Your Guide to LIT Sunday – The Pickathon 2025 Literary Lineup

Jul 31- Aug 3

What’s happening on LIT Sunday?

Spoken Word

10–11am | Woods Neighborhood, Sunday, August 3

Start your Sunday morning with a jolt of emotional truth and lyrical brilliance from some of the most dynamic voices in poetry today. This year’s lineup spans cultural ambassadorships, national slam championships, regional art collectives, and a former Oregon State Poet Laureate himself. These poets bring the fire.

Meet the Poets:

Karen Finneyfrock

Karen Finneyfrock is the author of the poetry collection Ceremony for the Choking Ghost and one of the editors of the anthology Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls, both on Write Bloody Publishing. She is also the author of two young adult novels published by Viking Children’s Books. Karen has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook, Bloedel Reserve, and Mineral School. She has competed on four National Poetry Slam Teams and toured internationally as a performance poet, representing the U.S. Department of State as a Cultural Ambassador.

Christopher Diaz

Christopher Diaz is an indigenous Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). As a writer, performer, and photographer, he has been featured by NBC News, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Poets & Writers, and more. He is a two-time grand slam champion of Houston’s slam poetry team “Write About Now,” which ranked fifth in the nation in 2018, and he won first place at the 2023 Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam festival with his Pacific Northwest team. Christopher has taught poetry and coached performance with the nonprofit Writers in the Schools.

Harper Quinn

Harper Quinn is a poet whose creative practice includes and incorporates printmaking, book arts, bookbinding, letter-writing, and collage. Her books include Coolth (Big Lucks Books, 2018), a full-length poetry collection, and the chapbooks Unnaysayer (Flying Object, 2013) and Thrownness (2019), a collaboration with artist Jillian Barthold. Her poems have appeared in Fonograf Editions Magazine, The Volta, Gulf Coast, and other journals. Her work has been supported by Literary Arts and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Harper lives in Portland, Oregon, and is part of the staff leadership collective at the Independent Publishing Resource Center.

Anis Mojgani

Anis Mojgani is Oregon’s 10th Poet Laureate. A two-time champion of the National Poetry Slam and winner of the international World Cup Poetry Slam, Anis is the author of six books of poetry, an opera libretto, and a forthcoming children’s picture book. His work has appeared on HBO, NPR, and in numerous literary journals. Originally from New Orleans, Anis now lives in Portland, Oregon, where he makes art in his studio and occasionally reads poems from its window at sunset to passersby.

Storytelling: Imagine

11am–12:30pm | Woods Neighborhood, Sunday, August 3

The Imagine Storytelling show is set to return to the Woods Stage this year at 11am on Sunday. Host and curator Patricia Wheeler (The Moth) has assembled an exciting 90 minutes of stories from tellers across the country—each sharing a true, personal tale centered on this year’s theme: Belonging.

Patricia has been curating the Imagine show at Pickathon since 2017, and in that time, she’s witnessed firsthand how deeply welcoming the community on the farm is—especially on quiet, golden Sunday mornings. She couldn’t think of a more fitting theme.

So grab your coffee and find a spot on the hill—or sway gently in a hammock up high—as these gifted storytellers take you on a ride through humor, heartbreak, and everything in between.

This year’s featured storytellers:

Bryan Kett – LA-based storyteller featured on The Moth, Risk!, and Story Collider. An award-winning writer and Second City alum, he also teaches for The Story Studio and USA Today’s Storytellers Project. His work blends humor and heart, including a TEDx talk and Slamdance-winning pilot.
Ash Allen – Portland comic and storyteller originally from Mississippi, known for big-hearted, hilarious tales of her Southern upbringing and queer identity. A Moth StorySLAM champ and host of Porch Hang, Ash has performed at festivals from PDX to New Orleans.
Travis Abels – Portland-based storyteller and filmmaker who hosts The Tiniest Party, a monthly storytelling show. His work brings warmth, wit, and a touch of the unexpected—look out for his solo show Things I Hide From Dad later this summer.
Pedro Martinez – A Portland performer blending storytelling, improv, and acting with sincerity and curiosity. Known for his thoughtful presence and vivid narratives, Pedro brings a fresh voice to the Pickathon stage.

Author Readings

10am–12pm | Windmill Neighborhood, Sunday, August 3

This year’s author lineup offers a vibrant spectrum of voices—memoirists, poets, novelists, and screenwriters—who will each read an 8-minute segment from their latest writing! Before they draw you into the world’s they’ve created on the written page each writer will share a quick story about their first concert or most memorable concert experience. It’s a new addition, and we think you’re really gonna dig it.

Curated and hosted by Frayn Masters, this year’s program invites audiences to sit back and let their minds be filled with the imagery and characters of some of today’s most exciting literary voices.

Frayn Masters is a speaker, storyteller, producer, and writer. She is the artistic director and host of BACKFENCE Storytelling and a former host and producer for The Moth. Her writing has appeared in Little Engines, Hobart, and McSweeney’s. Currently, she is working on the live talk/variety show Let’s Get Lonely and its accompanying podcast, The Pod is a Lonely Hunter, which she co-hosts and co-created with Beth Lisick.

Meet the Authors:

Olufunke Grace Bankole

Olufunke Grace Bankole is a Nigerian American writer and novelist. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Bankole’s debut novel, The Edge of Water, set between Nigeria and New Orleans, was published in February 2025 and named a Best Book at various outlets, including Oprah Daily, Ms. Magazine, Apple Books, Book Riot, The Root, Electric Literature, and more. Most recently, The Edge of Water was a finalist for the Westport Prize for Literature.

Erica Berry

Erica Berry’s essays, which are often about the intersection of inner worlds and outer environments, appear in The New York Times, The Guardian, Emergence, Outside, The Yale Review, and other publications. She is the author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear (Flatiron/Macmillan, 2023), which won the 2024 Oregon Book Award, and Bodies in Heat: Love in a Changing Climate, forthcoming from Flatiron (US) and Faber (UK).

Holly Brickley

Holly Brickley is originally from Hope, British Columbia, and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and their two daughters. She studied English at UC Berkeley and received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her debut novel, Deep Cuts, has been translated into fourteen languages and is being adapted into a film by A24 starring Saoirse Ronan.

Jenna Fletcher

Jenna Fletcher is a Black, queer, disabled writer and multidisciplinary artist making work that plays in the shared cul-de-sac of performance, improvisational storytelling, and chronic self-documentary. Her work has been featured in the Portland Mercury, BACKFENCE Storytelling, Mind-Meld, and Susan: the Journal, amongst others.

Jon Raymond

Jon Raymond is an author and screenwriter living in Portland. His books include The Half-Life, Livability, Rain Dragon, Freebird, Denial, and God and Sex. He also published a collection of art writing called The Community: Writings About Art In and Around Portland, 1997–2016. His screenwriting credits include Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Night Moves, First Cow, and Showing Up, and the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce.

Lisa Wells

Lisa Wells is the author, most recently, of The Fire Passage, a tragicomic journey through an underworld of mysterious illness, climate catastrophe, fallen empires, and the strange history of Western medicine. It was selected by Diane Seuss as the winner of the Levis Poetry Prize and was published by Four Way Books in 2025.

Brianna Wheeler

Brianna Wheeler is an author and journalist based in Portland, Oregon. Her debut book, Altogether Different: A Memoir About Identity, Inheritance, and the Raid That Started the Civil War—nominated for an Eric Hoffer Award—was published by Korza Books in 2023, with a special book club edition released in 2024.

Words that stay with you.

At Pickathon, literature isn’t just a side dish—it’s one of the main courses. The Literary Lineup reminds us that art, whether played on strings or spoken from a mic, has the power to transform, challenge, and uplift.