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,
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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 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
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 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,
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 want to reimagine their creative life. We’ll discuss methods for working through blocks and rejection, rituals that refill the well, and ways to make time
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 your self? This class will offer you the opportunity to explore these questions and consider poetry as a time-based art, a place-based art, and a
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 it – and when to use it. We’ll practice shaping and creating dialogues we can share. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves
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
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 and familiarity with the elements of literary short fiction including scene, character, conflict, place, and revision. We will study individual stories by authors, read craft
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 weeks, students will have created a dossier of up to 20 pages of new work and received detailed feedback from the instructor. Access Program We
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 production that hundreds of professionals will collaborate on.” - Ken Miyamoto, Screencraft “The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take
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
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
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Literary Arts925 SW Washington Street
Portland, Oregon 97205
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- 503.241.4256 fax
- la@literary-arts.org
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