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 at The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for a night of literary trivia in celebration of legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin! Play as a team or solo while competing for prizes and literary glory. Trivia will begin at 6:30 p.m. sharp, so don’t be late. We will be hosting three rounds of
The Literary Arts Bookstore is excited to welcome author Elsa Sjunneson to celebrate her new book, Dear Blind Lady! About the book: In Dear Blind Lady, Deafblind author and disability rights activist Elsa Sjunneson delivers candid, funny, and practical guidance in an advice-column format. Written for disabled readers, allies, friends, family members, coworkers, and anyone
Literary Arts is pleased to present Ayad Akhtar as part of the 2026-27 Portland Arts & Lectures series. Please note: a subscription to the entire 2026-27 Portland Arts & Lectures
Join us at The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for an evening of readings featuring members of the American Literary Translators Association’s BIPOC Translators Caucus. Co-organized by Elete Nelson-Fearon and Jon Cho-Polizzi, this year’s BIPOC Caucus Reading features translations from Arabic, Chinese, German, Korean, Spanish, and more! In addition to readings by the co-hosts, featured
Literary Arts is thrilled to partner with our neighbor, SCRAP PDX, for a special crafty event! Join us in celebrating the return of the crows! You may have followed crows
Join us at The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for a spooky storytelling open mic. Readers will have five minutes to enchant us with their ghoulish tales! Our only requirement is that these stories are true—or at least, true to you. Audience members will vote to decide who wins the title of Ghost King and brings
This Delve seminar will focus on Hawthorne’s short stories—among the most thrilling, strange, and memorable in the American canon. We will explore his first collection of stories, Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1851) as well as a small selection of extraordinary later stories.
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 up to share your work in our open mic. Readings will be followed by a short community discussion. Hosted by Kyle Yoshioka and Jessica Meza-Torres. The featured reader
In partnerneship with Chapterhouse, Literary Arts brings the Oregon Book Awards Author Tour to Albany.
In partnerneship with Deschutes Public Library, Literary Arts brings the Oregon Book Awards Author Tour to Redmond with a spooky evening with Oregon Book Awards Authors.
Throughout this six week course, students will look at the many ways in which humans are connected to our natural surroundings, both urban and remote. By delving into the inherent close relationship humans have with the natural world, each student’s path to writing their own stories using the natural world as scaffolding will emerge.
In this course, we’ll study writing that engages with folklore in a wide variety of ways: speculative memoir that tangles with witch tales, poems that draw on botanical lore, short story fairy tale retellings, mythic poetry and fiction, and more.
On October 29, 2026, Literary Arts presents #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Lewis, in conversation about his new book.
The Literary Arts Bookstore and Cafe are thrilled to welcome Lit Mic for another immersive writing workshop! Participants will search for clues, interview witnesses, and conduct their own investigation
In partnership with Paulina Springs Bookstore, Literary Arts brings the Oregon Book Awards Author Tour to Sisters, Oregon.
As part of their training, journalists learn how to distill a story down to its core components, make it legible to a wide audience, and structure information to maximize impact. These are skills and practices that all writers can benefit from. Whether there’s a journalist character in your novel, a historical component to your memoir, a narrative aspect to your academic work, or a poem that provides a glimpse into an unknown world, this class will provide a basic understanding of journalism that any writer can apply to any project.
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. The featured reader for November is
Tarot is both deeply symbolic and highly narrative, creating a system that can inspire and guide many forms of writing. This multigenre workshop will introduce techniques for using tarot in one’s writing practice.
Facilitated by Déy Rivers Wanna play in alternate worlds? It's challenging but glorious here! Join us for an Intro to Spec-Fic. Learn what is considered Speculative Fiction. Get ideas down
This workshop will explore how to get started on writing the short story-- thinking through inspirations, exploring ways of writing compelling short story beginnings, and focussing on how to draw the reader in as you move the story forward from the beginning to the end.
Facilitated by Nicky Nicholson-Klingerman The Poetic Justice Workshop explores poetry that addresses cultural, communal, or global traumas challenges. Covering works ranging from Langston Hughes to Taylor Byas, this is an
Explore ways plot functions in the short story, with tips and examples to guide you.
Beyond the mundane details of our daily lives, our beings contain deeper layers that only the language of poetry can unveil; and myth has long been a way that poets have translated the epic, emotive, and transcendent qualities of their noticing. In this short workshop, we’ll look at a way to interweave mythos into our poetry writing, revealing personal mythologies, unexpected eruptions of wisdom, and a way of working that’s full of creative power.
Facilitated by Katie Cusumano In this workshop, we'll practice creating lively, compelling characters who are drawn from real life, on the page. First, we'll focus on writing about other people
Few foods inspire the kind of irrational devotion like a good hot dog. Chef Farideh Sadeghin is bringing The Hot Dog Cookbook: 50 Recipes for the World’s Best Food to
In this Delve we will study Adorno's Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life---the amazing book he wrote between 1944 and 1949 to explore his feelings about the calamitous situation of a world facing despotism.
Closing out the Portland Book Festival with a special edition Soju Party, celebrating Korean food, drinking culture, and Irene Yoo’s James Beard Award-winning cookbook, Soju Party: How to Drink (and
This is an important novella in the vein of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, but with an ending that packs a different punch. At its center is a man torn between family, community, church, and one young woman in a terrible predicament. He must make a choice, and Keegan’s exquisite, concise writing reveals that agonizing choice. It’s a perfect story to ponder and discuss: What would you choose in his situation?
Second section added for Tuesday nights. This is an important novella in the vein of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, but with an ending that packs a different punch. At its center is a man torn between family, community, church, and one young woman in a terrible predicament. He must make a choice, and Keegan’s exquisite, concise writing reveals that agonizing choice. It’s a perfect story to ponder and discuss: What would you choose in his situation?
The Literary Arts Bookstore is pleased to welcome Amanda Uhle to celebrate her memoir, Destroy This House. About the book: For fans of The Glass Castle and The Liars’ Club, a tender, heartbreaking, and hilarious memoir written with “unwavering affection” (ELLE) chronicling the challenges of growing up with a desperately scheming father, a mother plagued
This multigenre workshop will introduce techniques for using tarot in one’s writing practice. We’ll use tarot cards to generate new ideas and new writing through writing exercises; practice character, story, and image development using tarot symbols; learn how tarot can help us plumb the depths of our ideas; and discover how to work with the tarot from generation through revision
Come on down to the Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for our monthly write-in. This month’s theme is Ancestors! This month's specialty drink is called Grandma’s Favorite. This drink has all the comfort of a London fog with none of the caffeine. Notes of bergamot, lavender, and vanilla create comfort in a cup! Stay up to date with the Literary Bookstore
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month at Literary Arts, 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
The Literary Arts Bookstore is pleased to welcome author Rebecca Handler to celebrate her new novel, In the Round. Handler will be joined in conversation by Selina Fillinger. About the book: Have you ever been dead certain that you’re being observed, that maybe your very existence is predicated on how others see you? A few
This December, The Moth’s anticipated Mainstage season comes to Portland in partnership with Literary Arts. One foot in front of another… Join The Moth this fall for TIGHTROPE, an evening
Come on down to the Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for our monthly write-in. This month’s theme is Little Women! This month's specialty drink is called March’s Mulled Wine. Sit back and enjoy a mulled wine or cranberry juice, and imagine you’re by the fireplace with the March family, while Beth plays piano and Jo tells you a story. Stay up
Dickens turns his pen onto a satiric look London’s pursuit of Money and Society, and a bitter one at the state of the poor and those whose living are derived from the great and polluted River Thames, the powerful controlling symbol that unites many of the characters and plots in the novel.
This class is for experienced writers who are dedicated to starting the first draft of a story collection over the course of 6 months. We will have 22 class meetings between January and June, with a two-week break in March/April to focus on generating and revising our work. Participants should have experience writing stories and familiarity with the elements of literary short fiction including scene, character, conflict, place and some revision. We will study individual stories by authors, read craft essays, and discuss several published collections and how the stories unite to form a book.
Does what you write or how you write it change with the seasons? In these quarterly gatherings we’ll meet to be inspired by the turn of the world, consider nature’s shifts and how we can incorporate them into our writing practice.
Through journaling and discussion, we’ll work our way toward a greater understanding of the novel Tokyo Ueno Station’s view on contemporary Japan, and the fractured structure Yu employs to explore one man’s memories. Over the course of our time together, we’ll gain insights into our own places, decisions, losses, and joys, reading and journaling toward a finer understanding of life’s fragility and resilience.
Writing Authentic Characters is a four-week course for writers who want to understand their characters more deeply and make them feel believable and relatable to readers. Each week will include examples from fiction or film, discussion, and guided writing exercises. In the final week, you’ll spend more time developing a short extract, either from your own work or from one of the prompts provided, using the techniques from the course to strengthen the character’s motivation and subtext.
In this four week Delve, we’ll revisit four iconic works of middle grade fiction—Island of the Blue Dolphins, Hatchet, Julie of the Wolves, and Jacob Have I Loved. We will come to these books as adults with new questions. Throughout the course, we will weave between how the books existed in their time and what they have to offer us now.
Over the course of eight weeks, you’ll work to complete a rough draft of a short story, with weekly check-ins to keep you on track. There will be some in-class discussion and feedback for your writing, but there will not be a traditional, dedicated workshop component to the class.
This six-week intensive is for the writer who has lived their subject matter. The expert, the advocate, the practitioner, the person who has earned their perspective and is ready to shape it into something that lasts. Each session combines direct instruction with hands-on writing practice, guided research, breakout group work, and mastermind-style coaching — so students leave every class with something made, not just something learned. A craft thread runs through every session: every workshop produces actual writing, not just planning documents.
Literary Arts is pleased to present Isabel Wilkerson as part of the 2026-27 Portland Arts & Lectures series. Please note: a subscription to the entire 2026-27 Portland Arts & Lectures
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