All events and classes take place at Literary Arts, 716 SE Grand Ave., Portland, OR, unless otherwise noted.
One Page Wednesday [FREE]
Wednesday, September 2, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
Here is an opportunity to share or listen to one page of work in progress from talented writers from everywhere. Come with a single page of work and sign up to read – or come to listen and prepare to be inspired. Our host is the one and only Emme Lund. The featured reader for September is 2026 Oregon Book Award winner Ling Ling Huang.
Jamie Fisher in conversation with Lydia Kiesling [FREE]
Tuesday, September 8, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe is excited to welcome author Jamie Fisher to celebrate her latest book, Nobody Broke Your Heart: An Intimate Biography of Elliott Smith. Fisher will be joined in conversation by author Lydia Kiesling.
James Ciano, Bobby Elliott, and Nick Martino in conversation [FREE]
Wednesday, September 9, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe is pleased to welcome poets James Ciano, Bobby Elliott, and Nick Martino for an evening of celebrations and conversation.
Do You Like Me?: A Comics Reading Event [FREE]
Thursday, September 10, 5:30–7:30 p.m.
Join us at The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe as we dive into this beautifully printed riso comic, published by Portland’s Secret Room Press. The authors of Do You Like Me? will be joined by author, artist, and essayist Ash Yang-Thompson who will read from her works and join the authors in conversation about comedic writing and creating unique and unrealized stories for readers.
September Write-In: Labor Day [FREE]
Tuesday, September 15, 5:30–7:30 p.m.
Come on down to the Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for our monthly write-in. This month’s theme is Labor Day, and this month’s specialty drink is called The Means of Production.
Slamlandia [FREE]
Thursday, September 17, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month at Literary Arts, on the third Thursday. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets, new and old, to share their work. We strive towards a safe space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community.
Literary Trivia Night [$5 SUGGESTED DONATION]
Tuesday, September 22, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
Join us at The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for an evening of literary-themed trivia. Play as a team or solo while competing for prizes and literary glory. Trivia will begin at 6:30 sharp, so don’t be late!
BIPOC Reading Series [FREE]
Wednesday, September 30, 6:30–8:00 p.m.
Hosted by Kyle Yoshioka and Jessica Meza-Torres, this monthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color.
Sign up for our dedicated bookstore and cafe email list to be the first to hear about events at Literary Arts, new book releases, food and drink specials, and more.
Writing Classes
The Art of Fiction
Saturdays, September 1 through November 10, 5:45–8:00 p.m.
Designed for beginner and advanced writers, this course meets for ten sessions total. Students will have the opportunity to share two pieces (up to 25 pages each) and receive constructive feedback in a thoughtfully facilitated, supportive atmosphere. Although not required, students may wish to obtain a copy of Gardner’s Art of Fiction. All other readings to be provided.
Instructor: Rajesh K. Reddy
Demystifying the Editing Process
Wednesdays, September 9–30, 5:00–7:00 p.m.
This class is designed to demystify the editing process with applicable tools for editing at each stage of your draft. From fiction to creative nonfiction, this workshop offers in-depth looks at different editorial tools to use to help you refine your story and your language. In this four-week workshop, we’ll review practical, applicable revision tools for each stage of the revision process.
Instructor: Michelle Kicherer
Nine-Month Novel Intensive: Wednesdays (ONLINE)
Wednesdays, September 9 through May 12, 6:30–8:30 p.m.
This course for dedicated writers is designed to guide you through the writing and/or revising of your novel. It runs from September through May.
Instructor: Cari Luna
3 Month Short Memoir Intensive: Writing the Memoirella
Thursdays, September 10 through December 2, 2:00–4:00 p.m.
In this class we will read a few novellas to borrow from their medium-length structures, as well as several essays and memoirs. We’ll pick these works apart on a craft level, asking what these works did to make them successful, then apply those tools to your work.
Instructor: Michelle Kicherer
Nine-Month Novel Intensive: Thursdays (ONLINE)
Thursdays, September 10 through May 13, 6:30–8:30 p.m.
This course for dedicated writers is designed to guide you through the writing and/or revising of your novel. It runs from September through May.
Instructor: Cari Luna
Unlocking the Creative Process
Saturdays, September 12 through October 17, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
In this inspiring and goal-setting class, participants will review the fundamental aspects of the creative process, generate ideas, and zoom in on developing a vibrant, thriving, and consistent creative routine. We will examine barriers to creativity and develop strategies of resilience for days when we receive interruptions in our creative works, eventually transforming the interruption into a meditative pause.
Instructor: Radhika Sharma
Creative Clarity, Focus and Momentum
Saturdays, September 16–26, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
In this supportive workshop, you will learn creative process skills for sticking with a writing project from initial idea to completion. If you dream of writing that novel or finishing that poem, but you feel scattered, overwhelmed, or stuck with many beginnings but no finished product, this workshop will offer you gentle and effective ways to work through creative blocks so you can finally share your creative expression with your readers.
Instructor: Meg Hayertz
Scene Writing Intensive
Monday through Friday, September 14–18, 5:30–8:00 p.m.
This five-day intensive teaches writers the essential elements of compelling scene construction. Over five class meetings, students will learn to create authentic characters, ground readers in vivid and purposeful setting, weave exposition seamlessly into narrative, and build scenes that draw readers in and hold them page after page. In each session, we move from craft principle to practice and feedback, so that each writer leaves understanding how scene works and having practiced, too.
Instructor: Becky Ellis
Where Is Your Mother? Family Relationships Missing from Your Memoir
Tuesdays, September 22 through November 3, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
This course will ask you who or what you have left out, and why it’s important to evaluate bringing them into the fold. We will look at how to treat that “character” with respect and look at examples from authors who use compassion and authenticity when looking at hard relationships. Let’s get a handle on the “fear of family” repercussions, so that your work can sing its song.
Instructor: Sarah Cannon
Craft-Focused Workshop: Personalized Feedback on Work in Progress
Wednesdays, September 23 through November 11, 5:30–7:30 p.m.
This is workshopping in the traditional model, with three things added. Every writer receives detailed, line-level editing and concrete revision strategies. Feedback leads with strengths, naming what each piece is already doing well before offering where the greatest opportunity lies, because writers revise most effectively from their best work, and often don’t yet see what that is. Feedback is framed as craft questions—what is this scene asking for, where does the work want to build—so that writers leave with direction they can act on.
Instructor: Becky Ellis
Fundamental Scenes: A Speculative Writing Workshop
Sunday, September 27, 10:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
This is a generative class rather than a critique workshop. Writers will leave with new pages, a set of prompts for continued work, and a clearer sense of how large ideas can arise from concrete experience. The atmosphere will be supportive, exploratory, and craft-centered: serious play for writers who want to risk wonder without losing the page.
Instructor: Eli Kramer
The Art of the Short Story
Mondays, September 28 through November 2, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
This class will provide practical insights and techniques to craft short stories that captivate and create an emotional resonance with readers. We will explore the practice of writing fiction as an experience that not only includes putting words to page, but also as an act of listening, observing, and paying attention.
Instructor: Margaret Muthee
Extra/Ordinary: Writing the Uncommon in the Everyday
Tuesdays, September 29 through November 3, 5:00–7:00 p.m.
In this generative class we will close-read—and write—alongside works that resist easy classification, including “Everyday Barf” by Eileen Myles, “Dead Doe” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, “Exhausting a Place in Paris” by Georges Perec, Christina Sharpe’s “The Shapes of Grief,” and Rekdal’s “Nightingale: A Gloss.” Writers will come away with sharpened tools of observation, tactile craft practices, a portfolio of fresh writing starts, and a keener sense of the uncommon and the poetic within the everyday—on and off the page.
Instructor: Gabriela Denise Frank
Readers Seminar
James Joyce: Ulysses
Saturdays, September 12 through November 14, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
With Chritopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” providing a cinematic version of Homer’s epic, what better time to join Joyce in his rethinking of Homer’s powerful story of disillusion, desire, and the always pressing question of how to find a way home. In this eight-week Delve, we’ll work our way through Ulysses, exploring these characters’ stories, Joyce’s prose, early twentieth-century Dublin, and the many other stories and histories woven into this extraordinary novel.
Guide: Elizabeth Duquette
Fiction of Tennessee Williams
Mondays, September 14 through October 19, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
The oeuvre of Tennessee Williams expands far beyond his well-known plays. His prolific dedication to writing resulted in experimental one acts, collections of poetry, song lyrics, essays, a memoir, several short story collections, & two novels. This seminar will focus on his fiction. Beginning with his novel The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950), we’ll explore how his prose developed from more straightforward language to experiments with disordered time & stream of consciousness—powerfully applied in Moise and the World of Reason (1975). Bridging these two novels are his many short stories, which range from the brutally realist to the sensationally surreal.
Guide: Benjamin McPherson Ficklin
Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
Sundays, September 27 through November 1, 5:00–7:00 p.m.
It is not an exaggeration to say The Brothers Karamazov is one of the most influential novels ever written. It is a novel that has a history of dividing opinions, regularly hitting banned book lists: Written in the mid-late 19th century, contemporary Christians believed the novel was atheistic, and contemporary atheists believed the novel is too Christian. Regardless of which it is, the novel is certainly an attempt to tear down established norms and create a blueprint for a new societal order in Russia. Dostoevsky himself spent time in a labor camp earlier in his life, accused of various crimes including fears from the Ministry of Internal Affairs that he was a member of a revolutionary literary group.
Guide: Andrew Maxwell
Classes and Readers Seminar schedules are subject to change.
For the most up-to-date information, check out our full events calendar.
