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.
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 guided intuitively in our creations, suppressing the urge to control the process intellectually. Session One will be purely generative, focusing on starting and progressing new
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. Students will explore how the contradictions in their personalities—the gaps between dirty laundry and grace—are the most interesting spaces for both readers and writers. Together,
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 to life vivid characters. We will focus on physical description, internal life, setting, scene, action, and dialogue to round out and bring our creations to
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 stories in ways that gesture toward larger concerns? In this 2-hour workshop, writers will uncover some of the big questions buried in their own narratives,
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 will look at examples of prose memoir in which the writer uses the poet’s tools of meditation, dream, and lyricism, and then do their own
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 done the same and take ourselves on a journey using writing exercises and imagination, creating poems line by line along the way.
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 want to paint.” She was inspired by poet friends, too. In this workshop, we’ll write poetry and turn it into art. Participants brainstorm about a
“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 Persuasion In this workshop, we will write stories built around dialogue, around speech. Once written, we will perform the words aloud, seeing how they flow
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, makingit a very unique form. I will provide craft essays and
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 about how hunger translates across unsaid emotions. Drawing upon sensory texts about snacking, groceries, and meals both extravagant and humble, we’ll learn new ways to
“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 plot in narrative, from Aristotle down to contemporary literary fiction. We will also explore the essential characteristics of a great plot and the rewards of
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 picture book form, then construct stories in picturebook form, playing with powerful tools such as repetition, suspenseful page turns, and the rule of threes. You
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.
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