Commit to your writing practice in the new year!
Deepen your craft, create and share new work, and learn from experienced teachers and writers at Literary Arts. We offer classes in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and multi-genre, as well as classes that cover professional aspects of the writing life. We also offer readers seminars that foster community and shared insights on contemporary and classic literature.
Scholarships Available
Scholarships are available for all classes through our Access Program. In addition to scholarships, every in-person class and seminar has one liaison position. Liaisons perform specific duties for each class meeting in exchange for full tuition.
Apply for access rate tuition here. Email writers@literary-arts.org if you have questions.
Special thanks to the Tammis Day Foundation for supporting the Literary Arts Access Program.
Writing Classes
Writing Comic Fiction Workshop
Mondays, January 2–February 16, 4:00–6:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
In this six-week workshop-meets-craft class, we’ll dissect five different short stories and figure out: How did the writer do that? We’ll then apply some of those same literary tools to your own stories. Each writer will have the opportunity to have one short story workshopped in this class, with written and verbal feedback from both the instructor and peers.
Instructor: Michelle Kicherer
How to Start a Novel: and How to Finish It, Too
Sundays, January 18–March 15, 2:00–4:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
This class is intended to get you started on your novel, get you feedback, and keep you going. We’ll workshop excerpts of novels-in-progress, if you have them, but we’ll also work through low-pressure exercises intended to generate ideas and make narrative sparks fly.
Instructor: Jordan Jacks
Your Novel’s First Pages
Tuesdays, January 20–February 15, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
Students will workshop their own first pages with each other and receive instructor feedback on up to 25 pages that begin their novels. Students at any point in the writing process are welcome. Whether you have a full draft or are just beginning your novel, this course can help to inspire your writing, deepen your process, and refine your craft.
Instructor: Miranda Schmidt
Unreliable Historians: Reclaiming Truth and Agency in Creative Writing
Saturday, January 24, 1:00–4:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
Who writes our shared histories? Who gets deemed “unreliable?” Through generative writing exercises and discussion of examples from Brody Parrish Craig’s The Patient is an Unreliable Historian, we’ll write poems together that challenge truth, combat erasure, and reclaim space for lived experience. Topics include saneism, gender, queerness & the power of narrative/madness.
Instructor: Brody Parrish Craig
So the Story Begins
Mondays, January 26–February 16, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
Every story emerges from a prompt: a memory, an image, an historical incident, a song, a family tale. Experimenting with a wide array of such prompts can be a great way of discovering and developing stories, especially the ones that you didn’t know you wanted to tell. In this class students will create, share, and discuss the work that emerges from a range of different prompts.
Instructor: John Gregory Brown
Writing in Scenes: Bringing Your Story to Life
Saturdays, February 7–28, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
Strong scenes are what transform ideas into a story. Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, scenes give shape, energy, and depth to your narrative. In this class, we’ll study what makes a scene come alive—moment-to-moment movement, sensory detail, tension, and character motivation. You’ll learn how to identify when to zoom in or summarize, and how to link scenes through transitions and emotional arcs. Each week includes instruction, generative writing, and group discussion to help you apply new techniques directly to your work-in-progress.
Instructor: Charlotte Chipperfield
The Art of Fiction
Tuesdays, February 10–April 17, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
While this course will predominantly take the form of a workshop, it will also feature discussions of published works to explore the “absolutes” that govern the art of fiction and creative nonfiction, as well as to equip students to appreciate how they might bend if not break these rules in service of the stories that they hope to tell.
Instructor: Rajesh K. Reddy
The Shape of a Life: An 8-week Memoir Intensive
Wednesdays, February 11–April 1, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
In this course, we’ll respond to writing prompts that engage the memory and summon the events of our past. We’ll collect, observe, analyze, and, ultimately, cull these stories and sketches, honing our narratives and discovering the stories within our stories—the ones that make our private moments universally vital and meaningful.
Instructor: Karleigh Frisbie Brogan
Pushing Through: Carrying Your Manuscript Over the Finish Line
Mondays, February 23–March 30, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
In this course, we’ll respond to writing prompts that engage the memory and summon the events of our past. We’ll collect, observe, analyze, and, ultimately, cull these stories and sketches, honing our narratives and discovering the stories within our stories—the ones that make our private moments universally vital and meaningful.
Instructor: Emme Lund
Readers Seminars
Early Works of Barbara Kingsolver
Tuesdays, January 6–27, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
This four-week Delve will focus on two early novels from Barbara Kingsolver. Both of these books take place in a southwest, dealing with environmental impacts, poverty, and the choices people make within those contexts. Both novels grapple with the health of rural places and people. Discussion will also focus on what Kingsolver leaves out in her version of the West and the way her books approach indigenous characters.
Guide: Pamela Pierce
W.G. Sebald: Narratives of Trauma, Trauma of Narrative
Tuesdays, February 10–March 17, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
In this seminar, you will acquaint yourselves with major writings of W. G. Sebald (1944-2001). Beginning with the author’s first novel, The Rings of Saturn (1998; Die Ringe des Saturn. Eine englische Wallfahrt, 1995), we will encounter themes that the author relentlessly followed throughout his oeuvre, such as, memory, trauma, displacement, and identity. The Rings of Saturn, a hybrid narrative of fiction, travel book, biography, and memoir, stands as a prime example of Sebald’s experimental narrative techniques. Guide: Ülker Gökberk
Thomas Pynchon: Mason & Dixon
Saturdays, February 21–March 28, 10:00–12:00 p.m.
Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave, Portland
IThomas Pynchon’s novels are chaotic combinations of ideas, puns, characters, subplots, facts, fictions, and words. Set in the eighteenth century, Mason & Dixon includes all of the above plus a talking dog. Its plot is organized around the efforts of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two Englishmen tasked with surveyed the disputed 233-mile line between Pennsylvania and Maryland. If history had unfolded differently, of course, the Mason-Dixon line might not have been all that important—but it came to bifurcate the United States in fundamental ways.
Guide: Elizabeth Duquette
Classes and Seminars are subject to change. For the most up-to-date information, check out our full events calendar.
