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.
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.
Come on down to the Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for our monthly write-in. This month’s theme is Labor Day! This month's specialty drink is called The Means of Production. Have you ever wanted a chocolate-covered banana that delivers caffeine as well as joy?? Look no further! We’ve made you a banana mocha! Stay up to date with the Literary
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
Memoir-writing challenges us to interrogate ourselves. Transcribing those memories can be difficult, but even more difficult is ensuring we are honest about how our important relationships have shaped us. 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.
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! We will be hosting three rounds of trivia with five questions each. Answers will be collected and
This craft-focused workshop is built around personalized feedback on work in progress. Each session, the group reads and discusses four writers’ submissions, and for every piece, the instructor prepares an individual craft lesson—the one element she believes will most help that piece take its next step forward.
Every writer has moments that seem larger than themselves: a night sky, a death, a first encounter with art, a dream, a sentence in a book, a city seen from above, a strange conversation, a childhood image that never stopped working. This one-day workshop helps writers return to one such moment and begin shaping it into literary material.
If Tolstoy’s War and Peace, written a decade earlier, was an attempt to capture the totality of political and interpersonal life, then The Brothers Karamazov is an attempt to capture the totality of internal life. We will be reading the Peaver and Volokhonsky translation, itself a major turning point in the novel’s popularity in English, shedding some of the stuffy, plodding, confusing language of earlier translations in favor a readable and populist style. The Brothers Karamazov is a big novel full of big ideas, and there is no better way to experience it than in a group.
Give your writing the space it needs to grow. This six-week lab helps you make meaningful progress while receiving immediate, actionable feedback. Through dedicated writing time and structured critique, you’ll generate and refine new work each week leaving with stronger pages, clearer direction, and writing momentum.
Join us at The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe to learn how to bring a new Dungeons and Dragons character to life! Learn how to bring your characters' story to life, figure out what makes them strong, and arm them to be ready to face their first combat. Consider this Dungeons and Dragons 101; come
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 October will
The spiral holds great meaning for cultures all over the world and has captivated our attention throughout ancient and modern time. In this 3-part generative writing workshop, we’ll expand our writing across multiple genres including poetry, essay, and narrative with prompts inspired by multicultural authors.
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 thrilled to team up with Native Arts and Cultures Foundation to welcome Joey Clift for his book, We've Been Here the Whole Time! Featuring a special performance from Gabe Colhoff of 1876.
This Delve seminar will focus on Hawthorne’s short stories—among the most thrilling, strange, and memorable in the American canon. We will explore his first collection of stories, Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1851) as well as a small selection of extraordinary later stories.
This monthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color. Come listen to our featured readers, or sign up to share your work in our open mic. Readings will be followed by a short community discussion. Hosted by Kyle Yoshioka and Jessica Meza-Torres. The featured reader
Throughout this six week course, students will look at the many ways in which humans are connected to our natural surroundings, both urban and remote. By delving into the inherent close relationship humans have with the natural world, each student’s path to writing their own stories using the natural world as scaffolding will emerge.
In this Delve we will study Adorno's Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life---the amazing book he wrote between 1944 and 1949 to explore his feelings about the calamitous situation of a world facing despotism.
This is an important novella in the vein of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, but with an ending that packs a different punch. At its center is a man torn between family, community, church, and one young woman in a terrible predicament. He must make a choice, and Keegan’s exquisite, concise writing reveals that agonizing choice. It’s a perfect story to ponder and discuss: What would you choose in his situation?
Second section added for Tuesday nights. This is an important novella in the vein of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, but with an ending that packs a different punch. At its center is a man torn between family, community, church, and one young woman in a terrible predicament. He must make a choice, and Keegan’s exquisite, concise writing reveals that agonizing choice. It’s a perfect story to ponder and discuss: What would you choose in his situation?
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
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
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