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.
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
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 and familiarity with the elements of literary short fiction including scene, character, conflict, place, and revision. We will study individual stories by authors, read craft
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by play." —Carl Jung For a creative twist, some prose writers impose unique conditions on their work as they craft a piece. Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham on a bet: that he couldn’t write an entire book using only 50
Dialogue is like music: on the page it may look great, but what it’s like when you hear it aloud? This workshop will examine what dialogue does, how to write
Searching for a space to create new work with fellow BIPOC writers? This two-hour workshop meets on Zoom. A variety of prompts will be presented as avenues for generating and sharing new work in an informal setting. Open to BIPOC writers at all levels writing in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. Access Program We want our
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
This generative workshop will focus on the skills involved in creating and sustaining vibrant and complex characters. Through a series of in-workshop prompts and exercises participants will create and bring
There is a great temptation to airbrush ourselves on the page, to fill in the pockmarks of our flaws—and yet this leaves us not only less trustworthy, but less interesting.
In this online three-part workshop, participants will explore various methods of using the Tarot and other simple forms of divination as prompts for poems. We will allow ourselves to be
In this seminar we will explore Orhan Pamuk’s new novel, Nights of Plague, an epic narrative which depicts the outbreak of the bubonic plague in the late Ottoman era during the reign of the despotic Sultan Abdülhamid II. The stage of the epidemic is the fictional island Minger in the Levant, and the year is
We're all familiar with satisfying story shape, the arc of a story that follows the pattern of jokes and sex—the inciting incident, rising action, crisis and the falling action. Yet
If a story leads exactly where you would expect it to go, then both the writer and the reader have discovered nothing. How do we expand our well-behaved, satisfying stories
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
Searching for a space to create new work with fellow BIPOC writers? This two-hour workshop meets on Zoom. A variety of prompts will be presented as avenues for generating and
“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
This 8-week class is focused on holding yourself and your classmates accountable to your writing goals. Each week, plan to share your work-in-progress with the group, set or revise goals for your weekly writing practice, and share successes and challenges with fellow writers. You’ll also learn strategies for keeping focused and staying on track. Occasional
Do you think in lengthy narrative strands, elegantly formed with a beginning, middle and an end? I don’t. I flit from image, to feeling, to recrimination, to joy. Light flickers over my memories, both happy and hard. I call these messy memories ‘stamps,’ events or moments that have imprinted upon me in unshakeable ways. In
Can we “chase” our imagination to its source? Where does creativity happen in the mind? These are some of the questions Lynda Barry explores in her book Syllabus, which describes the author’s lifelong investigation of the creative process. Participants will discuss Barry's techniques, and visit their own creative process, and perhaps draft a new story,
It’s all about the relationship! In this workshop you’ll learn when and how to search for an agent, what you need for a powerful query letter, and the nuts and bolts of when to sign, when not to sign, and how to escape from a toxic agent relationship. Access Program We want our writing classes
Etgar Keret is one of the most important Israeli authors alive today. He has mastered the genre of short fiction with a witticism that uses humor and farce to make readers step outside of their comfort zone and view things from the perspective of the absurd. In doing that, Keret brings a fresh, comical, and
This is a three-hour, one-day intensive discussion on the unique genre of autofiction. This course will provide insight into the many nuances of autofiction, or autobiographical fiction. This “genre” involves writing that is based on real life experiences, but also utilizes fictional literary devices, makingit a very unique form. I will provide craft essays and
Creative nonfiction utilizes non-linear structures to “think” into complex or ambiguous subjects. In this class, we will explore the relationship between form and content in memoir, deepening our practice by working with a draft of a story or essay. Outside reading assignments and in-class writing and revision exercises will encourage experimentation and writing play. We will
This 8-week class is focused on holding yourself and your classmates accountable to your writing goals. Each week, plan to share your work-in-progress with the group, set or revise goals for your weekly writing practice, and share successes and challenges with fellow writers. You’ll also learn strategies for keeping focused and staying on track. Occasional
Questions about applying to this year's Oregon Literary Fellowships? Join us at this information session! Drop-in anytime between 12:00 - 1:00 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 Susan Moore (susan@literary-arts.org) or Jessica Meza-Torres (jessica@literary-arts.org) if you have any questions.
How to handle time can be challenging to master when writing in any genre. When should we slow down and dwell in a scene? When should we summarize and move rapidly through weeks, years, or even decades? Should we go back in time to unpack and understand a character's motivation? How does the manipulation of
This 4 -week short fiction workshop will focus on generating new work and simply getting words down on a page. We will read excerpts, share just-written work aloud, and sometimes discuss assigned weekly readings together. We will investigate ways to unearth material together and share strategies for maintaining a regular writing practice. Participants will leave
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung and Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park have just been translated into English from the original Korean by Anton Hur and have recently been shortlisted and longlisted (respectively) for the Booker Prize. Though very different from one another, by reading both we can get a taste of the exciting landscape that is
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
How do you find literary magazines that want your work? What's the best way of getting an editor's attention? This workshop will give you the tools to set up your submission process so you can easily track submissions, learn when to follow up, and how to improve your chances of being published. Access Program We
An evening with writers who took part in Margaret Malone’s Short Story Intensive class, from September 2021 to May 2022. Join us as they share pieces from the story collections they’ve been working on all year. Hosted by Margaret Malone Register in advance for this event:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the man with "the mind on fire," wrote some of the most important and greatest essays in American literature prior to the later twentieth century. Emerson's thought combined some of the most important trends in religion, culture, and philosophy from the start of modernity with the intense intellectual and moral culture of
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