The Campaign for Literary Arts will build on our incredible history and prepare the organization to serve the next generation of readers and writers.
Read our Case for Support:
It’s fitting that we are launching this new chapter as we celebrate our 40th anniversary because it would not be possible without the visionaries and leaders that helped establish and grow Literary Arts over the past four decades.
Literary Arts was primarily established in the years between 1984 and 1994 (see pages 9–10). It was a time when our region was not known as a cultural center or a community with the global outlook it has today. The work to establish Portland Arts & Lectures and the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts was visionary because these organizations helped create a new identity for us, an identity deeply invested in stories, ideas, and the people who dream them up. This work, alongside the work of other cultural organizations, is what opened the doors of possibility for a community to imagine a new future at a time when we were reeling from industrial collapse.
Today, the same opportunity is before us. The answers to our many challenges we face will be found in the stories we tell, the ideas we share, in the artists and visionaries we choose to listen to and honor. The Campaign for Literary Arts is a $22.5M investment to create new space for our community to dream, and imagine our future, to get informed, to connect, and to be engaged by stories from around the globe right here at home.
We would be honored if you would help us complete this campaign with a gift, and by doing so help us all imagine the next chapter for our community.
