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 for an evening of poetry and conversation celebrating janan alexandra's debut poetry collection come from (BOA Editions). janan will be speaking in conversation with Jennifer (JP) Perrine, author
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
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.
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month, on the third Thursday. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in
Don your vegetables and celebrate the harvest season with us! We're channeling Fall energy with an Over the Garden Wall themed write-in this month, complete with molasses latte to celebrate.
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.
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
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.
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.
In this generative and craft-focused class, we’ll explore how close reading can unlock our own voice. We’ll study excerpts from your favorite authors, examine sentence structure, tone, rhythm, and emotional pacing, and organize our findings into a living document you can return to again and again.
You have a great idea—but is it ready to become a book? In this interactive workshop, you’ll refine your nonfiction concept and clarify what your book is really about, who it's for, and how it stands out.
Calling all graphic novel readers! Join us in welcoming Johanna Taylor to discuss her latest, The Ghostkeeper. About the book: Dorian Leith can see ghosts. Not only that, he listens
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 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
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.
Join us for a special evening as local theatre collective Theatre Diaspora presents a staged reading of Isabel, a play by reid tang. This is event is free and open
While better known for her extraordinarily imaginative paintings, the British-born Mexican artist Leonora Carrington was also a dazzling writer, conjuring stories that alchemically transform the banal and infuse the imagination
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
Join us for a very special interactive event with local author Holly Capelle for her new cook book, Preserving the Seasons.Capelle will be joined in conversation by Liz Crain. About
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
Over the four weeks of this course, we’ll work to demystify the submission process. We’ll discuss how to find publications you’re excited to send your work to, set up personalized submission goals and to-do lists, and organize our own systems for keeping track of our submissions.
Join us in welcoming Denali Sai Nalamalapu and the IPRC for a celebration of Holler: A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance. About the IPRC: The mission of the Independent Publishing
This is a class to take if you’re new to writing picture books, if you’re curious about writing them, but don’t know quite where to start, or even if you’ve been writing for a while, but feel like you still have some unanswered questions.
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.
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.
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.
Hosted by Kyle Yoshioka and Jessica Meza-Torres, this monthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color. The featured readers for
Questions about applying to this year's Oregon Literary Fellowships? Join us at this information session! Drop in any time between 12:30 and 2:00 p.m.
Join us for a night of readings from this year's Stafford Challenge Anthology! About The Stafford Challenge The Stafford Challenge is a yearlong international poetry project inspired by the daily
Write, mingle, and be merry - The Literary Arts Bookstore and Cafe are excited to welcome local authors from the LGBTQ+ community for an evening of co-writing and and delicious
Join Orion's deputy editor Tara Rae Miner with Erica Berry, Oregon Book Award–winning author of Wolfish; Julie Beeler, artist and author of The Mushroom Color Atlas; and Elan Hangens, mushroom
Just in time for the Oasis Live '25 tour, join us for a conversation with DJ Greg Glover and Melissa Locker on her latest book, And After All: A Fan
Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month, on the third Thursday. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in
A Physical Education traces Casey Johnston’s journey of calorie restriction and obsessive cardio—making herself small in almost every way—to finding healing through the (unexpected) practice of lifting weights. As she
Join us for a conversation between Jami Attenberg and Genevieve Hudson, discussing Jami's novel A Reason to See You Again.
Putting Your Creativity first will feature a talk, writing prompts and group write-along, followed by a Q&A on the creative process, writing community, and business of art.
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
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
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
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.
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