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.

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Thursday

Jul 17

Monday

Jul 21

Tuesday

Jul 22

Wednesday

Jul 23

Wednesday

Jul 23

Thursday

Jul 24

Monday

Jul 28

Wednesday

Jul 30

Wednesday

Jul 30

Monday

Aug 4

In-person   Summer 2025   Writing Classes  

The Art of the Gut Renovation: Revising as Rebuilding

This class is designed for nonfiction writers. Essayists, memoirists, and writers of literary reportage are all welcome. Please come with a complete early draft of a project — maybe it’s something fresh, or maybe it’s simply a piece on which you feel a bit stalled. By the end of the month, writers will emerge with a new set of revision strategies, and a clear path forward for revising their work-in-progress.

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Wednesday

Aug 6

Friday

Aug 8

Friday

Aug 8

Bookstore   Free Events  

Crafting Stories: Mark Roberts and Jon Raymond

Join two accomplished storytellers, Mark Roberts, whose work spans the stage to screen with credits including Mike and Molly, Two and a Half Men, as well as his acclaimed plays, and Jon Raymond, known for his novels, teleplays and screenplays including Mildred Pierce, Meek’s Cutoff and Wendy and Lucy, for an in-depth conversation on the art of crafting stories for both screen and stage.

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Saturday

Aug 16

Saturday

Aug 16

Saturday

Aug 16

Sunday

Aug 17

Wednesday

Aug 20

Thursday

Aug 21

Friday

Aug 22

Monday

Aug 25

Wednesday

Aug 27

Thursday

Aug 28

Thursday

Aug 28

Tuesday

Sep 2

In-person   Writing Classes  

Get Writing

Each week we’ll use new prompts and guided activities to inspire new creation. We’ll look at the work of writers we admire and ask: how’d they do that? As they say, writing is a muscle, and no matter what your experience level, you have to continually exercise that muscle and practice new tools to keep your writing nimble and moving.

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Tuesday

Sep 2

Chris La Tray: Becoming Little Shell

Join us in welcoming Montana Poet Laureate Chris La Tray for the paperback release of his bestselling memoir, Becoming Little Shell. “Nothing less than the history of a people in

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Wednesday

Sep 3

Thursday

Sep 4

Saturday

Sep 6

Saturday

Sep 6

Monday

Sep 8

Delve Readers Seminars   In-person  

Henry James: The Bostonians

The Bostonians is Henry James’s most explicitly American novel—and not only because the characters spend their time arguing about politics and gender. Set in the wake of the U.S. Civil War, the book explores loyalty and love, fanaticism and friendship, family feuds and Boston marriages.

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Wednesday

Sep 10

Delve Readers Seminars   In-person  

The Monstrous Feminine

In Western literature, scholars often reduce supernatural fiction to pulp, pop, or entertaining"fluff," which is somehow less noteworthy than other works of literature. Yet horror fiction often uses supernatural tropes of haunting and monstrosity to depict oppression, marginalized identities, gender, and "madness."
Through conversation and writing, we can consider how these modern and postmodern feminist authors expand Western literature and the gothic tradition through provocative first-person narratives.

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Wednesday

Sep 10

Wednesday

Sep 10

Thursday

Sep 11

Thursday

Sep 11

Sunday

Sep 14

Delve Readers Seminars  

Apuleius: The Golden Ass

The Golden Ass is an outsider’s portrait of life in the Roman Empire, which is both shockingly familiar and alsi truly strange. It is the only complete surviving novel from Greco-Roman antiquity,

A rich young Roman named Lucius goes to the annual Festival of Laughter in a town in Thessaly and meets a witch. She mistakenly turns him into a donkey. On his travels to find the plant with the magic antidote that will restore his humanity, he experiences his society from the animal's point of view.

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Tuesday

Sep 16

Online Class   Writing Classes  

Oulipo: Generative Experiments in Constrained Writing

This course is a guide to the spirit and ethos of Oulipo and their collaborative experimental writing approach, designed to free the mind through constraint.
Each session will offer generative prompts and experimental forms for writers to respond to. No prior knowledge or skills required other than a sense of curiosity and a desire to test, try, and experiment with writing.

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Tuesday

Sep 16

Thursday

Sep 18

Writing Classes   In-person  

Writing the Weird

During this eight-week course we’ll read and discuss genres and craft elements like fabulism, magical realism, absurdity, unreliable narrators, trick mirror logic, and more. Through generative prompts and constructive feedback, we’ll begin to craft our own acutely surreal realities. Expect to leave with several fresh starts to weird and wonderful works.

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Thursday

Sep 18

Wednesday

Sep 24

In-person   Writing Classes  

Scene Writing for Memoir

This eight-week memoir workshop teaches writers how to transform personal experiences into compelling scenes that captivate readers. Students will learn to craft authentic moments from memory, weave reflection seamlessly into narrative, and build scenes that invite readers into their lived experiences while revealing deeper emotional truths.

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Wednesday

Sep 24

Friday

Sep 26

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