Students to the Schnitz

Connecting students with world famous authors through live literary events and school visits.

Literary Arts believes that our literary community is stronger with the participation of our youth. By bringing high school students to the concert hall, youth play an active role in our city’s cultural events. 

Support Students to the Schnitz

Literary Arts provides students and teachers with free books, tickets, and transportation. Make your gift and help us bring more students to the concert hall.

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The Students to the Schnitz program gives free tickets and books to public high school students in and around the Portland area. If your school has not yet partnered with us for this program, please reach out to the Director of Youth Programs at olivia@literary-arts.org for availability inquiries.

Please note: At this time, the Students to the Schnitz Program is specifically reserved for public high schools and community organizations that serve high school-aged individuals. If you have questions about your school or community organization’s eligibility, or would like to inquire about group ticket pricing, please contact the Director of Youth Programs at the email address above before filling out this application.

The 2024-25 Students to the Schnitz application has been extended. Space is limited, so be sure to fill out this form at your earliest convenience. We may not be able to fulfill requests that come in fewer than 72 hours before an event.

2024-25 Students to the Schnitz Program Application

  • Section 1: Educator Info

    Please enter your school and contact information. We give tickets by school, not by class or teacher, and will group requests from the same school, so please coordinate with your school community to submit a single request.Literary Arts has a limited amount of money available for reimbursing for school bus costs.

  • Section Two: Author Events

    Each lecture starts at 7:30 p.m. and takes place at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland. Please indicate in each author’s section if you are interested in the event, and which books you’d like. Please triple check that you have clicked the check box that indicates you would like to attend an author event. It is the only way we’ll know. All PAL events in the 2024-25 season will be held in person, and there are a limited number of student tickets available at each lecture.
  • Abraham Verghese is a physician, writer, tenured professor, and senior associate chair for the theory and practice of medicine at Stanford University. Verghese’s first book, My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story, was inspired by his early years practicing medicine as an orderly, taking care of terminal AIDs patients. The book was selected as one of the best books of the year by TIME and was turned into a film directed by Mira Nair starring Naveen Andrews. Verghese has written several other books and his most recent novel, The Covenant of Water, was named one of the Best Books of 2023 for NPR, TIME, Kirkus Reviews, and a New York Times notable book of 2023. In 2010 Verghese launched the “Stanford Medicine 25” initiative to promote a culture of bedside medicine exam skills to students, residents, and healthcare professionals.
  • Timothy Egan is an American journalist and author of ten books. The most recent, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, was an immediate New York Times bestseller. Egan worked for The New York Times for 18 years, first as the Pacific Northwest correspondent, and then as a national enterprise reporter. As part of a team of reporters Egan won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2001 for writing a series called How Race is Lived in America. Egan lives in Seattle with his family.
  • Masha Gessen is a Russian American author, activist, translator, and journalist. They’ve written 11 books, including Surviving Autocracy, The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaiming Russia (winner of the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction). They’ve written for many US publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. Gessen is a distinguished professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and a distinguished visiting writer at Bard College. They live in New York with their wife and children.
  • Emily Wilson is a classicist, translator, professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of the bestselling translations of Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad (winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Best Literary Fiction and Classics). In addition to Wilson’s translated works, her other books include The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca, The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint, and Mocked with Death: Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton. Wilson is a professor of classical studies and chair of the program in comparative literature and literary theory at the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Section Three: Finishing Touches

  • Let us know anything else you’d like to share. If you are definitely *not* interested in attending a specific lecture if you can’t have your viewing preference, please indicate that here.
    After you submit this application, you will receive your ticket assignments for the season, as well as an electronic agreement form that you must read and sign before your place in the program will be confirmed. Please sign the agreement by the date specified on the form, or your tickets will be forfeited.

“As someone who loves to read and write this experience was meaningful because I got to hear about the daily struggles of an author and how they think of the world and how they incorporate this into their stories.”

Beaverton High School student

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