Our events, classes, and seminars bring the community together to hear, learn, and discuss the most compelling issues and ideas of our day. We hope you will join us in our community space and bookstore at 716 SE Grand Avenue, Portland, OR, online, and at partnering venues across Portland and Oregon.
Come on down to the Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for our monthly write-in. This month’s theme is Ancestors! This month's specialty drink is called Grandma’s Favorite. This drink has all the comfort of a London fog with none of the caffeine. Notes of bergamot, lavender, and vanilla create comfort in a cup! Stay up to date with the Literary Bookstore
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 come share their work. We strive towards a safe space for poets to read their
The Literary Arts Bookstore is pleased to welcome author Rebecca Handler to celebrate her new novel, In the Round. Handler will be joined in conversation by Selina Fillinger. About the book: Have you ever been dead certain that you’re being observed, that maybe your very existence is predicated on how others see you? A few
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 December will
Come on down to the Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for our monthly write-in. This month’s theme is Little Women! This month's specialty drink is called March’s Mulled Wine. Sit back and enjoy a mulled wine or cranberry juice, and imagine you’re by the fireplace with the March family, while Beth plays piano and Jo tells you a story. Stay up
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 come share their work. We strive towards a safe space for poets to read their
Dickens turns his pen onto a satiric look London’s pursuit of Money and Society, and a bitter one at the state of the poor and those whose living are derived from the great and polluted River Thames, the powerful controlling symbol that unites many of the characters and plots in the novel.
In Beautiful Is the World, David Biespiel spans three decades of lyric intensity, tracing the intimate cartography of memory, place, and inheritance. David will be joined in conversation with Director of Programs for Writers Susan Moore.
Over the course of eight weeks, you’ll work to complete a rough draft of a short story, with weekly check-ins to keep you on track. There will be some in-class discussion and feedback for your writing, but there will not be a traditional, dedicated workshop component to the class.
This six-week intensive is for the writer who has lived their subject matter. The expert, the advocate, the practitioner, the person who has earned their perspective and is ready to shape it into something that lasts. Each session combines direct instruction with hands-on writing practice, guided research, breakout group work, and mastermind-style coaching — so students leave every class with something made, not just something learned. A craft thread runs through every session: every workshop produces actual writing, not just planning documents.
This eight-week opportunity to read Middlemarch, Eliot’s masterpiece of 19th-century provincial English lives, will encourage engagement across whatever distinctions we use to label or group us as readers.
Every poem is in conversation with the writing that came before it. This conversation crosses generations and cultures, erasing distances of time, space, and mortality. In this four-part class, we'll make that conversation intentional. We'll consider the what, why, and how of writing in dialogue with other writers: what it means to write "after" someone, why we might quote, echo, erase, or respond to another text, and how we might do so with care, integrity, and proper credit.
Join us for a Delve seminar in which we will explore a wide range of visual art alongside short essays and books by artists, novelists, philosophers, filmmakers, and poets. Together we will read a series of classic unconventional short texts, both old and new, that examine the complex roles color (culminating with a deep dive into the color blue) plays in literature, the fine arts, philosophy, music, and daily life.
In this course, we’ll study writing that engages with folklore in a wide variety of ways: speculative memoir that tangles with witch tales, poems that draw on botanical lore, short story fairy tale retellings, mythic poetry and fiction, and more.
The workshop will begin with an interactive seminar on narrative structure. Participants will then analyze and present the dramatic beats of one of their favorite pieces of fiction to better understand what makes the story “work.” We’ll then apply those principles to your own work of fiction, devising character-driven scenes for maximum emotional effect.
Over three sessions, we’ll break down what a memoir book proposal needs, how to prove there’s an audience for your story, and how to make your personal material feel urgent. We’ll study real-life successful proposals and revise student material live in class. Best for writers with at least a partial manuscript or proposal-in-progress.
This class is for fiction writers who have already made significant progress on novels, novellas, or short stories. This six-week workshop will offer in-depth guidance to students on their fiction writing projects.
This course encourages prose writers to turn their gaze outward through research, be it trips to the library, time spent online, interviewing, and more. Over six weeks, we will read and discuss works that incorporate research in unique ways, and follow our questions and passions to enrich our writing.
Each week, we will read and discuss short pieces and excerpts from contemporary authors who are known to weave their pasts into the present including Annie Erneaux, Joan Didion, Ayad Aktar, Sonya Walger, Aysegul Savas, Rachel Cusk, Emmanuel Carrere, and others. There were also be to weekly craft essays on various genres (memoir, personal essay, autofiction and hybrid).
This course is designed to help poets overcome the fear of fixed form through in-class practice, specialized writing prompts, and instruction on letting the form work for them rather than against them. Students will be guided through writing practices and prompts to generate specific words, ideas, symbols, or metaphors that will serve as catalysts for discovering fresh syntax, diction, and imagery.
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