LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.

For details regarding specific events please contact the organizers or venues. If you are an organizer or venue and would like to reach out to us please feel free to contact us or submit an event using our submission form. We’d love to hear from you!

CANCELED – Delve Readers Seminar: Graphic Literature as Autobiography

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

In this Delve seminar, we’ll explore autobiographies executed in the medium of comics, and in doing so sample from a few of the world’s most respected illustrator-storytellers. In turn, Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi will each inspire and challenge participants as we examine graphic literature’s unique perspective on created identity. READING LIST: ONE! HUNDRED! DEMONS! by Lynda Barry FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi MAUS by Art Spiegelman: A DRIFTING LIFE by Yoshihiro Tatsumi Delve Access Program We want Delve seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. We are happy to offer an Access Program which provides reduced tuition to…

$220

Planning and Writing Your Book with Kristen James

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

THIS MEETING IS ONLINE and FREE to all. (Details below the talk decription.) Planning and Writing Your Book: How to Apply Methods and Tips from Bestselling Writers Kristen Chaney James, author of Blockbuster Books, Broken Down and other writing books will share the methods and tips she’s picked up during her writing career to plan and write an engaging novel. You don’t have to choose to “write from the middle” or only use the “three legged outline” because you can use a combination of methods to ensure your story is solid and hits all the plot points readers look for. **You can join us on your phone or on your computer. You do not need to have video, but it is helpful if you can.…

Free

Liminal Writing Online w/ Sonya Lea

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Launches Saturday April 4th Online Four Weeks in Length ***In light of the current coronavirus crisis, Sonya has re-recorded audio elements of this workshop to specifically address the liminal space we are all living in right now. In addition, a limited number of sliding scale enrollments are available. If you have been financially impacted by the current situation, please write to Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com to inquire.*** Writing The Liminal Liminal means threshold, and liminal experiences are transitional, a suspension in identity, time, or community. We’ll write our way into dreams, ritual, wilderness, birth, death, visions, ghosts, tricksters, crossroads, revolutions, and all kinds of collapses of the status quo. You’ll come away with tools to help you work with your liminal experiences in writing. Week one: Definitions of thresholds, threshold/outlier experiences, and an…

$350

The Art of Marketing Your Book

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This meeting will be ONLINE ONLY. We will post a link for you to watch on your computer as well as a phone number where you can call in to listen. We are determined to make the online experience as seamless as possible. “Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” Lao Tzu Dami will present steps for marketing your first book and guide you through the planning of a marketing journey that can start small and lead to great and unexpected places. She will share the lessons learned from her mistakes and share the unexpected successes and new worlds that have opened up…

Free

Delve Readers Seminar: Delve Online: Still and Unstill: Objects and Landscapes as Human Metaphors

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This Delve will take place online via Zoom. Participants will receive information about how to connect with Zoom online. This Delve takes place virtually, at the Portland Art Museum, and coincides with the exhibition Volcano!, which marks the 40th anniversary of the eruption of Mount Saint Helens. This Delve will explore museum galleries, pages of books, and the realm of memory, discovering commonalities in ways writers and visual artists recreate human experience through their hyper-realistic descriptions of material objects and natural places. Through a multi-sensory examination of objects, images, and texts, we will become fluent in this symbolic language of concrete detail. We will also look at various ways text and image interact, including how illustration functions as form of creative adaptation of a text, influencing our…

$220

Delve Readers Seminar: Delve Online: Memory and Ancestors: Paula by Isabel Allende

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This class meets via Zoom teleconferencing, Participants who register will receive information on how to log onto the Zoom meeting. “What actually happened isn’t what matters, only the resulting scars and distinguishing marks. My past has little meaning; I can see no order to it, no clarity, purpose, or path, only a blind journey guided by instinct and detours caused by events beyond my control. There was no deliberation on my part, only good intentions and the faint sense of a greater design determining my steps.” – Isabel Allende, Paula   Allende wrote this memoir for her daughter Paula when she became gravely ill and fell into a coma. In typical Allende fashion, it is a work that accepts the magical and spiritual worlds, and…

$75

Online: Critiques with J. Komp and Willamette Writers

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Hurts So Good – Turning painful critiques into productive reader insight Are you an editor, member of a read & critique group, part time beta reader, reviewer of books? This class will turn you into an invaluable resource for yourself and other writers. Become a respected authority with better questions, story specific feedback, and learning the art of counterpoint arguments. J. Komp will show you how to quantify and qualify everyone from beta readers to industry professionals and use the data to elevate your writing. Bring your harshest reviews and leave the class with a soul-cleansing perspective. About J. Komp J. Komp, of Just Key Edits, has been taking apart stories, to explain why we love or hate them, for over 30 years. A Behavioral…

Free

Delve Readers Seminar Online: Free 90 minute Discussion on ‘The Falls’ by George Saunders

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A free 90-minute Delve discussion on The Falls by George Saunders. Hosted by Christopher Zinn. The discussion is limited to 16 people and pre-registration is required. Registered participants will receive information on how to sign on to the Zoom meeting. “Boy, oh boy, could life be a torture. Could life ever force a fellow into a strange, dark place from which he found himself doing graceless, unforgivable things like casting aspersions on his beloved firstborn. If only he could escape BlasCorp and do something significant, such as discovering a critical vaccine. But it was too late, and he had never been good at biology and in fact had flunked it twice. But some kind of moment in the sun would certainly not be unwelcome.” —George…

Free

Spring 2020 Online: Strange Stories: Putting the Uncanny in Your Fiction

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This class will take place online, using Wet Ink, a popular online platform for classes. Registered students will receive a link to access the class four days before it starts. A four week online fiction class. The unusual is thriving in contemporary storytelling. Maybe art is imitating our strange times. Looking at stories from writers such as Kelly Link and A.S. Byatt, we will consider how the strange can get us closer to the truth. Plan to draft two stories and discuss one of those stories with the class. Please note: Wet Ink is different from Zoom for online classes in that there is not a “live” option. Students do not “attend” class at a set time, but rather, access lectures, readings and other materials…

$180

WW Online: Sharpen Your Wit with Tiffany Pitts

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Author Tiffany Pitts will discuss different ways humor can be used to deepen storytelling. She will break down comedic timing and how it is used to build or relieve tension within scenes, creating interest and gripping the reader. She will also look at ways it can be used to develop characters from one-dimensional names into complex heroes and villains. Participants should be prepared to take part in a short (3 sentence) writing exercise. Pitts is an award-winning author of speculative fiction. She’s also a freelance travel writer focusing on the strangest places she can get her family to visit. As a native of the Pacific Northwest, she enjoys dogs, rain, and beer. In her down time, she’s the thumbs behind the Vacuum Cleaner Defense League,…

Free