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.
Incite: Queer Writers Read is a curated, bimonthly reading series for Queer writers. Incite’s hope is to create conversation, connection, and greater understanding both within the Queer community and with other
Join us for a panel discussion with the 2023 Oregon Book Award finalists for the Angus Bowmer Award in Drama. The panel will be moderated by Conor Eifler, the 2021
Join us for an evening with the 2023 Oregon Book Award finalists for the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction. Readings will be followed by an audience Q&A. This is
Join us for storytime with the 2023 Oregon Book Award finalists for the Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children's Literature. This is a virtual event. Click here to register in
Join us for a reading featuring the 2023 Oregon Book Award finalists for the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Literature. This is a virtual event. Click
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
Please join us for a reading with some of this year's finalists in Poetry and Fiction: Sindya Bhanoo Matthew Dickman Michele Glazer Emme Lund Eric Tran
Join us for an evening honoring our state's most accomplished writers in the genres of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, young readers, and drama.
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
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
Here is an opportunity to share or listen to one page of work in progress from talented writers from everywhere. Come with a single page of work and sign up
Join us in celebrating the launch of Metabolics (University of Chicago Press).Author Jessica E. Johnson will be joined in conversation by Janice Lee, author of Imagine a Death (Texas Review
“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
“It’s the little things that count”; “Good things come in small packages”; “Brevity is the soul of wit”; “The Devil’s in the details”… We’ll put these aphorisms to the test in this Delve Seminar exploring short poems, prose poetry, and short/micro fiction. These compressed forms aren’t lacking for content in their brevity, and we will
Setting is an important aspect of every story, but sometimes it is so integral as to be almost a character in itself. Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi and Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger explore the unsettling power of place and its influence on the human mind. Piranesi lives in the House, a fantastical, dreamlike structure where ocean
“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
A reading featuring the 2023 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients.
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets
Join two of this year’s finalists in General Nonfiction for a talk and reading at the Springfield Public Library. When the Moon Turns to Blood by Leah Sottile is a
Proust’s magnum opus is often considered to be the greatest novel of the 20th century. It richly repays the careful attention it demands, and becomes unforgettable. First-time readers, however, may find the style and size of the work daunting. This seminar is intended for participants who have always wanted to read Proust, but who would
This bimonthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color. Come listen to our featured readers, or sign
This event is part of our 38th season of Portland Arts & Lectures. Subscriptions to the lecture series have now closed. Depending on inventory, we may release a limited amount
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
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland is producing two Shakespeare plays this season, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night—both perennial favorites. OSF tries to make these plays fresh for contemporary audiences with inventive or provocative interpretations. These seminars will help you think through how you might stage the dramas if you were the director. How
Published in 1936, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! takes his favored subject--the legacy of slavery and the Civil War--and his imagined setting--Mississippi's Yoknapatawpha County--to new heights of development. Set in the period before, during, and after the Civil War, it focuses on the life of Thomas Sutpen, an aspiring plantation owner and patriarch, and his descendants.
Youth Poetry Slam Championship Celebrate Portland’s youth poets during Literary Arts’ annual Verselandia! Youth Poetry Slam Championship. Cheer on students from Portland and East Multnomah County public high schools competing
Join us in celebration of the launch of oh orchid o’clock (Omnidawn Publishing, 2023) by Endi Bogue Hartigan who will introduce her new collection. She will be joined by Brazilian
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,
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
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,
“A list of furniture is not a good beginning to a letter, though I dare say a clever person with a fantastic turn of mind could transform even a laundry list into a poem.” Mildred Lathbury, the “excellent woman” at the heart of Barbara Pym’s 1952 comedy of manners, is full of such opinions and
This seminar offers an in-depth exploration of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg, 1924). As a modernist epic The Magic Mountain intimates the tradition of the Bildungsroman, only with an ironic twist. It draws an unforgettable portrayal of a lost world, the cosmopolitan European society before the First World War. The polyglot, international milieu
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland is producing two Shakespeare plays this season, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night—both perennial favorites. OSF tries to make these plays fresh for contemporary audiences with inventive or provocative interpretations. These seminars will help you think through how you might stage the dramas if you were the director. How
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.
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets
Literary Arts presents a special event with legendary actor, filmmaker, and writer Tom Hanks, in conversation about his new novel The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece. About the book: The
With the death of Hilary Mantel in September 2022 we lost one of the greatest writers of our time. Mantel’s books are so original, and so different from one another, that it’s often difficult to believe they were written by the same novelist. Her brilliant language, dark humor, and inventive, impeccable craft make everything she
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
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets
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