Free Events In-person
Slamlandia
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month, on the third Thursday. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in
45 events found.
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 community space and bookstore at 716 SE Grand Avenue, Portland, OR, online, and at partnering venues across Portland and Oregon.
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, with feedback from the class and the instructor. Discussions will be focused on character development and plot and how to chart the next steps with
For BIPOC Writers Free Events In-person
BIPOC Reading Series- October
Featured
We're back! And better than ever! Starting this month, the BIPOC Reading series will meet in-person at the Literary Arts event space in downtown Portland. We are also welcoming a new cohost, Kyle Yoshioka. This bimonthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of
Portland Arts & Lectures
Mary Beard: Portland Arts & Lectures 2023/24
Featured
Portland Arts & Lectures 2023/24
Literary Arts presents Mary Beard on October 26, 2023, as part of the 39th season of Portland Arts & Lectures.
Online Class Writing Classes
Grief and the Lyric Essay
Throughout history, writers have used lyrical 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
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 sharing new work in an informal setting. Open to BIPOC writers at all levels writing in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. Access Program We want our
Online Class Portland Book Festival Writing Class
The Art of the Novella
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.
Online Class Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
Writing About Animals
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.
Online Class Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
STYLE AND THE SENTENCE
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.
Online Class Writing Classes
The Lyric Essay: Braiding the World
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 bit of imagination; it celebrates mixing genres. In this workshop, we will write a series of fragments in response to prompts, and then braid
Free Events In-person
One Page Wednesday
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 to read – or come to listen and prepare to be inspired. Our host is the one and only, Emme Lund. Our featured reader is Molly
Online Class Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
Writing Deliciously: The Poetry of Food Writing
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?
In-person Poetry Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
Revising Poems
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.
Portland Book Festival Ticketed Events
Portland Book Festival
Portland Book Festival will return to the Portland Art Museum and neighboring venues on Saturday, November 4, 2023. This daylong event features author discussions, pop-up readings, writing workshops for youth and adults, kids’ story time, an extensive book fair, local food trucks, and more! Learn more at pdxbookfest.org
Portland Book Festival Ticketed Events
Viet Thanh Nguyen: A Man of Two Faces
Viet Thanh Nguyen will be joined in conversation with Tommy Orange. This is a special event at Portland Book Festival which requires an add-on ticket to attend. With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in A Man of Two Faces Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing Class Youth Events
Writing Poetry From Art (Grades 9-12)
In this workshop, we’ll discover parallels between visual and written art, and use pieces in the museum collection to inspire poetry.
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing Class Youth Events
Ekphrastic Worldbuilding (Grades 9-12)
In this workshop, we'll learn how to build a fictional world and add texture to imaginary settings.
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing Class Youth Events
Narrative and Social Justice Storytelling (Grades 9-12)
In this workshop, we’ll learn journalistic storytelling techniques and explore how they can be used to cover social justice stories.
Portland Book Festival Ticketed Events
Michael Lewis: Going Infitinite
This is a special event at Portland Book Festival which requires an add-on ticket to attend. From the #1 best-selling author of The Big Short and Flash Boys, the story of FTX’s spectacular collapse and the enigmatic founder at its center. When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and
In-person Portland Book Festival Writing 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 writing that is based on real life experiences, but also utilizes fictional literary devices, making it a very unique form.
Online Class Portland Book Festival Writing Class Writing Classes
Radical Revision
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.
Delve Readers Seminars In-person
Washington Square
Catherine Sloper is young—not clever, not quick, not ugly—and rich. Into her life in New York City’s fashionable Washington Square comes Morris Townsend—“the most beautiful young man in the world.” Her aunt Lavinia is impressed but Dr. Sloper, Catherine’s father, is not. Is Morris in love with Catherine, or merely after her money? In only
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
Free Events In-person
Incite: Queer Writers Read
Featured
Incite: Queer Writers Read
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 communities. Hosted by Vinnie Kinsella and Jennifer Perrine.
In-person Writing Classes
Finders, Keepers: Reclaiming Agency through Erasure and Collage
The hybrid genre of erasure and collage often exists between and because of two different mediums: text and image. Through obscuring a pre-existing text using various methods, an original work is created. Like erasure and collage, we as writers and community members exist between and because of various factors and people. What we amplify in
Online Class Writing Classes
Essaying the Essay
While we may know of essays as personal narratives crafted with creative storytelling techniques, essay as a verb means an attempt. In this six-week series, we’ll explore a variety of essays under the creative nonfiction umbrella in an attempt to expand our entry points to writing and in an attempt to build community. Our evenings
Online Class 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 essential truths of the larger world. The challenge we face as poets is how to transform our lived experiences–creatively and imaginatively–into art that can be
Free Events In-person
Slamlandia
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month, on the third Thursday. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safe space for poets to read their own poetry,
For BIPOC Writers Free Events In-person
BIPOC Reading Series- November
Featured
This monthly 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
Free Events In-person
Timeless Feminist Wisdom: A poetic conversation between Adela Zamudio and Adrienne Rich
Lynette Yetter, translator of Bolivian feminist poet Adela Zamudio’s work from the Spanish and Sara Guest, local teacher of American feminist Poet Adrienne Rich’s work will facilitate a “conversation” between these
Free Events In-person
One Page Wednesday
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
Free Events In-person
Independent Publishers Discussion
Join us at Literary Arts for a panel discussion featuring local independent publishers, Buckman Journal, Lurch Zine, and Provecho Magazine. Hosted by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller of Berm Magazine.
Free Events In-person
Slamlandia
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month, on the third Thursday. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in
Delve Readers Seminars In-person
Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past: The Guermantes way
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
Delve Readers Seminars
George Eliot: Daniel Deronda
Young and beautiful Gwendolen Harleth is poised at a roulette table at a German spa, where she is observed by Daniel Deronda, an exceptionally handsome upper-class Englishman. Later, a reversal of fortune forces Gwendolen toward a troubled marriage with a rich older man and Daniel encounters Mirah Lapidoth, a troubled young actress and singer. In
Delve Readers Seminars In-person
Selling your Soul for Fun and Profit: Faustian Bargains
The Faust Legend takes up the question of selling your soul to the devil for magical success in this world. This Delve seminar looks at the legend in three famous instantiations: in the German chapbook, in Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy, and in Goethe’s iconic drama. We can trace these authors’ evolving view of evil, sin, the
Free Events In-person
Incite: Queer Writers Read
Featured
Incite: Queer Writers Read
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
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
More Joy: Writing for Resilience
What if we joined our sorrows? What if that is joy? - Ross Gay Following in the tradition of Ross Gay, and his new book, The Book of (More) Delights,
Delve Readers Seminars
Monsters and Morals: Art vs. the Artist
So the saying goes, “You should never meet your heroes.” The fact that this is such a common expression implies a longtime acceptance that the artist and the art they make are not necessarily synonymous. However, recent years have seen our culture engaged in revelations about the morality of the figures behind our beloved works
Delve Readers Seminars In-person
“Lucid Abnormality”: The Short Stories of Elizabeth Bowen on the Homefront in World War II
Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) was maybe the greatest short story writer in English that you might not have read. In this Delve, we will read the two dozen stories she wrote describing life in London and throughout Britain during World War II. She describes a world coming apart at its most intimate level—the homes, the lives
Online Class Writing Classes
Writing the Novel: Getting to the First Draft
Writing novels can seem like a mystical process. Write every day, and a novel will appear. The work can feel isolating and disorienting, particularly for a writer’s first book, like
Free Events
2024 Oregon Book Award finalists announced
The 2024 Oregon Book Awards finalists will be announced on January 23, 2024 on our website. Winners will be announced at the 2024 Oregon Book Awards ceremony.
In-person Writing Classes
Get Writing: Unblocking Writer’s Block
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.
Online Class Poetry Writing Classes
There’s Something About Mary: The Practice of Looking Closely with Mary Oliver & Mary Ruefle
"I’m half crazy with the wonder of it- the abundance of leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I’m, in that delicious and important place,
Newsletter Signup
Follow
Contact
Literary Arts716 SE Grand Ave
Portland, Oregon 97214
- 503.227.2583
- 503.241.4256 fax
- la@literary-arts.org
Literary Arts, Inc. is a tax-exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Tax ID# 93-0909494
Copyright © 2025 Literary Arts
Made by Needmore Designs
Literary Arts appreciates the continuing support of…
