Events, Classes, and Seminars
We have moved many of our offerings online! We hope you will join us.
Featured Events
August 2020
Writing Classes
Summer 2020 Online:August Writer of Color Workshop
Sun, August 16 from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
One-day Workshop: Open to writers of color at all levels writing in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. A variety of prompts will be presented as avenues for generating and sharing new work in an informal setting. You can also bring your own prompts and questions about the writing process, and explore them with the group.
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Delve Readers Seminars
Delve Online: Contemporary Korean Fiction
Thu, August 20 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
A look at 3 contemporary Korean writers. From a haunting meditation on grief to a powerful examination on capitalism, participants will discuss the themes that bind and distinguish these texts.Discussions will also focus on how translation affects our understanding of these novels as well as elements of Korean culture and current affairs that are uniquely reflected in these works. This seminar is offered exclusively for people of color Reading List: The White Book, Han Kang The Impossible Fairy, Han Yujoo…
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Free Events
@Literary Arts Online: Slamlandia: August
Thu, August 20 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month. 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 safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community. August's featured poet is Robyn Kaur Sidhu. Register in advance for Slamlandia: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUrcOmuqz0qGtaSZsUI8oaSMnAeIg6OqIMR If you have any questions, please contact slamlandia@gmail.com or jessica@literary-arts.org.
Find out moreSeptember 2020
Free Events Virtual Event
@ Literary Arts Online: One Page Wednesday – September
Wed, September 2 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Literary Arts is taking One Page online! 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! September's One Page featured reader is Nastashia Minto. Hosted by Natalie Serber. Click here to register. You do NOT need a Zoom account to log on to a Zoom meeting. You…
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Delve Readers Seminars
William James: Inventing an American Philosophy
Sun, September 6 from 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Six-week Seminar: The philosophy of William James (1842–1910) has had world-wide influence, and yet it is in many ways an essentially American view of the nature and humanity. James was a psychologist by training. This study led him to develop his unique view of human experience, out of which grew his profound concept of the nature of knowledge and reality as the way in which we act in the world and experience life.
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Delve Readers Seminars
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Thu, September 10 from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Six-week Seminar: Composed in the era of the Second World War, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has become, through various incarnations, one of the best known stories in the world and also part of a larger system of myth and lore--thee so-called "Tolkien universe"--that also includes the Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and countless additional tales in prose and verse.
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Writing Classes
Fall 2020: Writing No Matter What
Sat, September 12 from 10:00 am - 12:00 pm
Walking the Path of Perseverance: Writing No Matter What The writing journey, exhilarating and wondrous as it is, can be punctuated with delays and disappointments. How do you keep writing through chaos or a stressful live event? If you are tired of not writing, and want to cultivate the “stick-to-it-ness” necessary for meeting your goals, this workshop is for you. Gleaning inspiration and guidance from writers like Annie Dillard and Julia Cameron, and mining the well of our own life…
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Writing Classes
Fall 2020 online: Nature Writing Now
Mon, September 14 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
What does it mean to write about nature now? We are living at a time of great ecological peril and promise, when some thinkers are questioning whether “nature” still even exists. How to write about this complexity in authentic and evocative ways? How to convey both the beauty and the corruption of beauty? Together, we will consider some historical and contemporary nature writing. Noticing how the genre has changed over time will help us understand how our cultural conceptions of…
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Writing Classes Hybrid or Multi-Genre
Fall 2020 online: Dear Liary: At the Outskirts of Genre
Tue, September 15 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
This four-week workshop will consider the concept of “a liary” to explore the messy boundaries between fact and fiction, which takes its name from the idea that we might experiment with writing about our own life (as in a “diary”) using the tools of fiction (thus making it a “lie.”) What are the possibilities of using this as a starting technique, for both nonfiction and fiction writers? What other “truths” can be liberated when facts are off the hook? How…
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Writing Classes
Fall 2020 Online: Writing the Non-Fiction Book Proposal
Tue, September 15 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
This six-week class will take you step-by-step through the major parts of the nonfiction book proposal: the query letter, overview, competitive analysis, marketing and promotion, author background, outline and sample chapter. Bring an idea, and be ready to write. The class includes extensive handouts and questionnaires to guide your work.
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Writing Classes
Fall 2020: Nine-Month Novel Intensive
Wed, September 16 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
WAITING LIST ONLY. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org to be put on the waiting list. This course for dedicated writers is designed to guide you through the writing and/or revising of your novel. It begins in September, with the goal of completing a draft of a novel, or rewriting a draft of a novel, by May.
Find out moreWriting Classes
Fall 2020: Nine-Month Novel Intensive: Section 2
Thu, September 17 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
This is the Thursday night section of the Nine Month Novel Intensive. We've added a second section! This course for dedicated writers is designed to guide you through the writing and/or revising of your novel. It begins in September, with the goal of completing a draft of a novel, or rewriting a draft of a novel, by May. You’ll read excerpts from published novels by authors including Han Kang, Tommy Orange, Lina Meruane, Mitchell S. Jackson, Deborah Levy, and Susan…
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Writing Classes Memoir
Fall 2020: Nine-Month Memoir Intensive
Sat, September 19 from 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Waiting List only. The class begins in September, with the goal of finishing a complete draft of a memoir by June. Participants do not need to be published writers; however, they should have some experience with elements of memoir, including character, setting, dialogue and scene, and have a clear project in mind that they will devote nine months to.
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Writing Classes Memoir
Fall 2020 Online: Memoir Infusion!
Sun, September 20 from 2:30 pm - 5:30 pm
This class is meant to get you moving, excited and deeply engaged with your memoir project.
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Delve Readers Seminars
Delve Online Fall 2020: Fairytales Retold
Wed, September 23 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
When exactly is “once upon a time,” what does it mean to live “happily ever after,” and how do these tropes from childhood storybooks find their way into so much contemporary literature and film? These traditional frames for fairytales are just one of the aspects we’ll study in this Delve; we will examine other aspects of structure, characters, and motifs of folktales, both in collected oral tales and literary retellings of those same tales over time, into the current day.…
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Writing Classes Personal Essay Hybrid or Multi-Genre
Fall 2020: Fragmentation and Joy: Writing for Resilience in Hard Times
Wed, September 23 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Following in the tradition of Ross Gay, we will focus on writing about joy in the midst of pandemic, protest, and looming election. We will explore the lyric essay as a celebration of the fragment and the collage. This is a generative writing class, where most of our time will be spent writing to prompts; at the end of our time together, we will offer feedback to each other on our work.
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Portland Arts & Lectures
2019/2020 Portland Arts & Lectures: Colson Whitehead (virtual event)
Thu, September 24 from 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
This event was originally scheduled for May 7, 2020. Due to concern for the health and safety of our community due to COVID-19, it has been rescheduled to next spring: May 5, 2021.
Find out moreOctober 2020
Writing Classes Generative
Fall 2020 Online: Looking Back to Look Forward: A Daily Writing Practice
Sat, October 3 from 10:00 am - Sat, October 31 from 12:00 pm
This class will help you adopt crucial creative habits using your memory of the past to build a practice for the future. Using a series of daily in-class and at-home prompts that focus on ideas of home, trek childhood, and position memory as present, you will generate new work and use research-based ways to bring a sustainable practice into your life.
Find out moreWriting Classes Hybrid or Multi-Genre
Fall 2020 online: Writing Along the Seam
Sat, October 3 from 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Hybrid forms of writing possess a similar power, harnessing two or more established forms to create something new, unique, and potent. When we reunite these forms, we welcome new, transformative forces into our work. In this course, we will consider various hybrid literary forms: lyric essay, poetic memoir, prose poetry, flash fiction, and visual/verbal hybrids. We’ll consider the unique powers of each of these forms and see what they can offer our writing. Access Program We want our writing…
Find out moreWriting Classes Hybrid or Multi-Genre Generative
Fall 2020 online: Kindling the Story: Experiments in Research
Sun, October 4 from 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
What surprising roles can research play in helping to generate new ideas or complement the telling of our own personal life stories? In this five-week class we will explore readings and prompts that utilize research in lyrical and innovative ways—sometimes as a seed that launches a surprising investigation, sometimes as the metaphorical connective tissue between memories of something unrelated, sometimes as structural scaffolding. Looking to journalism, ethnography, archives, found material, and our own repositories of memory and observation, we will…
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Delve Readers Seminars
Delve Online Fall 2020: Far From the Madding Crowd
Mon, October 5 from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
The older well-to-do gentleman farmer, the dashing cavalry officer, or the steadfast shepherd—whom will accidental tenant farmer Bathsheba Everdene choose? Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel that first established his international reputation, asks and answers that question. But, because this is Thomas Hardy, the course of true love is fraught with perils, tragic accidents of fate, well-meaning rustics, and—sheep. This is one of the great 19th century love stories, written by a master novelist/poet whose lifelong literary…
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Delve Readers Seminars
Delve Online Fall 2020: Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition
Tue, October 6 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
What is the purpose of public life? Should we live as thinkers or doers? These are the questions that Hannah Arendt tackles in her 1958 work The Human Condition. Philosophers have long argued that the ideal state for the human condition is a life of contemplation and inward-focus. Arendt questions the value of the vita contemplativa and she proposes that a life of action, vita activa, is central to the human condition. Hannah Arendt is one of the most influential…
Find out moreWriting Classes Hybrid or Multi-Genre
Fall 2020 Online: Borders and Beginnings: Creation and Revision
Wed, October 7 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
This class will help you adopt crucial creative habits using your memory of the past to build a practice for the future. Using a series of daily in-class and at-home prompts that focus on ideas of home, trek childhood, and position memory as present, you will generate new work and use research-based ways to bring a sustainable practice into your life.
Find out moreWriting Classes Personal Essay Hybrid or Multi-Genre
Fall 2020: Writing with Constraints:Discover the Unexpected or the Unusual By Working with Limits
Tue, October 13 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Sometimes freedom is found within the boundaries of constraints. In this workshop, we are going to write to prompts, but with a twist. Each prompt will also come with some form of constraint or a series of constraints (i.e. write in the present tense, write only in second person, write the experience from end to beginning, etc.) We will be working towards a series of prose poems, or a lyric essay, or a personal essay, but all the while using…
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Portland Arts & Lectures
Portland Arts & Lectures 2020/21 Season
Tue, October 13 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
One event on Tue, May 18, 2021 at 7:30 pm
One event on Tue, May 18, 2021 at 7:30 pm
One event on Tue, May 18, 2021 at 7:30 pm
One event on Tue, May 18, 2021 at 7:30 pm
Literary Arts is pleased to announce the author line-up for the 2020/21 Season of Portland Arts & Lectures. Subscriptions start at just $90 for the series. Subscribe today! At this time, all lectures are scheduled to take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.
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Portland Arts & Lectures
2020/21 Portland Arts & Lectures: Helen Macdonald (Virtual Event)
Tue, October 13 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator and naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her most recent book is the essay collection, Vesper Flights (Grove Atlantic, August 2020). Her best-selling memoir, H Is for Hawk, which the New York Times notes reminds us that “excellent nature writing can lay bare some of the intimacies of the wild world.” Macdonald is the author of a cultural history of…
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Writing Classes Short Fiction
Fall 2020: Six-Month Short Story Intensive: Starting the Story Collection
Fri, October 30 from 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
This class is for experienced writers who are dedicated to starting the first draft of a story collection over the course of 6 months. We will have 22 class meetings between October and April, with a four-week break from mid-December to mid-January to focus on generating and revising our work.
Participants should have experience writing stories and familiarity with the elements of literary short fiction including scene, character, conflict, place and revision. We will study individual stories by authors, read craft essays, and discuss several published collections and how the stories unite to form a book.
Find out moreNovember 2020
Portland Book Festival
Portland Book Festival: Opening Day
Thu, November 5
Join Literary Arts for the annual Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America, taking place online November 5-21, 2020, with digital events streaming at different times throughout the day. The digital festival will feature author events for all ages, pop-up readings, and writing classes. Come together with your community and celebrate our shared passion for books. Subscribe to our monthly e-news and continue to check online for the latest news.
Find out morePortland Book Festival
Portland Book Festival: Closing Day
Sat, November 21
Join Literary Arts for the final day of the Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America. Come together with your community and celebrate our shared passion for books and cap off the 2020 Festival. The 2020 Festival takes place online November 5-21, with digital events streaming at different times throughout the day. The digital festival will feature author events for all ages, pop-up readings, and writing classes. Subscribe to our monthly e-news and continue to check online for the latest news.
Find out moreJanuary 2021
Portland Arts & Lectures
2020/21 Portland Arts & Lectures: Madeline Miller
Thu, Jan 28, 2021 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Madeline Miller is the author of The Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2018). Writing in a genre Miller refers to as “mythological realism,” these titles reimagine ancient Greek myths for the modern reader. The Song of Achilles won the 2012 Orange Prize (now The Women’s Prize for Fiction), was a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, and was praised by acclaimed author Ann Patchett as “a book I could not put down.” Circe was a #1 New York Times bestseller…
Find out moreFebruary 2021
Portland Arts & Lectures
2020/21 Portland Arts & Lectures: Ibram X. Kendi
Thu, Feb 18, 2021 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Ibram X. Kendi is a New York Times bestselling author and the founding director of The Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. A professor of history and international relations, Kendi is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of The Black Campus Movement and Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Kendi was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and he was honored on The Root…
Find out moreApril 2021
2020/21 Portland Arts & Lectures: Joy Harjo
Tue, Apr 20, 2021 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Joy Harjo is a renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was named the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019. Harjo is the author of nine books of poetry—most recently An American Sunrise—several plays and children’s books, and a memoir, Crazy Brave. She has received numerous prominent awards, including the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and 2015 Wallace Stevens Award. The Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, says: “Her work powerfully connects us to the…
Find out moreMay 2021
Portland Arts & Lectures
Portland Arts & Lectures 2020/21 Season
Tue, May 18, 2021 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
One event on Tue, May 18, 2021 at 7:30 pm
One event on Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 7:30 pm
One event on Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 7:30 pm
One event on Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 7:30 pm
Literary Arts is pleased to announce the author line-up for the 2020/21 Season of Portland Arts & Lectures. Subscriptions start at just $90 for the series. Subscribe today! At this time, all lectures are scheduled to take place at 7:30 p.m. in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.
Find out more
Portland Arts & Lectures
2020/21 Portland Arts & Lectures: Yaa Gyasi (RESCHEDULED)
Tue, May 18, 2021 from 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Yaa Gyasi is the author of the forthcoming novel, Transcendent Kingdom (Knopf, August 2020). Her best-selling debut novel, Homegoing (2016), is an intergenerational saga following two split branches of a Ghanaian family through three hundred years of history. Homegoing won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for best first book, was shortlisted for the British Book Award – Debut of the Year, was named a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, and…
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