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 downtown Literary Arts space, online, and at partnering venues across Portland and Oregon.
This six-month class is designed for memoirists in the early to mid stages of their memoir writing journey looking for consistent, in-depth feedback on their work. We will study four
This class, in the words of Nikki Finney, is about having and keeping a beautiful mind -- which is essential to building an art practice that can change or deepen
Writing can be emotionally exhausting. It can have a substantial physiological effect on the body: as you imagine an emotional scene, your body will sometimes go through the experience as
This course for dedicated writers is designed to guide you through the writing and/or revising of your novel. It runs from September through May. You’ll read excerpts from published novels
This course for dedicated writers is designed to guide you through the writing and/or revising of your novel. It runs from September through May. You’ll read excerpts from published novels
As many of us now know, traumatic memory doesn’t always function linearly. There is no clear beginning or end, as trauma literally relives itself in the brain. Because of this,
During this weekend autofiction intensive, we will take a deep dive into the unique art of autofiction. Autofiction combines the disciplines of autobiography and fiction. It can be written like
This six-week course is designed to help students finish a draft of a fiction or non-fiction manuscript. We'll read craft essays about drafting a book, set aside time each week
In his 1974 book, Working, Studs Terkel begins by saying, “This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence—to the spirit as well as to the body.”
This weekend intensive is designed for writers who have written at least the first two chapters of a novel. Limited to 8 students, each participant will have their work discussed,
Throughout history, writers have used lyrical techniques to access states of consciousness we associate with grief. Lyrical writing prioritizes music, rhythm, and emotion over the narrative arc. The goal of
The novella has its own parameters, intricacies, and rewards. Together we’ll look at the novella’s histories, jewels, origins, and how its varying structures still feed into the overall design. Students can use this experience to either enhance their own novellas, or learn more about this fascinating literary form.
When it comes to writing short fiction and novels, the ideas we’ve absorbed about narrativizing from our outside lives often don’t apply. Even the most thrilling story, if written without a reverence to form, loses its audience quickly. In this seminar on literary style, we’ll study the most minute of authorial choices, coming to understand how subjectivity comes through on the subconscious level of the sentence.
The lyric essay is a form that allows many small fragments to be drawn together to create a whole. A lyric essay might hold memories, research, a bit of poetry,
Together, we will delve into the intimate sensory memories that food evokes. How can writing about food open up evocative spaces of comfort, family, memory, shared rituals, and desires? How can writing through and about food radically strengthen our communities and open up our creative craft?
Bring one or two of your most promising poems-in-process, and we will work through ways to make them more like what they want to be. This will not be a critique session, but a workshop in generative revision.
Equal parts strategy, community, generative writing, and experiment, this class will help writers spark curiosity and deepen self-knowledge while crafting artistic habits that nourish. A good fit for writers who
The hybrid genre of erasure and collage often exists between and because of two different mediums: text and image. Through obscuring a pre-existing text using various methods, an original work
While we may know of essays as personal narratives crafted with creative storytelling techniques, essay as a verb means an attempt. In this six-week series, we’ll explore a variety of
“Your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone’s.” -Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, The Poet’s Companion What we know in our personal worlds contain
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