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.
This foundational series is for personal nonfiction writers ready to shape real-life experiences into engaging stories with intention and clarity. Over four sessions, you’ll learn how to identify your memoir’s deeper message, build a strong narrative arc, and make structural choices that serve both your story and your reader.
In this class we’ll study and practice specific techniques used by established speculative fiction authors such as N.K. Jemisin and Nalo Hopkinson. We’ll examine examples of “worldbuilding in small doses” and try our hands at it. We’ll discuss the merits of creating worlds from the inside out versus going from the outside in. We’ll cover viewpoint, voice, neologisms, “found” texts, and other elements of this aspect of writing with exploratory and generative exercises.
In this six-week class we will explore prompt and nurture creative ideas to create a dossier of possibilities for further development. Participants can expect to take home 5-10 new ideas for creative works-in-progress and strategies for infusing more joy and authenticity in their writing practice.
In this four-week class, we’ll read and discuss ekphrastic poems by a wide selection of writers, creating our own definition of ekphrasis, pushing the boundaries of what an ekphrastic poem can be. We’ll engage with several essays by poets to get us asking questions and diving deeper into our craft.
In this workshop, students will learn the fundamentals of what makes an effective pitch and receive guidance, insight and support about how to navigate the pitching process.
Percival Everett appears on November 12, 2025 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures series.
In this four part class, we will consider the what, why, who, and how of form: what form is, why we might choose to write in an inherited form, alter an inherited form, or write in a made-up form, and how we might go about doing so.
Colm Tóibín appears at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on January 15, 2025 as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures series.
Imani Perry appears at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on February 12, 2026, as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures series.
Patrick Radden Keefe appears at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on April 23, 2026, as part of the Portland Arts & Lectures series.
Literary Arts, Inc. is a tax-exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
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