Events, Classes, and Seminars

In this generative writing workshop, we will explore a slice of Portland as flâneurs, or writers who walk and observe as part of their practice.

Write about difficult experiences with honesty and control. This six-week course helps you navigate vulnerability on the page without feeling exposed or stuck. Through guided exercises and discussion, you’ll develop strategies to approach sensitive material with clarity, emotional safety, and intention so you can tell the truth while staying grounded.

This class will provide an introduction to journalism for every writer. Learning the fundamentals of reporting, researching, writing, editing and fact-checking can enhance any writing practice. In five, two-hour sessions, students of all levels will learn basic journalistic skills they can apply to their own projects, whatever the genre.

Together we will read & write creative writing on substance abuse, addiction & recovery, with an emphasis on harm reduction, healing, and reclamation. We will look at poems, short stories, and essay writing centering themes of addiction by their loved ones and by those with lived experience.

Although this course will predominantly take the form of a workshop, it will also provide insights into the craft of writing by drawing upon principles from The Art of Fiction, essays on literary craft, and published short stories. Designed for beginner and advanced writers, this course meets for ten sessions total. Students will have the opportunity to share two pieces (up to 25 pages each) and receive constructive feedback in a thoughtfully facilitated, supportive atmosphere.

This class is designed to demystify the editing process with applicable tools for editing at each stage of your draft. From fiction to creative nonfiction, this five-week workshop offers in-depth looks at different editorial tools to use to help you refine your story and your language.

This five-day intensive teaches writers the essential elements of compelling scene construction. Over five class meetings, students will learn to create authentic characters, ground readers in vivid and purposeful setting, weave exposition seamlessly into narrative, and build scenes that draw readers in and hold them page after page.

This craft-focused workshop is built around personalized feedback on work in progress. Each session, the group reads and discusses four writers’ submissions, and for every piece, the instructor prepares an individual craft lesson—the one element she believes will most help that piece take its next step forward.

Every writer has moments that seem larger than themselves: a night sky, a death, a first encounter with art, a dream, a sentence in a book, a city seen from above, a strange conversation, a childhood image that never stopped working. This one-day workshop helps writers return to one such moment and begin shaping it into literary material.

This class will provide practical insights and techniques to craft short stories that captivate and create an emotional resonance with readers. We will explore the practice of writing fiction as an experience that not only includes putting words to page, but also as an act of listening, observing, and paying attention.

In these quarterly gatherings we’ll meet to be inspired by the turn of the world. From autumn leaves to springtime flowers, rain and snow and sun, we’ll consider nature’s shifts and how we can incorporate them into our writing practice.