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.
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.
How and why do we write about non-human animals, and how might we write about them in new ways? Through discussion, short readings, and writing exercises, we will explore varying approaches to writing about other species in our time of mass extinction and global warming. No experience necessary.
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.
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.
In this workshop, we’ll discover parallels between visual and written art, and use pieces in the museum collection to inspire poetry.
In this workshop, we'll learn how to build a fictional world and add texture to imaginary settings.
In this workshop, we’ll learn journalistic storytelling techniques and explore how they can be used to cover social justice stories.
This is a three-hour, one-day intensive discussion on the unique genre of autofiction. This course will provide insight into the many nuances of autofiction, or autobiographical fiction. This “genre” involves writing that is based on real life experiences, but also utilizes fictional literary devices, making it a very unique form.
Let's spend a few hours together exploring the practice of revision! Too often revision is just a fancy word for copy-editing. But it can be more. In this three hour class we will explore different revision exercises using a recent poem and how we can break old revision habits and constructs.
This will be a generative writing lab where we will read poems together and then write poems together. Be prepared to write and have fun and experiment in new ways.We will go from one set of poems and writing exercises to the next with some time at the end to share what we’ve written. Come to this workshop with a big imagination, an open mind, a laptop and/or a notebook.
Explore the necessary elements of writing a nonfiction book proposal from outline to “comp titles”, how to use them effectively, and where you can let your personal style shine through. In nonfiction, most books are sold “on proposal” which means writers connect with an agent and publisher for a book deal before writing the entire
Learn new techniques for maintaining inspiration, overcoming self-doubt, and establishing sustainable writing habits, and stay focused and motivated on your writing goals.Explore the tools and mindset needed to persevere through challenges.
In this workshop, we will explore an expansive approach to the multi-voice novel. Taking inspiration from recently published works, we will consider how to decide which of your novel’s characters get to tell a story, and the manner in which they do so, and forms of narration that utilize the supernatural.
Instructor: Amy Minato Grades 9-12 In this workshop, we’ll discover parallels between visual and written art drawing inspiration from pieces in the museum collection. We’ll practice imagery, form, metaphor, and perspective to engage in conversation with actual paintings in a supportive writing community. No previous writing experience necessary! Just bring your imagination and good vibes.
Instructor: Damien Miles-Paulson (Grades 9-12) Write about your life … as a zombie! In this workshop, you’ll take a normal day and turn it into an imaginative story where you face the challenges of being undead. We’ll explore how twisting real-life moments with wild, fictional elements helps you see them in a totally new way.
Let’s play at the intersection of language and visual art! In this pop-up class, we’ll capture the image as it appears and disappears through ekphrastic writing and erasure.
The goal with stories, usually, is to keep us immersed in the plot line. So how do we make funny little tangents smoothly, without distracting the reader? This session will look at some examples of great transitions and practice making great little tangents of your own.
Instructor: Nicky Nicholson-Klingerman Grades 9–12 This workshop will explore the healing and performative aspects of spoken word poetry. Students will engage with spoken word poets from Gwendolyn Brooks to Brandon Leake, with time to write and perform their own spoken word poetry and share space and community with other young poets.
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