Arts & Culture Events for April! -📍 Vancouver & Clark County, WA

April is National Poetry Month! Check out some of the literary and literary-adjacent events coming up this month. And have you heard of the micro bookstore someone opened on their front porch? We let you in on that little secret, too!

👀 For more, visit the episode page.

• Intro to Zine Making Workshop with Couve Zine Swap. Washougal, April 4, 2 - 3:30pm 
• Pour Choices Pub’s Writer’s Group. Vancouver, every Sunday, 2 - 3:30pm
• Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic. Vancouver, Apr. 9, 7pm 
• Poetry Street PNW. Camas, Apr. 22, 6:15pm
• Soup & Words at Plas Newydd. April 24, 6 - 9pm
• MORE EVENTS

Bookstores we love:

• White Oak Books
• Vintage Books
• Front Porch Books

⭐️  Thanks to our sponsor, Oregon ArtsWatch!

Transcript

Upcoming Events for April, 2026

[00:00:00] Welcome to Next Month's Events. This is a new segment for I’m Into This Place where we jump on at the end of the month to tell you what's coming up in arts, culture, and heritage next month. This is in direct response to wonderful audience feedback. Thank you to all of you for letting us know that one of the things you're most interested in is getting a head’s up on all of the amazing arts, culture, and heritage content that's coming up in the next month, month and a half.

So this is our first episode for Next Month's Events, and of course that means we're talking about what's coming up in Clark County for April, 2026, 

Welcome to I’m Into This Place, your deep dive into the local arts, culture, and heritage of Clark County. From fabulous new restaurants to quirky art installations to the historical sites you never even knew to look for, we’re inviting you along. Whether you're a Clark County connoisseur or just starting to get to know her, get ready to fall head over heels for this place we call home. I'm your host, Adriana Baer, and I'm into this place. Let's go.

April is National Poetry Month. So I really want to highlight some exciting things coming up in the literary world here in Clark County for the month of April. A lot of our coverage on the podcast for the rest of the month will also be about the written word, so be sure to tune back in for that. 

And as a reminder, we always have events listed on our website. You can click on the events tab in the menu bar and that will take you to a page with a running list of anything that's going on in arts, culture, and heritage in Clark County for the month. So be sure to check that out. We update it all the [00:02:00] time so you can return to it all throughout the month.

Let's start with a zine making workshop hosted by our upcoming guests, Couve Zines. Now, if you don't know what a zine is, if you think of magazine and just cut out the first four letters, you end up with “zine,” which is a little folded, easy to produce, easy to publish. tiny little booklet where you can write poetry, interesting stories.

You can just draw or create art. It can be a purely visual zine. This Zine Making Workshop is a full crash course into crafting a zine, zine culture, and generating ideas for zines. One of my favorite stories from our upcoming episode is one of our guests talked about her grandfather making a zine that's all about how to tie knots.

So it can be anything from avant garde poetry to practical application knot [00:03:00] tying. The zine making workshop is at the Washougal Community Library on April 4th at 2:00 pm.  A link to every single one of these events is in the show notes for this episode and on our website.

Okay. The next event I want to highlight is from Pour Choices, also a podcast guest. Pour Choices is a local pub on Main Street in Vancouver that is run by creative folks and artists, dancers, and writers. And every Sunday, they have the Pour Choices Pub’s Writer's Group, where folks get together for writing challenges, prompts, craft discussions.

It’'s a really good time, and what I love about it is they do it on Sundays from 2 to 3:30. So it's kind of before the main pub crowd shows up and you can really sit in a cool communal space, but it's not very loud [00:04:00] and you can really get a lot of cool writing done. So Pour Choices is a lovely, lovely spot.

If you haven't been, make sure to check it out.

I also want to highlight Poetry Street Pacific Northwest or Poetry Street PNW. This is an open mic event that's run by Susan Dingle, who is our Poet Laureate for Clark County and every fourth Wednesday, folks gather to listen to original pieces or fan favorites from the community. All of the poems that are read there are family-friendly, and as they say, “all voices are ready to be heard.”

Poetry Street Pacific Northwest takes place at the Camas Public Library on April 22nd at 6:15 pm this month. That's when you can go and sign up for your slot, and then they start reading poems around 6:30. 

Every second [00:05:00] Thursday, you get the opportunity to join Ghost Town Open Mic at their monthly gathering at Art at the Cave Gallery.

They start at 7:00 pm the second Thursday of every month. Ghost Town is actually our guest for next week, so come back next week and you'll get to hear all about who they are and hear from their co-hosts, Christopher Luna and Morgan Paige. Ghost Town has been going on since 2004, so they have some staying power and a wonderful group of people who reads their poems every month or just comes to listen.

You can find out more about the Ghost Town Open mic through the link in the show notes, but again, that's at Art at the Cave Gallery.

Finally, I wanna highlight our friends over at the Plas Newydd Farm Arts Initiative in Ridgefield. Every, month or so, Abby Braithwaite, who is the sort of Queen of Operations over [00:06:00] there, she hosts Soup and Words. Soup and Words is a cozy evening event where you and a small group of writers get together to write, give, and get feedback, and of course, eat soup together. Um, Abby has cultivated such a warm and welcoming space up at Plas Newydd that nourishes your soul and nourishes your belly. That, this month, is on April 24th from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.

And of course I'd be remiss if I didn't say that Abby was also a podcast guest. Now, normally I don't have so many podcast guests as our features for upcoming events. It just so happens that we have some really incredible writers and poets on the podcast in the past and, and also in some upcoming episodes.

I really wanted to celebrate all of the incredible literary work that happens in our community. Let's give a [00:07:00] couple of shout outs to some local bookstores while we're at it. So number one, I wanna shout out Vintage Books. They are a bookstore that especially focuses on used books and those sort of hard to find books. 

White Oak Books is an independent bookstore on Main Street in Vancouver. They opened not too many years ago, and then they completely renovated and expanded recently. And I always say it's very, very dangerous to go in there. If you're not careful, you'll spend your whole paycheck on the incredible selection of books that they have there.

And then I really am excited to make sure that you all know about Front Porch Books. Front Porch Books is just what it sounds like. It is a bookstore on somebody's front porch. Our wonderful friend Josie, friend of the pod Josie, created a [00:08:00] teeny weeny little bookstore, literally on the front porch of her house in Ridgefield.

They are open most weekends, but not always. And they have a really wonderful active Instagram account where you can message them, order books from them, which they'll deliver if they can, and really curate a book list for you based on your interests.

Their website is also in the show notes here. And one of the special things about Front Porch Books is they really are focused on building community through diverse literature. They focus on uplifting, marginalized authors and artists and facilitating the growth of community through, as they say, “learning and sharing of life experiences.”

This is a micro bookstore. That is such a cool model, and if any of you out there are thinking, “Oh my gosh, I want a bookstore on my front porch,” well, Josie can tell you all about how she did it. She [00:09:00] also hosts a lot of events at the Ridgefield Public Library that you can find out again on her Instagram page or on her website, I just think they're very, very special and I wanna shout them out as much as I possibly can. She and her kiddo are the proprietors, and what a lovely thing to just be able to walk down the street in somebody's neighborhood and find a bookstore on their front porch. 

So these are some of the incredible literary events and opportunities that are happening in our community in April. Stay tuned for amazing upcoming events. At the end of next month, I'll be talking about your plans for heading into the beginning of summer. I can't believe it's already that time. Happy National Poetry Month!