Events

Monthly on every second Tuesday

Remember how great silent reading time was in elementary school? The melting away of distractions while you lost yourself in a great book? Now you can get that as an adult too!

Join us at BOLD for a silent reading party. Bring your book or buy one here. Grab a drink or pastry, and lose yourself in those pages.

Arrive around 5:00 if you want to meet other readers and share about the book you’re reading. The background music switches to classical and the reading begins at 5:30 p.m. More book talk afterwards, at 6:30.

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

Every Wednesday

Every Wednesday

No more procrastination! Bring your work in progress and join other writers for some dedicated time to get your words down.

Every Wednesday 5:00–5:30 Arrive, get comfortable, meet your fellow writers, and chat about your projects 5:30–6:30 Time to shut up and write!

Cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books (

https://boldcoffeeandbooks.com

) and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More (

https://www.indigoediting.com

). 

Every Thursday

Do you love paper crafts? We do too!

This group is for people seeking consistent time to practice paper arts and crafts in a small, low-pressure group setting.

***Space is limited. Please RSVP on Meetup here.***

Every Friday

Join us for a writing/discussion group. This is a co-working meeting. If you are looking for feedback or critique, there are other meetings for that. The format is social chat for 15 minutes, silent write for an hour, chat for 15 minutes, repeat.

Hosted by Rose City Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers at BOLD Coffee & Books.

BOLD is thrilled to host a reading and launch for Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays by Chrys Buckley. Chrys will be in conversation with Domi Shoemaker.

Celebrate Chrys Buckley’s award-winning debut, a fierce and lyrical exploration of albinism, disability, visibility, and the power of story. Chrys will be in conversation with Domi Shoemaker of Corporeal Writing, sharing reflections on the writing process, featured excerpt readings, and behind-the-scenes book moments. Experience the blend of humor, music, memory, and truth-telling that defines this mixtape of essays. Featuring live acoustic music by Tracy McFarland. The main event will be followed by book signing.

Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays

Winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award in Nonfiction

Chrys Buckley was born with albinism, which means she has no pigment and she is legally blind. From an early age, she realized that while she was the blind one, it was hard for other people to see her as a real person.

Chrys often felt like a blank white canvas that everyone painted their assumptions about disability and paleness onto, rendering her invisible.

With warmth, compassion, wit, and lyricism, Chrys examines albinism, disability, blindness, synesthesia, dysfunctional relationships, self-betrayal, family discord, true-crime pop culture and true crimes on the smaller stage of our real lives, discrimination in medical education, and the power of words and writing.

This literary mixtape is an exploration of seeing, not seeing, being seen, and not being seen. It's a reclaiming of the real, particular self that too often gets overlooked and obscured by tropes and projections. Each essay is a love song: to place, to memory, to music across decades, to books, to science and medicine, to the land and the sea and the sky. Underscoring all the stories and contemplations is the steel will of a writer screaming in vivid color to make her flawed individual heart visible.

Chrys Buckley’s work has appeared in The Sun, Shark Reef, and Aerial. A two-time finalist in MTV’s I’m from Rolling Stone writing contest, Chrys has won the R.L. Gilette Scholarship, the Sophie Kerr Gift in English Literature, and the Friends in Art Award. Chrys lives and writes in Portland.

Domi J. Shoemaker is a queer, gender-flexing disabled writer working where body, pulse, and narrative meet. A longtime co-conspirator with Lidia Yuknavitch at Corporeal Writing, Domi cultivates spaces that elevate the voices of marginalized writers. Their work appears in [PANK], Nailed, and other literary corners where body-forward writing lives.

Arrive at 6:30 p.m. to grab a snack or drink. The event will start at 7:00 p.m.

*****

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

Every Saturday

Join us every Saturday morning for children’s storytime! Whether an author is here to read their book or our staff is reading a favorite, we’ll feature stories that spread compassion, awareness, and positivity.

Children will get a coloring page or sticker to take home too!

The shop carries juice, snacks, cookies, cinnamon rolls, and other items for kids—and adults, we hope you enjoy a delicious coffee or tea drink while your child is entertained.

*****

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

BOLD invites you to a very special children’s storytime with author Sue Dockstader.

Sue will be here to read from The Adventures of Henry the Field Mouse and share her activity book! Join Henry, the tiny but curious field mouse and his wildlife friends on their escapades exploring the English countryside!

Children ages 3-7 will be delighted by these enchanting tales of friendship and adventure.

***

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

BOLD is what it is in part because of its sister business, Indigo: Editing, Design, and More, which sponsors all Bold events and whose community has supported us so much. Where one business thrives, so does the other, so we see them as truly interconnected. And where one gets to celebrate, so does the other—so help us celebrate Indigo's twentieth anniversary!

Indigo Is Twenty!

 From a single editor with a used desktop computer to a team of seventeen editors, designers, ebook conversion specialists, indexers, and audiobook producers, Indigo has grown tremendously.

 We're grateful for how our community has flourished over the past twenty years thanks to people like you, our clients, team members, interns, students, mentors, family, and friends. Please join us in celebrating our community and this important landmark as we head into our next twenty years! 

 Come have a drink and charcuterie on us, meet members of the Indigo team if you haven't already, network with writers, and enter a raffle to win a bundle of Indigo clients' books.

Please RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/indigos-twentieth-anniversary-party-tickets-1984149023140?aff=oddtdtcreator.

*****

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

Monthly on every third Tuesday

Join us for a monthly Q&A about all things publishing and books!

Join Ali Shaw—co-owner of BOLD Coffee & Books and owner of Indigo: Editing, Design, and More—for an in-person Q&A about the publishing process, the business of writing, and the book world in general. If you have questions about how to start your publishing journey, bring them! If you’ve always wondered about something more obscure, like how to tell if an antique book is a first edition or what librarians do at trade shows, bring those too!

Free and open to the public.

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

BOLD is thrilled to host a reading with Evan Morgan Williams, author of The Divide, in conversation with Rachel King, author of Bratwurst Haven.

Join Portland writer and Oregon Literary Fellow Evan Morgan Williams in conversation with Oregon Book Award nominee Rachel King as they discuss Evan's new collection, The Divide, from Cornerstone Press.

The Divide is a collection of realistic fiction short stories set in the Pacific Northwest. Relationships are challenged in The Divide, award-winning writer Evan Morgan Williams’ newest collection. Set in the Mountain West, place is not just a backdrop; it is a provocation, an invitation to hope, and a mirror to reflect either consolation or indifference, depending on the case. To solve a problem in the West is to solve a problem initiated by the sense of possibility that the place allows. Characters in make difficult choices. The stakes are high. For Williams, division exposes character, and through breakage comes the possibility of redemption.

Evan Morgan Williams is the recipient of a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellowship. He is the author of four collections of stories, most recently The Divide, from Cornerstone Press. His stories have appeared widely in literary magazines including Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Witness. He is retired after 29 years of teaching in a public school.

Rachel King is the author of two poetry chapbooks, the novel People Along the Sand, and the short story collection Bratwurst Haven, winner of a 2023 Colorado Book Award and finalist for a 2024 Oregon Book Award. Her fiction has appeared in One Story, North American Review, Northwest Review, Hong Kong Review, Flyway, Lunch Ticket, and elsewhere. Her novel The Red Heads is forthcoming from Forest Avenue Press in 2027.

Arrive at 6:30 p.m. to grab a snack or drink. The event will start at 7:00 p.m. *****

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

BOLD is thrilled to host a special children’s storytime with Sara Bednark, author of Juggling the ABC's.

From an apple to a zebra, join Jace and his friends as they juggle something from each letter of the alphabet in Juggling the ABC’s.

Sara Bednark loves Portland, writing, her cats, reading, the color orange. She has written two other children's books, Midas and Wally's Bedroom Aviary, and hopes to do more.

*****

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

Arts and Crafts and Politics? Yes, please!

 The next No Kings March is coming up soon on March 28. Don’t wait till the last minute to make your protest sign. Come to Bold and join likeminded people to party, paint, and prepare to protest.

 We’ll set the playlist to our best get-fired-up mix. Poster boards, markers, paint, and even some collage supplies will be provided. $1 off beer, wine, and cider.

 Let’s party like democracy depends on it!

 $10 suggested donation to cover supplies.

*****

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

In this snappy writing contest, we give the writers four writing prompts and set the timer for 30 minutes. When the time is up, they read their stories and the judges select a winner—all right there on the spot. There’s no time to hesitate, second-guess, or hold back. Then the winner takes home prizes! All writers are welcome, from published professionals to newborn novelists. 

 Arrive at 6:30 p.m. to grab a snack or drink. The event will start at 7:00 p.m. 

 ***** 

 Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

BOLD is thrilled to host a reading with Lois Colton, author of Teaching to A Captive Audience: Reflections from a Prison Educator.

Lois Colton never planned on having a 20-year career as a corrections educator. But from her first day teaching inside Oregon’s oldest maximum security male prison, she knew she was where she was supposed to be. Behind the prison’s walls, she discovered a hidden city populated by a colorful community of inhabitants with fascinating histories and stories.

The essays contained in Teaching to a Captive Audience paint a vivid sensory picture of the complicated world of the prison as observed through the lens of a creative, passionate teacher and acknowledge the resilient human spirits that she encountered behind bars.

Lois Colton was an innovative adult educator who spent 20 years teaching incarcerated felons at Oregon State Penitentiary. She was twice voted as Corrections Educator of the Year in North America’s Region VI for the international Correction Education Association. Lois is now retired and lives in Hood River, OR.

Arrive at 6:30 p.m. to grab a snack or drink. The event will start at 7:00 p.m.

*****

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

BOLD is thrilled to host a special children’s storytime withAudrey Sauble, author of Acorn Party and Who Laid the Egg?

Acorn Party

Get ready for a forest feast! The acorns are ripe, and it's time for a party! With one small, slightly distracted squirrel in charge, what could possibly go wrong?

Join the fun and count along with Squirrel's happy-go-lucky method for counting to 10. It's sure to be an acorn party to be remembered-but be sure to avoid any disasters lurking in the party's plans!

Who Laid the Egg?

Who Laid the Egg? invites kids to learn what kinds of animals lay eggs. It offers vibrant illustrations and lots of repetition, ideal for helping kids build vocabulary and practice early reading skills. It's perfect for toddlers, preschoolers, and early readers, ages 2-5. Plus, it's great resource for parents and teachers looking to inspire a sense of wonder and an passion for nature exploration.

Audrey Sauble is a children’s author and science illustrator with a passion for exploring nature through picture books.

Audrey is the author of Acorn Party, a mixed up counting story and other nature-themed picture books. She lives in Oregon with her husband and two kids who occasionally agree to join her for bug watching, nature journaling, and other outdoor shenanigans.

*****

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

BOLD is thrilled our next movie night! Join us for a screening of All In: The Fight for Democracy.

“One of the most influential voices in the fight for democracy is Stacey Abrams. As a political leader and voting rights advocate, Abrams has dedicated her career to dismantling barriers to voting and promoting civic participation. Her efforts are vividly showcased in the acclaimed documentary All In: The Fight for Democracy. “This documentary takes an in-depth look at the history of voter suppression in the United States and the ongoing struggle to ensure free and fair elections. Through interviews, historical context, and Abrams’ personal insights, All In provides a compelling narrative on the importance of protecting democratic principles.”

Learn more about All In: The Fight for Democracy and find more resources here.

Arrive at 6:30 p.m. to get dinner or a drink. The movie starts at 7:00 p.m.

*****

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

Monthly on every last Tuesday

Come meet other writers and enjoy a drink in this fun and informal setting to bond over the written (or still unwritten!) word.

5:00–7:00 p.m.

Drop in at your convenience. We'll be happy to see you and hear about your writing!

Event cohosted by BOLD Coffee & Books and Indigo: Editing, Design, and More.

Monthly on every first Tuesday

We want your BOLD stories!

Come to our monthly open mic to share your latest work in progress or previously published piece. We welcome short stories, personal essays, poetry, slam, and other spoken word art forms.

10% off for performers!

Arrive at 5:00 to sign up and get your beverage. The mic goes on at 5:30 p.m. 7-minute time limit. No theme. 

BOLD is a safe place. We strive to uplift stories by and about people from underrepresented and diverse communities. We do not tolerate hate speech of any kind.

See you there!