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 2026-27 Student to the Schnitz form is now open! Fill out the form below by June 5, 2026 for your school to be able to participate in the STTS program. If you have further questions before or after filling out the form, please email the Director of Youth Programs who can be reached at olivia@literary-arts.org.

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2026-27 Students to the Schnitz Program Application

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

  • Please fill out this form by June 5, 2026 and enter your school and contact information below. 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.

  • Event information

    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. There are a limited number of student tickets available at each lecture.
  • George Saunders is the author of several books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize, and the story collections Pastoralia and Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2006 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2013 he was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and was included in Time’s list of the one hundred most influential people in the world. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University. His second novel, Vigil, was published January, 2026
  • Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright whose work has been published and performed in over thirty languages. He is the author of American Dervish, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, and Homeland Elegies, named one of the 10 Best Books of 2020 by The New York Times. The Radiance, his forthcoming novel, will be published in Fall 2026. Akhtar’s plays include Disgraced, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, McNeal, Junk, The Who & The What, and The Invisible Hand.
  • Isabel Wilkerson is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. She was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism and was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama. Her work blends history, sociology and reportage to explore race in America, how unspoken histories and hierarchies inform our present moment.
  • Note: We anticipate very high demand for this event, so ticket allotments may be lower than requested.
  • Ben Rhodes is a writer, political commentator, and national security analyst. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers After the Fall and The World As It Is. From 2009–2017, Ben served as a speechwriter and deputy national security advisor to President Obama. He is currently co-host of Pod Save the World, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, a contributor for MS NOW, a senior advisor to former president Obama; and chair of National Security Action, which he co-founded with Jake Sullivan in 2018.
  • Kiran Desai was born in New Delhi, India, was educated in India, England and the United States, and now lives in New York. She is the author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, which was published to unanimous acclaim in over 22 countries, and The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Booker Prize in 2006, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker. In 2015, the Economic Times listed her as one of 20 most influential global Indian women.

  • 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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