: Fences. The exhibit features Warpinski’s photographs of the US–Mexico border fence accompanied by Winter’s response through poetry. Passage Bookshop, 5 p.m., free.
Sunday 4/26: À reading #16, a celebration of contemporary poetry, will feature performances by C.E. Putnam, Hajara Quinn, Thomas Mowe, and Jenna Marie Fletcher, and will be hosted by Robert Duncan Gray. Valentine’s, 6 p.m., free.
Sandy Tolan shares a moving story about a Palestinian boy confronting power in a refugee camps in her latest book, Children of the Stone. Powell’s City of Books, 7:30 p.m., free.
Monday 4/27: Driven by her family’s devastating losses, Congolese expatriate Francisca Thelin embarks, with human rights activist Lisa J. Shannon, on a perilous journey back to her beloved homeland, now under the shadow of Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Both women will discuss and read from the the book, Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen. Powell’s City of Books, 7:30 p.m., free.
Tuesday 4/28: Salon Skid Row presents Josh Gaines, Domi J. Shoemaker, Amy Leona Havin, and Carly Nicole Ostergaard for a night of live readings. The Corner Bar, 7 p.m., free.
From a small town in Mexico to the boardrooms of Big Pharma and doctors’ offices in suburbia, Sam Quinones’s Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic is an explosive and shocking account of addiction, marketing, and the making of an epidemic. Powell’s City of Books, 7:30 p.m., free.
Wednesday 4/29: Join Backwords Press as they launch the first-ever contest-driven, submission-based literary t-shirt press. Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, 7 p.m., free.
Author Lisa Genova returns with Inside the O’Briens, a new novel that does for Huntington’s Disease what her debut, Still Alice, did for Alzheimer’s. Powell’s City of Books, 7:30 p.m., free.
