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!

PNCA Low-Residency MFA Program Summer 2020 Residency Classes & Readings Open to the Public

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

As part of the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program, PNCA offers talks, discussions, and readings by acclaimed writers and artists, July 24th to August 3rd. Everything is free and open to the public. All events this summer are hosted via Zoom. The passwords for all faculty classes are 515000. CLASSES Saturday, July 25 10am: Unsafe is Not a Feeling: How Writing Contends with the Illusion of Safety Sara Jaffe https://pnca.zoom.us/j/98345715004?pwd=OVVOLysrZUh5S0hxS0d5QlBHUDZMUT09 2pm: Winter Poop, Spring Revivals, Summer Fires, and Fall Marigolds Alison C Rollins https://pnca.zoom.us/j/98224439656?pwd=TnNGWkJmQUZaTWlOOXFhZjlhUnJudz09 Sunday, July 26 10am: THE ART OF WEALTH (in life & in literature) Vi Khi Nao https://pnca.zoom.us/j/95075415254?pwd=YVd4ZVJON3YrZHIrdWF1MXN4WmkwZz09 Monday, July 27 10am: Outsider Ecopoetics Tyrone Williams https://pnca.zoom.us/j/95516376236?pwd=T1EycmFvM05STEJlN1JPZ3k3WVY3dz09 11am: Feminism / Queer Theory Shawna Liption and Sloane McNulty https://pnca.zoom.us/j/97573944766?pwd=Y0NZeEtETmxZdDFRczRrYU0wdEJLdz09 Tuesday, July 28…

Free

The Edge of Reason: poetic line w/ Brigid Yuknavitch

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHERE: Online, for six weeks (please note: there is no live/Zoom component to this class—poets will go at their own pace each week) LEADER: Brigid Yuknavitch COST: $350 SCHOLARSHIPS: Yes, scholarships are available. Please follow this link to apply. The Edge of Reason: poetic line The form of the poem organizes our sensory and felt experience as we read. It supports and disrupts what the language is saying. The line slows the sentence down. The line makes a dance inside the sentence. The line breaks open the sentence. The line registers what the sentence tried to contain. The line takes a walk as Paul Klee described it in painting. And because the line can make these many moves it lets us do more with words…

$350

VIRTUAL Risograph Basics with Outlet!

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Welcome to our Risograph Basics course: a printing, collage, experimentation, and mark making extravaganza! Get to know Outlet and our RISO sisters (Barbara, Janet, Corita, and Tina) and learn the basics of this fun and unique print method with Kate Bingaman-Burt! IMPORTANT: Due to social distancing this class will be taught virtually via Zoom—more info on that below! About the Workshop: Want to learn what Risograph printing is? Want to meet others who do too? Join us to learn all about the basics of the Risograph in our two-color introduction workshop. The workshop will kick off with a Show & Tell of exactly what a Risograph can do with a printing demo, print and zine samples and a general exploration of how we can get the best results from this…

$15 – $100

Willamette Writers Online Conference

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Pitch agents. Sit down with producers. Sharpen your manuscript with industry pros. You can do all this from the comfort of your own home, July 30 – August 2, 2020! Featuring keynote speakers Cheryl Strayed, Pete Souza, Mitchell S. Jackson, Zoraida Córdova, Rosanne Parry, and more! With over 80 virtual workshops, as well as night events, critiques, and gatherings, you're sure to find your community, develop your craft, and expand your career this year. Whether you're a poet, a screenwriter, a novelist, or a techie, you'll find your home at our annual conference. What's that? You're a memoirist? You're going to love our classes on voice and style, taught by New York Times Bestselling Authors. Newbie? Great! Come learn with us! Published 80 books? We're…

$249 – $349

Delve Readers Seminar Online: Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Storyteller and Death in the Andes

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“Opam-pogyakyena shinoshinonkarintsi. Me está mirando la tristeza.” Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa is known for his prolific oeuvre, particularly his long historical novels that portray different aspects and eras of Peru and other parts of Latin America; and yet, his less-known shorter works are narrative gems that show the complexities of the human condition, with characters that cross both geographic and fundamental inner boundaries. We will discuss Death in the Andes and The Storyteller, two books whose protagonists step outside of the predictability of their comfort zones and place themselves in remote communities, where they will assume a radical life transformation. Graphic designer, writer, translator, and photographer, Ivonne Saed has extensively explored the crossroads between the visual and the textual, both in her creative…

$150

Delve Readers Seminar Online: Ritual, Redemption, and Epiphany

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 Seminar explores the common human experiences of redemption and epiphany and the role that ritual can play in ushering in such profound moments. Through our texts, we’ll examine how ritual can be used to protect societal structures as well as shift culture, how the tension between what has been and what might be leads to necessary conflict within the self, and how the power of acute experience ushers in clarity and the capacity for change. We will read two novellas, The Dead by James Joyce and Babette’s Feast by Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen), and a selection of short stories and poems by Alice Walker,…

$150

Summer 2020 Online: Turning Life Into Fiction

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“Because something happened to you, you own it. Tell your stories. ~Anne Lamott Often, when we set out to write a story we don’t know where to begin. In this class we will look at the wealth of possibility in our lives, in our family life, our work life, or something a friend has told you that seems perfect fodder for fiction. What is a story that’s often retold to the point of folklore in your family? What is the anecdote that you trot out over a beverage with friends? In this class we will use life as the starter for stories to which we apply our imagination, the skills in our writers’ toolbox, and the joy that comes from being in charge of how…

$240

Delve Summer 2020: The Case for Oregon Reparations

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most culturally-relevant examinations of America’s tradition of systematic economic exploitation, particularly of Blacks. Published in 2016, this Atlantic article, which veers into being a short book in length, looks at the foundational policies of the land: 400 years of slavery, decades of Jim Crow and separate but equal that have set the scene for the massive disparties found in the coutry today. The real human collateral of America’s plunder sets the scene for the question of Coates’ question: why hasn’t the country made a serious attempt into, at the very least, examining reparations. We will pair this reading with Portland State University professor Dr. Karen Gibson’s cutting delve into the effects of racist policies…

$110

Corporeal Writing: Space Stations: A Module for BIPOC Writers by Pamela K. Santos

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

MODULE ONE: Ask The Cup & Who Will Answer? LED BY: Pamela K. Santos WHERE: Online (via Zoom) WHEN: 4 weeks, 7 sessions, meeting Sundays and Tuesdays Aug 9 to Aug 30 (details on meeting times below) Space Stations are a pilot project series facilitated by Pamela K. Santos as artistic practice incubators for BIPOC writers meeting in 4-week modules around themes of introspection and self-inquiry. “What is your relationship to your art?” is the central question guiding the twice-weekly virtual sessions and self-directed exercises. Space Stations envision cooperative communities (“waystations” in the galaxies) that writers can drop in based on needs and shape how to support each other in literary ecosystems of our own creation. Ask The Cup & Who Will Answer? What is…

Free

Corporeal Writing: The Edge of Reason: poetic line w/ Brigid Yuknavitch

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

STARTS: 8/15/2020 WHERE: Online, for six weeks (please note: there is no live/Zoom component to this class—poets will go at their own pace each week) LEADER: Brigid Yuknavitch COST: $350 SCHOLARSHIPS: Yes, scholarships are available. Please follow this link to apply. The Edge of Reason: poetic line The form of the poem organizes our sensory and felt experience as we read. It supports and disrupts what the language is saying. The line slows the sentence down. The line makes a dance inside the sentence. The line breaks open the sentence. The line registers what the sentence tried to contain. The line takes a walk as Paul Klee described it in painting. And because the line can make these many moves it lets us do more…

$350