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.
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 & JOY to a world in great need of these attributes. Starri has taught creative workshops with teens and has been a camp counselor for
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.
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 communities. Hosted by Vinnie Kinsella and Jennifer (JP) Perrine. The featured readers for July are JP Perrine, Grey Traynor, and Eliot Feenstra. The theme is
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 Ballering Iván Cantú Villarreal Brittney Corrigan Katherine Cusumano jessamyn duckwall Amelia Díaz Ettinger Jordan Jacks Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong Alfred Jung Lee Fuente Fountain Press Some
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
Families are invited to join us weekly on Saturday mornings from 10:30-11:00 a.m. at the Literary Arts Bookstore for story time! Each week our booksellers will read from picture books
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
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
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
Bring the whole family for a magical Story Time at the Literary Arts Bookstore! Sing, play, and dive into the world of Spanish storytelling hosted by Adventures in Spanish. Join
Families are invited to join us weekly on Saturday mornings from 10:30-11:00 a.m. at the Literary Arts Bookstore for story time! Each week our booksellers will read from picture books
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.
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 communities. Hosted by Vinnie Kinsella and Jennifer Perrine. The featured readers for May are T. Thorn Coyle, Miranda Schmidt, and Juan Antonio Trujillo. The theme is Ritual.
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,
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.
In this six-week, workshop-meets-craft class, we'll dissect three different short stories and figure out: How did the writer do that? We’ll then apply some of those same literary tools to your own stories. This class for writers with some experience includes a workshop component.
Join local author and illustrator Rowan Kingsbury to celebrate her debut graphic novel, Avery and the Fairy Circle, the story of a girl and her fairy friend exploring the local
Join novelist Emily Chenoweth for an afternoon of writing and community. Participants will spend time writing to a variety of prompts, sharing their work with classmates, and learning tips and
Families are invited to join us weekly on Saturday mornings from 10:30-11:00 a.m. at the Literary Arts Bookstore for story time! Each week our booksellers will read from picture books
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
Join local writers Callum Angus, Cavar, and Miranda Schmidt for a celebration of the art of trans nature writing. Bios: Callum Angus is a writer, editor, and publisher of
This weekend intensive is designed for writers who have written at least the first two chapters of a novel. Limited to 8 students, each participant will have their work discussed, with feedback from the class and the instructor. Discussions will be focused on character development and plot and how to chart the next steps with your novel.
In this seminar, we will tackle Melville’s whale of a book, exploring its philosophical insights, its debts to other writers (especially Shakespeare and Hawthorne), its commentary on US politics and culture, and (of course) its cetology, the chapters about whales and whaling. Across six weeks, we will take up Melville’s challenge—“Read it if you can”—and join the Pequod’s crew on their quests for knowledge, for friendship, and for revenge.
Families are invited to join us weekly on Saturday mornings from 10:30-11:00 a.m. at the Literary Arts Bookstore for story time! Each week our booksellers will read from picture books
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
Marilynne Robinson’s 2004 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead appears as one long and intimate letter from an aging father, the Reverend John Ames, to his young son. The letter is an
Join local author Megan Woodward, for a hilarious interactive reading of her picture book This Book is Definitely Not Cursed which will be followed by a creative group activity, a
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