Events, Classes, and Seminars

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.

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Thursday

Apr 23

Saturday

Apr 25

Saturday

Apr 25

In-person   Writing Classes  

EPISTOLARY POEMS

Participants in this one day class will read, draft, and collaborate in revising letter poems that balance the public with the private, the close-to-bone with the common. Through generative, constraint-based prompts, participants will explore the tension between forms of direct address and forms of poetic allusion to speak to, or point towards, what’s been left unsaid in their poems.

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Saturday

Apr 25

Saturday

Apr 25

Saturday

Apr 25

Sunday

Apr 26

In-person   Storytelling   Writing Classes  

Bring Your Story to the Stage

This class is for anyone ready to take a personal 5-minute story and actively shape it for an audience. You’ll work hands-on with one story. Drafting, refining, and testing it aloud. We’ll focus on structure, pacing, and point of view, helping you find the spine of the story and decide what belongs in this particular version of the story and what doesn’t.

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Tuesday

Apr 28

Wednesday

Apr 29

Thursday

Apr 30

Thursday

Apr 30

Thursday

Apr 30

Saturday

May 2

Saturday

May 2

Online Class   Writing Classes  

Hybrid Memoir Workshop

In this class, we examine how hybrid memoirists strategize to tell stories that diverge from conventional forms of memoir and essay writing. In addition to practicing various poetic and nonfiction forms, participants will have the opportunity to deep dive into topics that interest them, such as art, literature, history, theory, myth, film, fashion, erotics, music, science, and more.

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Monday

May 4

Tuesday

May 5

Wednesday

May 6

In-person   Writing Classes  

Funny Fiction Workshop

In this six-week, workshop-meets-craft class, we'll dissect six different short stories and figure out: How did the writer do that? We’ll then apply some of those same literary tools to your own stories. Each writer will have the opportunity to have one short story workshopped in this class (ie; written and verbal feedback from both instructor and peers).

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Wednesday

May 6

Delve Readers Seminars   In-person  

Wallace Stevens: Collected Poems

Wallace Stevens is one of the most distinctive and extravagant voices in American poetry, an orator of the imagination and eloquent observer of the world's beauty. Beginning with the appearance of the astonishing Harmonium in 1923, Stevens published seven volumes of poetry while living an 'ordinary' life as an insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut. His Collected Poems is a book of wonders, one of the landmarks of American literary modernism, and his poems are admired and studied for their lustrous language, their philosophical profundity, and their commitment to the importance of poetry in our everyday lives.

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Wednesday

May 6

Thursday

May 7

Bookstore   Ticketed Events  

May Hand-Sewing Social with SCRAP PDX

The Literary Arts Bookstore and Cafe is thrilled to partner with SCRAP PDX for monthly crafting events. Stay tuned for details on this month's crafts!  This event is self-guided & beginner-friendly. A SCRAP educator will be ready to assist newer sewists with hand-sewing basics! This is a ticketed event. Drop-ins welcome

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Thursday

May 7

Friday

May 8

Tuesday

May 12

Thursday

May 14

Friday

May 15

Tuesday

May 19

Thursday

May 21

Free Events   In-person  

Slamlandia – May

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

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Thursday

May 21

Tuesday

May 26

Wednesday

May 27

Free Events   In-person  

BIPOC Reading Series – May

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

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Tuesday

Jun 2

In-person   Writing Classes  

Write Like You’re Swimming: From Self-Doubt to Compassion and Creative Flow

Through guided meditations, writing exercises, and reading excerpts of big-hearted, emotionally courageous literature, writers of fiction and nonfiction will develop more self-connection, feel compassion for themselves as writers as well as for their characters, and care for their nervous system during the writing process, so they can enjoy more flow, catharsis, and joy.

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Tuesday

Jun 2

Bookstore   Free Events  

Rosiee Thor: Being Aro: A Collection of Aromantic Stories about Love

Kick off Pride Month at The Literary Bookstore and Cafe! We are excited to welcome Rosiee Thor to celebrate their book Being Aro: A Collection of Aromantic Stories about Love. About the book: Explore expansive aromantic love and connection in stories across genres These twelve stories showcase aromantic people breaking generational curses, finding acceptance, and

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Wednesday

Jun 3

In-person   Writing Classes  

WRITING FIRST-PERSON FICTION

In this course we'll read a number of first-person stories and discuss the advantages and risks of this perspective and how the first-person perspective is effectively established and sustained. Participants will use prompts to experiment with the many possibilities of the first-person in their own creative work.

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Thursday

Jun 4

Saturday

Jun 6

Saturday

Jun 6

Sunday

Jun 14

Delve Readers Seminars   In-person  

Simone Weil: Paying Attention to the World

One of the most compelling figures of modern thought, Simone Weil (1909–1943) was a brilliant, often startling, and visionary thinker. She was a philosopher (one of first two women in France to earn a PhD, along with her classmate Simone de Beauvoir), teacher, writer, factory worker, pacifist, soldier, marxist, anarchist, Jewish, Christian, mystic, exile, playwright, translator, and mathematician.

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Tuesday

Jun 16

Bookstore   Free Events  

Melissa Febos: The Dry Season

The Literary Arts Bookstore and Cafe is thrilled to welcome Melissa Febos to celebrate the paperback release of her book The Dry Season. About the book: In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break: For three months, she would abstain from dating, relationships, and sex. Her friends were

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Sunday

Jun 21

Monday

Jun 22

Delve Readers Seminars   Online  

Octavia Butler: Fledgling

Octavia Butler’s final novel, Fledgling, is a powerful, disturbing book about humanity and Otherness that is also a vampire coming-of-age story. Delve guide Nisi Shawl, a friend of Butler’s during her lifetime, adds unique perspective drawing on their personal experience of the author’s joys, struggles, triumphs, and frustrations.

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Tuesday

Jun 23

Wednesday

Jun 24

In-person   Writing Classes  

WRITING THROUGH MEMORY: WEAVING YOUR PAST WITH THE PRESENT

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).

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Thursday

Jun 25

Saturday

Jun 27

Thursday

Jul 9

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