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
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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.
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
BIPOC writers Writing Classes
BIPOC Writing Workshop: November
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 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
Writing Dynamic Dialogue
Dialogue is like music: on the page it may look great, but what it’s like when you hear it aloud? This workshop will examine what dialogue does, how to write
In-person Writing Classes
Submission Party
Bring a story, essay, nonfiction, hybrid piece - anything you feels is ready to submit. We'll review how submission works, how to research the literary magazines that might be a
online class Writing Classes
Writing With Constraints: Free Your Creativity
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by play." —Carl Jung For a creative twist, some prose writers impose unique conditions on their work
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
online class 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 Writing Classes
Mastering the Short Story
In this intensive workshop, students will write and revise their short stories focusing on craft elements such as characters, voice, subtext, and story structure. At the end of the six
online class Writing Classes
Six Month Screenwriting Intensive
“Screenplays…are primarily a narrative blueprint for cinematic interpretation. They require certain beats, certain layouts, and certain terminology to communicate the visual and audio needs of an eventual production — a
online class Writing Classes
Writing the Autofiction Novella: twelve week intensive
Autofiction is a unique genre (or non-genre) that combines the autobiographical with the fictional. In this course, we will take a close look at the craft of autofiction. We will read novel excerpts, short stories and novellas. We will also look at craft essays on the form. The goal over the twelve weeks is to
online class Writing Classes
Grief, Lyrically
Writers often use musical 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 crafting stories
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 many of the activities and discussions orbit or are inflected by recovery themes (Akbar has been in active recovery for eight years), participants are not
online class Writing Classes
Continuing Delight: Approaching Joy
In 2020, Perrin offered a class with Literary Arts on writing about joy inspired by Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. She's back in 2023 with a “take two” on this rich subject inspired this time by Ross Gay’s most recent book, Inciting Joy. This is a generative writing class where most of our time
In-person Memoir Writing Classes
Fiction Technique in Memoir
Memoir is a unique and exciting format in which the writer has the creative freedom to tell some portion of their life’s story in a captivating way. We don’t necessarily need to read your story from birth up to the present day but like any good novel, a good memoir should have a story arc,
online class Writing Classes
Writing For Television: Where to Begin
This unique course is designed for creative aspiring writers with no prior experience, as well as those with screenwriting experience, wishing to break into television writing. Learn in an interactive environment the basics of creating, writing, and presenting your first television script for both drama and/or comedy, including how to take your idea to the
For Bipoc Writers online class Writing Classes
BIPOC Writing Workshop: February
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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Literary Arts925 SW Washington Street
Portland, Oregon 97205
- 503.227.2583
- 503.241.4256 fax
- la@literary-arts.org
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