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.
Join us in welcoming Sarah Aziza and Omar El Akkad for a conversation on Sarah's new memoir, The Hollow Half. About the book: A brush with death. An ancestral haunting.
From crystals to cults, Leah Sottile's Blazing Eye Sees All is an investigation into American New Age spirituality and the ways it helps and hurts people. Exploring themes of extremism,
Yallah! Muslims Write is a monthly workshop with the expressed intent to foster a joyful, supportive, and courageous space for self-identifying Muslim artists.
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
Literary Arts and The Dougy Center present Susan Lieu, a Vietnamese-American author, playwright, and performer. Her works include her solo show "140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother” and memoir The Manicurist’s Daughter.
A talk with Jaclyn Moyer, author of On Gold Hill: A Personal History of Wheat, Farming, and Family, from Punjab to California at the Monmouth Public Library. On Gold Hill
Literary Arts and APANO are so excited to invite four incredible writers to read from their work and celebrate community during AAPI Heritage Month. Light refreshments will be served, and
Registration for the event opens on Friday, May 23 at 9:00 a.m. Tickets are free but capacity is limited. Register here. Agenda 🎶 Music from Joe Kye 💜 Janice Lee
Join us for a very special story time reading and illustration demo with visiting author/illustrator Tom Toro to celebrate his newest book, Crocodiles Need Friends, Too! Tom Toro is
Join us in celebrating Jonny Garza Villa's latest, Futbolista! A classmates-to-friends-to-lovers romp that is equal parts raunchy and heartfelt. About the book: A classmates-to-friends-to-lovers romance that's equal parts raunchy, heartfelt,
Join us for a night of music and literary conversation with Gabriel Kahane and Ross Barkan, celebrating Glass Century. About the book: It's 1973 and Mona Glass is a 24-year-old
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
Literary Arts is thrilled to be a part of Portland Book Week 2025! Come on down to the store, buy a Portland Book Week tote bag, and check some items
Lyrical writing prioritizes music, rhythm, and emotion over the narrative arc. In this course, we will find entry into writing through reading, conversation, and various prompts and exercises to catalyze memory and insight.
Poetry can be found anywhere and be created from anything. To create found poetry, we rely on a preexisting text like news articles, published poems, or excerpts from legal and government documents, to rediscover ways in which we as writers rely on language to create art.
Join us at Literary Arts for a social event to meet local children's authors and learn about their work! It's the middle of Portland Book Week AND The American Booksellers
Join Literary Arts for a social mixer event to meet local children's authors and learn about their work! It's the middle of Portland Book Week AND The American Booksellers Association's
This course is for all levels of writers and readers. We will read and discuss excerpts from contemporary authors who write the self (or write from the basis of personal experience), in addition to weekly craft essays on various genres (memoir, personal essay, autofiction).There will be an opportunity to submit either one or two short excerpts of your writing (can be from a short story or novel-in-progress) to be workshopped during the class.
Known for her “fearless and unbridled” writing about the natural world, Annie Dillard’s first three non-fiction books conjure lyrical insights so vivid that they seem to burn. So much more than a “nature writer,” Dillard’s observations of whatever she’s looking at—the transient effects of an eclipse viewing in a small town, a near-deadly airplane crash on an island in the Pacific Northwest, the unraveling of a tangled snake-skin she finds wandering through the woods—reveal the living textures of things: their ordinary strangeness and transcendent beauty.
On June 13, Coos Bay Public Library, in partnership with Literary Arts, will host a Writing Workshop With Willy Vlautin from 4:00pm-5:30pm and an Author Reading at 6:00pm. Join us
Join us on Saturday, June 14 to celebrate the opening of the Literary Arts Cafe! We will be open all day, but between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. we will
Literary Arts welcomes Peyton June to celebrate her debut young adult horror, Bad Creek. Peyton will be joined by fellow debut novelist Isa Aganjanian, the author of Modern Divination, for
Learn creative process skills for sticking with a writing project from initial idea to completion. If you dream of writing that novel or finishing that poem, but you feel scattered, overwhelmed, or stuck with many beginnings but no finished product, this workshop will offer you gentle and effective ways to work through creative blocks so you can finally share your creative expression with your readers.
Explore Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague (2022), an epic narrative which depicts the outbreak of the bubonic plague in the late Ottoman era. The stage is the fictional island Mingheria in the Levant, and the year is 1901.
Yallah! Muslims Write is a monthly workshop with the expressed intent to foster a joyful, supportive, and courageous space for self-identifying Muslim artists.
About the book: A genre-bending exploration of that most elemental force–water–through Indigenous storytelling, personal memory, and the work of influential artists and writers For many years, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Join Rachel Attias for an afternoon of writing. Participants will spend time writing to a variety of prompts, sharing their work with classmates.Writers of fiction, memoir, and poetry are all welcome for this fun, focused afternoon.
Join the Pacific Northwest College of Art writers Stephanie Adams-Santos author of Dream of Xibalba, Megan Milks author of Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body, Poupeh Missaghi author
Literary Arts welcomes Our Bold Voices founder Paul Iorrobino and readers from the new Defiant Moments anthology: Noah Grabeel, Kyle Lang, Brandy Penner and Scott Strickland.
Questions about applying to this year's Oregon Literary Fellowships? Join us at this information session! Drop-in anytime between 3:00-4:00 p.m. Register in advance for this meeting here. Please contact Alexa
In this six-week generative course we will read, watch, and listen to a wide range of sources—from traditional short stories to anonymous online forum posts, podcast excerpts, and short videos of people arguing at home or in the street. Each week we’ll discuss what story lives inside our experimental source, and will then come up with a prompt based on that source together.
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
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month, on the third Thursday (although this month is an exception, meeting on the fourth Thursday!). This mic provides
Join Claire Bernardo, Chelsea Bieker, and Meg Lucero for a conversation about the joys and challenges of motherhood and recovery.
Join us for a timely conversation with two local journalists Rebecca Grant and Zoë Carpenter about Grant’s forthcoming title, Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the Sixty-Year Battle for Reproductive
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
Please join us for a special reading event featuring recipients of the 2025 Oregon Literary Fellowships. This event is free and open to the public. Featuring . . . Zoë
In this eight-week workshop, we will focus on leading with suspense to evoke curiosity and engagement. In our first class, we’ll discuss the craft of making big and little promises to the reader and fulfilling them in fresh but satisfying ways. Sterling examples of engaging openings from the canon will provide fodder for our discussion of how to captivate a reader. In our subsequent classes, we’ll workshop two student submissions per each class.
The Literary Arts bookstore is excited to welcome Starri Merryweather for a very special drag storytime! From the imagination of multi-hyphenate performance artist Sonnei Verbena, Starri Merryweather brings whimsy, heart
Putting Your Creativity first will feature a talk, writing prompts and group write-along, followed by a Q&A on the creative process, writing community, and business of art.
Join us for a conversation between Jami Attenberg and Genevieve Hudson, discussing Jami's novel A Reason to See You Again.
A Physical Education traces Casey Johnston’s journey of calorie restriction and obsessive cardio—making herself small in almost every way—to finding healing through the (unexpected) practice of lifting weights. As she
Questions about applying to this year's Oregon Literary Fellowships? Join us at this information session! Drop-in anytime between 6:00-7:00 p.m. Register in advance for this meeting here. Please contact Alexa
Just in time for the Oasis Live '25 tour, join us for a conversation with DJ Greg Glover and Melissa Locker on her latest book, And After All: A Fan
Join Orion's deputy editor Tara Rae Miner with Erica Berry, Oregon Book Award–winning author of Wolfish; Julie Beeler, artist and author of The Mushroom Color Atlas; and Elan Hangens, mushroom
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