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 downtown Literary Arts space, online, and at partnering venues across Portland and Oregon.
We've added a second section! Have you ever wondered how to turn your brilliant idea into a captivating picture book? In this 8-week course, you’ll learn the art of crafting picture books that leave a lasting impression. We'll explore the world of children's literature, studying beloved classics and contemporary favorites, to inspire your creativity. Through
How do you describe the Oregon coast, a garden full of dahlias, or the vibe of your favorite coffee shop? How do you write about a crowd of people? A
This six-week class will hold space for creative nonfiction writers to write and discuss short creative nonfiction works (memoir, essay, lyric essay). Writers at every level---from beginner to experienced---are welcome
In this class, we will drop all worry about being “writers.” Instead, we will simply use writing as a means of grounding our own attention. We will be prompted by
A translated collection of short stories from one of Korea's most renowned writers, Pak Kyongni, Age of Doubt explores the postwar Korea of the 50s and 60s. A time of
Generate pages and explore the finer nuances of the world of your short story or novel in this Fiction Intensive! Over the course of 12 weeks, participants will work on
Equal parts strategy, community, generative writing, and experiment, this class will help writers spark curiosity and deepen self-knowledge while crafting artistic habits that nourish. A good fit for writers who
"I’m half crazy with the wonder of it- the abundance of leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I’m, in that delicious and important place,
Writing novels can seem like a mystical process. Write every day, and a novel will appear. The work can feel isolating and disorienting, particularly for a writer’s first book, like
What if we joined our sorrows? What if that is joy? - Ross Gay Following in the tradition of Ross Gay, and his new book, The Book of (More) Delights,
This class is for experienced writers who are dedicated to starting the first draft of a story collection over the course of six months. Participants should have experience writing stories
“Your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone’s.” -Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, The Poet’s Companion What we know in our personal worlds contain
While we may know of essays as personal narratives crafted with creative storytelling techniques, essay as a verb means an attempt. In this six-week series, we’ll explore a variety of
Equal parts strategy, community, generative writing, and experiment, this class will help writers spark curiosity and deepen self-knowledge while crafting artistic habits that nourish. A good fit for writers who
Let's spend a few hours together exploring the practice of revision! Too often revision is just a fancy word for copy-editing. But it can be more. In this three hour class we will explore different revision exercises using a recent poem and how we can break old revision habits and constructs.
The lyric essay is a form that allows many small fragments to be drawn together to create a whole. A lyric essay might hold memories, research, a bit of poetry,
When it comes to writing short fiction and novels, the ideas we’ve absorbed about narrativizing from our outside lives often don’t apply. Even the most thrilling story, if written without a reverence to form, loses its audience quickly. In this seminar on literary style, we’ll study the most minute of authorial choices, coming to understand how subjectivity comes through on the subconscious level of the sentence.
Throughout history, writers have used lyrical techniques to access states of consciousness we associate with grief. Lyrical writing prioritizes music, rhythm, and emotion over the narrative arc. The goal of
In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, "The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though many of the activities and discussions orbit or are inflected by recovery themes (Akbar has been in active recovery for eight years), participants are not
Zadie Smith is a critically acclaimed fiction writer, essayist, and playwright, whose work includes the novel White Teeth, winner of the Guardian First Book Prize, and On Beauty, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction. This four-week Delve will focus on her new novel The Fraud, based on historical events from the 1800's. From the
Writing can be emotionally exhausting. It can have a substantial physiological effect on the body: as you imagine an emotional scene, your body will sometimes go through the experience as if it were happening. And on top of that there's the anxiety, self-doubt, and judgment that many writers struggle with. In this 8 week course
In this generative workshop, we’ll look at examples by writers who use fragments in various ways, and try inventive writing exercises and strategies for creating a memoir from fragments. Fragments can stand on their own as micro-memoirs or be woven together into a larger work. This class is for writers at all levels. Access Program
This class, in the words of Nikki Finney, is about having and keeping a beautiful mind -- which is essential to building an art practice that can change or deepen how we see the world and who we are inside of it. We’ll begin by cataloguing our obsessions, and open into various texts and writing
In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, "The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though
Blending the novel and the short story format, Tower satirically examines modern life through six interconnected stories that all take place in a 674-story skyscraper. Bae Myung-hoon is one of the most famous sci-fi writers in Korea, and this is the first of his novels to be translated into English. I’m Waiting for You has
In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, "The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though many of the activities and discussions orbit or are inflected by recovery themes (Akbar has been in active recovery for eight years), participants are not
If you allow them to, ideas for art and writing can come from absolutely anywhere. This creative generation class will put that theory to the test, through a series of experiments in creative problem-solving, spontaneous and chance-based play, and other exploratory prompts that challenge you to work outside your normal modes and investigate how the
Questions about applying to this year's Oregon Literary Fellowships? Join us at this information session! Drop in anytime between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. Register in advance Please contact Jessica Meza-Torres (jessica@literary-arts.org) if you have any questions.
Some stories call for a breaking of boundaries, others for a union of text and image or visual form. In this generative course, we’ll experiment with different ways of looking
Questions about applying to this year's Oregon Literary Fellowships? Join us at this information session! Drop-in anytime between 3:00-4:00 p.m. Register in advance for this meeting here. Please contact Jessica Meza-Torres (jessica@literary-arts.org) if you have any questions.
Questions about applying to this year's Oregon Literary Fellowships? Join us at this information session! Drop-in anytime between 3:00-4:00 p.m. Register in advance for this meeting here. Please contact Jessica Meza-Torres (jessica@literary-arts.org) if you have any questions.
The lyric essay is a form that allows many small fragments to be drawn together to create a whole. A lyric essay might hold memories, research, a bit of poetry, a bit of fiction; it celebrates mixing genres. In this workshop, we will write a series of fragments in response to prompts, and then braid
How do I decide what to write about? What if my memory is flawed? How much research do I need to do? What details are the most important? What’s the best way to give and receive feedback to writers in a workshop setting? This class invites you to explore the fundamentals of creative nonfiction, including
“When I sit down and start writing, I feel the given world recede, and I can just play.” —Sam Lipsyte Remember when you were a little kid, playing on the floor for hours and hours? Our best writing days are often imbued with that same sense of timelessness, freedom, wonder, and escape—in other words, our
“It’s the little things that count”; “Good things come in small packages”; “Brevity is the soul of wit”; “The Devil’s in the details”… We’ll put these aphorisms to the test in this Delve Seminar exploring short poems, prose poetry, and short/micro fiction. These compressed forms aren’t lacking for content in their brevity, and we will
The world is a weird place, and we’re just here to document it. This course is for the scribes, the armchair historians, the miners of weird information — all of you aspiring nonfiction writers who aren’t sure what to do with your ideas, or budding freelance journalists looking to turn your ideas into sellable stories.
Join us for a panel discussion with the 2023 Oregon Book Award finalists for the Angus Bowmer Award in Drama. The panel will be moderated by Conor Eifler, the 2021 winner of the Angus Bowmer Award for "You Cannot Undo This Action." Register in advance for this event
In this six-week class, students will work on creating a narrative structure that will allow them to embark on the journey of the creation of their memoir. Through short and long readings, the class will study and develop characterization, setting, and narrative voice besides learning to mine memory and research for detail. A 10–15-page project
This unique course is designed for creative aspiring writers with no prior experience, as well as those with screenwriting experience, wishing to break into television writing. Learn in an interactive environment the basics of creating, writing, and presenting your first television script for both drama and/or comedy, including how to take your idea to the
In 2020, Perrin offered a class with Literary Arts on writing about joy inspired by Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. She's back in 2023 with a “take two” on this rich subject inspired this time by Ross Gay’s most recent book, Inciting Joy. This is a generative writing class where most of our time
Though published many decades apart, these two texts share similarities both in their subject matter and their experimental qualities. Just as Dictee cannot be merely labeled as a memoir and DMZ Colony cannot be labeled purely as a poetry collection, both texts expand our understanding of genre by weaving together prose, poetry and photographs. Moreover,
Writers often use musical techniques to access states of consciousness we associate with grief. Lyrical writing prioritizes music, rhythm, and emotion over the narrative arc. The goal of this course is to find entry into writing through reading, conversation,and various prompts and exercises to catalyze memory and thinking. We will consider how writers crafting stories
Autofiction is a unique genre (or non-genre) that combines the autobiographical with the fictional. In this course, we will take a close look at the craft of autofiction. We will read novel excerpts, short stories and novellas. We will also look at craft essays on the form. The goal over the twelve weeks is to
“Screenplays…are primarily a narrative blueprint for cinematic interpretation. They require certain beats, certain layouts, and certain terminology to communicate the visual and audio needs of an eventual production — a production that hundreds of professionals will collaborate on.” - Ken Miyamoto, Screencraft “The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take
In this intensive workshop, students will write and revise their short stories focusing on craft elements such as characters, voice, subtext, and story structure. At the end of the six weeks, students will have created a dossier of up to 20 pages of new work and received detailed feedback from the instructor. Access Program We
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