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.
Join Corporeal Writing and Autofocus Lit for an inspiring evening of reading! Featuring performances from Yashwina Canter, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Marissa Korbel, Ryan Rivas, Marisa Siegel, and Kristen Millares Young. Hosted by Genevieve Hudson.
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
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
“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
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
Join us for a film screening and discussion with author, Mitchell S. Jackson.
Renga is a form of collaborative Japanese poetry whereby multiple poets create and respond in turn. Join our group of poets from Portland and abroad for an afternoon of renga writing that examines some of today's most pressing concerns - bodily autonomy, religious extremism, and imminent environmental ruin.
Join us for the release of NACF’s first published anthology "The Larger Voice - Celebrating Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Literature Fellows."
Join Tin House as they celebrate their Autumn Workshop faculty with an evening of readings and merriment. Featured readers will include Carolina De Robertis, Lydia Kiesling, Kimberly King Parsons, and Morgan Talty. Please note that masks will be required.
Lit-Mondo is an improv comedy show inspired by prose, poetry, and other writing by local and traveling authors. A team of experienced improv comedians listen to short readings by authors and pull from the themes and ideas in their work to create hilarious original comedy scenes on the spot!
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
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. The theme for November is "Afterglow." This event will take place in-person at Literary Arts' downtown center.
Literary Arts, Ooligan Press, and Portland State University’s English Department partner to present the Oregon BIPOC Writers Publishing Event. This event is designed for writers who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color to connect to the publishers and authors seeking to hear their voices. Pitching, Submitting, & Proposing: How to Make Money as a
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
This event is part of our 38th season of Portland Arts & Lectures. Four-part subscriptions to the lecture series are on sale now. We will not be selling single tickets
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
Literary Arts, Ooligan Press, and Portland State University’s English Department partner to present the Oregon BIPOC Writers Publishing Event. This event is designed for writers who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color to connect to the publishers and authors seeking to hear their voices. What to Expect When You’re Expecting (a Book!) Ever wonder
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
One Page Wednesday is back in-person at our downtown center! 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
In partnership with Ooligan Press. Join us in celebration of the launch of Where We Call Home: Lands, Seas, and Skies of the Pacific Northwest, an essay collection by Josephine
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
"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
The Moth returns to Portland on Tuesday, December 13. This extraordinary performance sells out quickly, so reserve your seats early and experience unforgettable stories told live! Literary Arts and The Moth are bringing a new lineup of storytellers to Portland. Each Moth Mainstage show features five tellers who have developed their true stories with help from The
Vanity Fair (“A Novel without a Hero”), by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848), belongs on the same shelf with other towering novels of the Victorian age: Bleak House, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre,
One Page Wednesday is back in-person at our downtown center! 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
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
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. The theme for January is "Beginnings." Our featured readers are Katie Borak, Neil Cochrane, and Aubrey Coulthurst.
Join us for an evening with Ruby McConnell and Char Miller discussing their latest books, Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of Life and Natural Consequences: Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril. Ruby McConnell is a registered geologist and outdoor adventurer. She is a recipient of numerous honors, including the Literary Arts Oregon Literary Fellowship, and
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
Novels of ghosts and haunted landscapes can open the door to discussions of sociology and repression, trauma, and the cathartic function of horror. In this seminar, we will examine themes
This event is part of our 38th season of Portland Arts & Lectures. Subscription sales to the lecture series have now closed. All lectures will be held in person at
“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
The Symposium by Plato asks: what is love? It is the story of a banquet in classical Athens, attended by Socrates and his friends, at which each person tells a
The American novelist Walker Percy described The Brothers Karamazov as “maybe the greatest novel of all time . . . . almost prophesies and prefigures everything—all the bloody mess and
The Oregon Book Awards honors the state’s finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, graphic literature, drama, literary nonfiction, and literature for young readers. Finalists will be announced on our web site on January 24, 2023. Oregon Book Award winners will be announced at the Oregon Book Awards ceremony on
Join us for a conversation with Joy Castro, author of One Brilliant Flame, and S. Tremaine Nelson of the Northwest Review. This is a virtual event. Click here to register in advance. If you have any questions, reach out to Jessica Meza-Torres at jessica@literary-arts.org.
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
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
Though published many decades apart, these two texts share similarities both in their subject matter and their experimental qualities. Just as Dictee cannot be merely labeled as a memoir and
Literary Arts is proud to present an evening with #1 New York Times bestselling author Amor Towles (Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow) in celebration of his third novel,
Literary Arts and Sony Pictures Classics invite you to a special screening of the new documentary Turn Every Page.
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
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
This event is part of our 38th season of Portland Arts & Lectures. Subscription sales to the lecture series have now closed. A limited amount of single tickets have been
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
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