Wordstock is an annual literary festival in Portland, Oregon. This year's theme is "American Stories".

Before it was a nation, America was an idea. It was the idea that the future could be whatever we want it to be. It was the idea that we could escape the past by living in the present, and that words written on a page could change the world before the ink was dry.

America is still an idea. It’s an ever-changing destiny made manifest through word and deed. It’s an idea that isn’t bound by geography or borders; it’s a biography of who we are, and it’s a dream of who we want to be.

It’s a story that never ends.

Wordstock celebrates the American story and the diversity of its protagonists. Wordstock knows that a story can be American, even if its characters are not. Wordstock, quintessentially American, is an idea made up of ideas.