BIPOC writers Writing Classes
May BIPOC Writers Workshop
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
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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.
online class Writing Classes
Where Do You Start: Writing Beginnings
The first sentences of a work can connect instantly to your character and their dilemma so that your reader is immediately hooked into your story. In this 3 hour class,
online class Writing Classes
Getting Published: Literary Magazines
How do you find literary magazines that want your work? What's the best way of getting an editor's attention? This workshop will give you the tools to set up your
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 Writing Classes
Creative Nonfiction I
How do I decide what to write about? What if my memory is flawed? How much research do I need to do? What details are the most important? What’s the
Free Events 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
In-person Writing Classes
Forest Bathing and Writing: Mt. Tabor Park
This class, held outdoors at Mt. Tabor Park, will guide you in practicing skills associated with shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing—a gentle, meditative approach to being with nature. The class will
online class Writing Classes
Starting the Story
This 4 -week short fiction workshop will focus on generating new work and simply getting words down on a page. We will read excerpts, share just-written work aloud, and sometimes
online class Writing Classes
Spring Forward, Fall Back: Time in Prose Writing
How to handle time can be challenging to master when writing in any genre. When should we slow down and dwell in a scene? When should we summarize and move
In-person Writing Classes
Forest Bathing and Writing: Hoyt Arboretum
This class, held outdoors at Hoyt Arboretum, will guide you in practicing skills associated with shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing—a gentle, meditative approach to being with nature. The class will include
online class Writing Classes
Weekly Check-In: Getting the Work Done
This 8-week class is focused on holding yourself and your classmates accountable to your writing goals. Each week, plan to share your work-in-progress with the group, set or revise goals
online class Writing Classes
Creative Nonfiction II
Creative nonfiction utilizes non-linear structures to “think” into complex or ambiguous subjects. In this class, we will explore the relationship between form and content in memoir, deepening our practice by
online 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
In-person Writing Classes
Modern Tarot
Tarot, the ancient card system, is having a 21st century renaissance. With more and more artists improving upon the medieval straight, white, thin and able-bodied imagery, today everyone can find
online class Writing Classes
To Agent Or Not to Agent
It’s all about the relationship! In this workshop you’ll learn when and how to search for an agent, what you need for a powerful query letter, and the nuts and
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 by authors including Han Kang, Tommy Orange, Lina Meruane, Mitchell S. Jackson, Deborah Levy, and Susan Steinberg, as well as craft essays by authors including
online class Writing Classes
The Notebook: Your Creative Process
Can we “chase” our imagination to its source? Where does creativity happen in the mind? These are some of the questions Lynda Barry explores in her book Syllabus, which describes the author’s lifelong investigation of the creative process. Participants will discuss Barry's techniques, and visit their own creative process, and perhaps draft a new story,
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 by authors including Han Kang, Tommy Orange, Lina Meruane, Mitchell S. Jackson, Deborah Levy, and Susan Steinberg, as well as craft essays by authors including
Fiction In-person Writing Classes
Refuse the Given World: Breaking Blocks Through Play
“When I sit down and start writing, I feel the given world recede, and I can just play.” —Sam Lipsyte Remember when you were a little kid, playing on the floor for hours and hours? Our best writing days are often imbued with that same sense of timelessness, freedom, wonder, and escape—in other words, our
In-person Writing Classes
Exploring Fiction Narratives: How’d They Do That?
When was the last story you read that really changed you? Maybe you thought about it for days, weeks, you’ve re-read it over the years. And maybe you said to yourself, “I wish I could write like that. How’d they do that?” This course is all about the how. In this combination craft and workshop
online class Writing Classes
Stamp Collecting: Another Approach to Memoir Writing
Do you think in lengthy narrative strands, elegantly formed with a beginning, middle and an end? I don’t. I flit from image, to feeling, to recrimination, to joy. Light flickers over my memories, both happy and hard. I call these messy memories ‘stamps,’ events or moments that have imprinted upon me in unshakeable ways. In
Memoir online class Writing Classes
Nine-Month Memoir Intensive
This 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
online class Writing Classes
Weekly Check-In: Getting the Work Done
This 8-week class is focused on holding yourself and your classmates accountable to your writing goals. Each week, plan to share your work-in-progress with the group, set or revise goals for your weekly writing practice, and share successes and challenges with fellow writers. You’ll also learn strategies for keeping focused and staying on track. Occasional
Fiction 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, with feedback from the class and the instructor. Discussions will be focused on character development and plot and how to chart the next steps with
Delve for Writers Delve Readers Seminars In-person Writing Classes
Delve for Writers: Joan Didion and Durga Chew-Bose
Delve for Writers is a new, occasional Delve series that offers seminars that focus on close readings of narrative, form, and stylistic choices that writers can incorporate into their own writing practice. Creative nonfiction is the perfect place to find voice, ideas and perspective – and nobody does it better Joan Didion and contemporary groundbreaker
online class Poetry 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
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 sharing new work in an informal setting. Open to BIPOC writers at all levels writing in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. Access Program We want our
online class Writing Classes
Writing the Weird and Wonderful: Nonfiction
The world is a weird place, and we’re just here to document it. This course is for the scribes, the armchair historians, the miners of weird information — all of you aspiring nonfiction writers who aren’t sure what to do with your ideas, or budding freelance journalists looking to turn your ideas into sellable stories.
Fiction online class Writing Classes
Leave the Door Open on the Way Out: Endings in Fiction
If a story leads exactly where you would expect it to go, then both the writer and the reader have discovered nothing. How do we expand our well-behaved, satisfying stories to fully burst into the mystery and unpredictability of human experience? This discussion class will give participants the tools to examine great stories for the
Fiction online class Writing Classes
Leave the Door Open On The Way Out: Endings in Fiction
We're all familiar with satisfying story shape, the arc of a story that follows the pattern of jokes and sex—the inciting incident, rising action, crisis and the falling action. Yet sometimes this pattern can leave a story flat, without room for wonder. If a story leads exactly where you would expect it to go, then
Fiction online class Writing Classes
The Study and Practice of Autofiction
This course is for all levels of writers and readers; the only requirement is a desire to take a deep dive into the unique art of autofiction (autobiographical fiction). We will read and discuss excerpts from contemporary authors who write within the genre, such as Lucia Berlin, Tao Lin, Edouard Louis, Chris Kraus, Garth Greenwell,
online class Portland Book Festival Writing Classes
Poetry Through Divination
In this online three-part workshop, participants will explore various methods of using the Tarot and other simple forms of divination as prompts for poems. We will allow ourselves to be
online class Portland Book Festival Writing Classes
Writing the Complicated Self
There is a great temptation to airbrush ourselves on the page, to fill in the pockmarks of our flaws—and yet this leaves us not only less trustworthy, but less interesting.
online class Portland Book Festival Writing Classes
Creating Vibrant and Complex Characters
This generative workshop will focus on the skills involved in creating and sustaining vibrant and complex characters. Through a series of in-workshop prompts and exercises participants will create and bring
online class Portland Book Festival Writing Classes
Writing Into Big Questions
How do the big questions of our time--from climate change to racism--inhabit the stories of our lives? And what does it look like on the page to tell exquisitely personal
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing Classes
Starting the Memoir
John D’Agata describes memoir as “an agitation of memory,” which suggests memory-based writing as not just the expression of memory but volatile, vital consideration of memory. In this workshop, participants
Middle Grade Portland Book Festival Writing Classes Youth Events
What I mean when I say, Art meet Poetry (Grades 6-8)
In this workshop, we’ll learn how to talk to and about artwork through poetry. Also known as Ekphrastic writing! We’ll look at examples of other artists and writers who have
Portland Book Festival Writing Classes Young Adult Youth Events
Poetic Sculpture (High School Workshop)
The famous abstract painter Joan Mitchell once said, “My paintings repeat a feeling about Lake Michigan, or water, or fields. … it’s more like a poem, and that’s what I
Portland Book Festival Writing Classes Young Adult Youth Events
Dialogues: The Craft of Writing Conversation (High School Workshop)
“She had spoken it; but she trembled when it was done, conscious that her words were listened to, and daring not even to try to observe their effect.”-Jane Austen, from
In-person Portland Book Festival 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
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing Classes
Writing Food
Explore the role of food in storytelling, and how it can shape, define, and give insight into our characters’ deeper desires. Particpants will examine the language of food, and talk
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing Classes
“The Most Important Element”: Plot in Literary Fiction
“Plot-driven” has become a code word for commercial (aka “lesser”) fiction. But plot has always been what defines a good story. In this workshop, we will examine the centrality of
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing Classes
Kick-Start Your Picture Book
This class will take you from idea to rough draft in four hours. Picture books are so much more than stories with short text for young readers. We’ll study the
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
online class Poetry Writing Classes
Advanced Poetry Workshop
Poesis,” in ancient Greek, means “making.” What would it mean to make poetry a daily part of your life? How might this re-make your understanding of poetry, your life, and
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