Fall 2023 online class Writing Classes
HAVING AND KEEPING A BEAUTIFUL MIND
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
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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 downtown Literary Arts space, online, and at partnering venues across Portland and Oregon.
Memoir online class Summer 2023 Writing Classes
Fragments and Memoir
In this generative workshop, we’ll look at examples by writers who use fragments in various ways, and try inventive writing exercises and strategies for creating a memoir from fragments. Fragments
Fall 2023 online class Writing Classes
The Self-Doubting Writer: Releasing Anxiety
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 if it were happening. And on top of that there's the anxiety, self-doubt, and judgment that many writers struggle with. In this 8 week course
Fall 2023 Novel online class Writing Classes
Nine-Month Novel Intensive: Wednesday
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
Fall 2023 Novel online class Writing Classes
Nine-Month Novel Intensive: Thursday
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
Fall 2023 Memoir online class Writing Classes
When Memory is Fractured: Using Fragments to Craft Memoir
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,
Fall 2023 In-person Writing Classes
Autofiction Weekend Intensive
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
For Bipoc Writers online class Writing Classes
BIPOC Writing Workshop: September
Searching for a space to create new work with fellow BIPOC writers? This two-hour workshop meets on Zoom. A variety of prompts will be presented as avenues for generating and
Free Events online class Writing Classes
The Break with Kaveh Akbar
In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, "The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though
Fall 2023 In-person Writing Classes
Pushing Through: Carrying Your Manuscript Over the Finish Line
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
Fall 2023 In-person Writing Classes
EVERYBODY DOES IT: WRITING ABOUT WORK
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.”
Writing Classes Youth Events
Stranger than Fiction: Stepping into Speculation (ages 14-18)
Explore what it means to be alive in our current world through the weird and expansive genre of speculative fiction that gives us a way to look at social and/or
Fall 2023 In-person Writing Classes
Where Do I Go From Here: Writing the Novel
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,
Fall 2023 online class Writing Classes
Grief and the Lyric Essay
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 this course is to find entry into writing through reading, conversation,and various prompts and exercises to catalyze memory and thinking. We will consider how writers
For Bipoc Writers online class Writing Classes
BIPOC Writing Workshop: October
Searching for a space to create new work with fellow BIPOC writers? This two-hour workshop meets on Zoom. A variety of prompts will be presented as avenues for generating and
Fall 2023 online class Portland Book Festival Writing Class
The Art of the Novella
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.
online class Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
Writing About Animals
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.
Fall 2023 online class Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
STYLE AND THE SENTENCE
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.
Fall 2023 online class Writing Classes
The Lyric Essay: Braiding the World
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,
Fall 2023 online class Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
Writing Deliciously: The Poetry of Food Writing
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?
Fall 2023 In-person Poetry Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
Revising Poems
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-person Portland Book Festival Writing Class Young Adult Youth Events
Writing Poetry From Art (Grades 9-12)
In this workshop, we’ll discover parallels between visual and written art, and use pieces in the museum collection to inspire poetry.
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing Class Young Adult Youth Events
Ekphrastic Worldbuilding (Grades 9-12)
In this workshop, we'll learn how to build a fictional world and add texture to imaginary settings.
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing Class Young Adult Youth Events
Narrative and Social Justice Storytelling (Grades 9-12)
In this workshop, we’ll learn journalistic storytelling techniques and explore how they can be used to cover social justice stories.
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
The Unique Art of Autofiction
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.
online class Poetry Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
Radical Revision
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.
Fall 2023 online class Writing Classes
Recharge Your Writing Life: Experiments & Strategies
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
Fall 2023 In-person Writing Classes
Finders, Keepers: Reclaiming Agency through Erasure and Collage
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
Fall 2023 online class Writing Classes
Essaying the Essay
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
Fall 2023 online class Writing Classes
Speaking Beyond the Self in Poetry
“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 essential truths of the larger world. The challenge we face as poets is how to transform our lived experiences–creatively and imaginatively–into art that can be
online class Winter 2024 Writing Classes
Six Month Short Story Intensive
This class is for experienced writers who are dedicated to starting the first draft of a story collection over the course of six months. Participants should have experience writing stories
online class Winter 2024 Writing Classes
More Joy: Writing for Resilience
What if we joined our sorrows? What if that is joy? - Ross Gay Following in the tradition of Ross Gay, and his new book, The Book of (More) Delights,
online class Winter 2024 Writing Classes
Writing the Novel: Getting to the First Draft
Writing novels can seem like a mystical process. Write every day, and a novel will appear. The work can feel isolating and disorienting, particularly for a writer’s first book, like stumbling around in the dark. This 16-week course is designed to prepare writers for every stage of the novel writing process from beginning the first
In-person Winter 2024 Writing Classes
Get Writing: Unblocking Writer’s Block
Sometimes we become so focused on productivity or “doing it right” that we stifle our creativity. In this class we’ll focus on one of the hardest parts of writing: writing.
online class Poetry Winter 2024 Writing Classes
There’s Something About Mary: The Practice of Looking Closely with Mary Oliver & Mary Ruefle
"I’m half crazy with the wonder of it- the abundance of leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I’m, in that delicious and important place,
online class Winter 2024 Writing Classes
Write the Self: the study and practice of writing from personal experience
This course is for all levels of writers and readers. We will read and discuss excerpts from contemporary authors who write the self (or write from the basis of personal
online class Winter 2024 Writing Classes
Recharge Your Writing Life: Experiments & Strategies
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
Winter 2024 Writing Classes
Fiction Intensive
Generate pages and explore the finer nuances of the world of your short story or novel in this Fiction Intensive! Over the course of 12 weeks, participants will work on generating and framing their narratives – from idea formation to story development and revision with a keen eye on the elements of fiction such as
Free Events online class Writing Classes
The Break with Kaveh Akbar
In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, "The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though
online class Winter 2024 Writing Classes
Noticing: Writing as an Act of Attention
In this class, we will drop all worry about being “writers.” Instead, we will simply use writing as a means of grounding our own attention. We will be prompted by
online class Spring 2024 Writing Classes
ON GHOSTS, GHOSTING and HAUNTS
What is a ghost if not spirit energy yearning for form and expression? In our time together, we’ll explore a range of structures capable of hosting ghosts, from epistolary to
online class Spring 2024 Writing Classes
Creative Nonfiction Workshop
This six-week class will hold space for creative nonfiction writers to write and discuss short creative nonfiction works (memoir, essay, lyric essay). Writers at every level---from beginner to experienced---are welcome
In-person Spring 2024 Writing Classes
A Wrinkle in Time: How to Manage Chronology
One of the central struggles in storytelling is that human beings are, in essence, time travelers. We live in the past of our memories and the future of our hopes.
In-person Spring 2024 Writing Classes
How to Write Riveting Scenes
The key to any unforgettable work of prose resides in the quality of its scenes. In this class, we’ll look at some of the best scenes ever written and investigate
online class Spring 2024 Writing Classes
Relearning the Lyric Essay
In this six week class, students will explore the lyric essay form and learn to appreciate what makes it one of the most imaginative and creative writing genres around. Class
online class Spring 2024 Writing Classes
Places & Spaces: Making settings come to life
How do you describe the Oregon coast, a garden full of dahlias, or the vibe of your favorite coffee shop? How do you write about a crowd of people? A
online class Spring 2024 Writing Classes
From Idea to Manuscript: Crafting Your Picture Book: Tuesdays
We've added a second section! Have you ever wondered how to turn your brilliant idea into a captivating picture book? In this 8-week course, you’ll learn the art of crafting
online class Spring 2024 Writing Classes
From Idea to Manuscript: Crafting Your Picture Book
Have you ever wondered how to turn your brilliant idea into a captivating picture book? In this 8-week course, you’ll learn the art of crafting picture books that leave a
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- la@literary-arts.org
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