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!

Nature Writing Now

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

What does it mean to write about nature now? We are living at a time of great ecological peril and promise, when some are questioning whether “nature” still even exists. How to write about this complexity in authentic and evocative ways? How to convey both the beauty and the corruption of beauty? Together, we will consider a wide sampling of historical and contemporary nature writing. Noticing how the genre has changed over time will help us understand how our cultural conceptions of self and nature have both changed and remained the same. Contemporary nature writing often reflects complex social and political realities, while also reminding us of the abiding depth of feeling created by, for instance, placing one’s hand on a tree trunk and pausing…

$285

Core Character & Environment Online Class (7 Weeks)

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this class you will explore the improvisational storytelling principles of Characterization and Environment which include playing with point of view, physicality, how to build the space, finding the game, heightening, status and more. Learn how to make strong choices for yourself and hold on to them while supporting the choices made by your scene partner. COST: Early Bird (until Feb 21) $240.00 Regular Price (after Feb 21) $270 for this 7 week course ATTENTION: THIS CLASS WILL TAKE PLACE ONLINE. You will need a reliable internet connection, a laptop and a generally distraction free location in order to participate. This is an anti-racist, anti-misogynist, anti-abelist, anti-homophobic, anti-transphobic, anti-ageist class that strives to be inclusive of all experiences. We are always learning and aim to…

$240 – $270

Delve Readers Seminar: History of the Peloponnesian War

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The Peloponnesian War is the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides’s account of the strife, conflict, civil war, and military and political catastrophe he witnessed and lived through as a citizen of Athens during and after the reign of the great Pericles in the 5th century BCE–the height of the classical period. A lifelong student of democracy, his meticulous and dramatic analysis of the decades-long strife between Athens and Sparta presents a complex and probing picture of politics, character, and what he calls stasis–protracted and irresolvable civil conflict. One of the masterpieces of world history, The Peloponnesian War has proven an enduring and strikingly relevant classic for modern thinkers, writers, and students of politics. In this six week seminar, we will read through and thoroughly discuss the…

$240

IPRC: 2021 BIPOC Residency Info Session

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for a remote Q + A informational session about the 2021 BIPOC Residency program! Slideshow presented by IPRC Member and Community Projects Coordinator, Emmy Eao on the history of the residency, the intentions of the program, and the application process. RSVP here. Zoom link will be sent out the day of. More info about the residency here .

Free

Delve Readers Seminar: Imagining the Future: Dystopic and Utopic Fiction

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Many of us have described the past year as “apocalyptic” or “dystopian.” We’ve been living through a global pandemic, a critical presidential election, ravaging wildfires, and a national reckoning with our country’s legacy of racism and police violence. Utopic and dystopic fiction can help us make sense of our experience and ask questions about our future. In this seminar we’ll read three works of utopic and dystopic fiction written by women authors. In our reading and discussion of each text, we will focus on a few core questions: Who are we, as a society? Who do we want to be? What gets in the way of becoming the society we dream of? What do fictional dystopias and utopias teach us about what we fear and…

$240

Memoir Infusion!

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The best work speaks intimately to you even though it has been consciously made to speak intimately to thousands of others.- Jeanette Winterson This class is meant to get you moving, excited and deeply engaged with your memoir project. Whether you’ve almost got a full draft, are just beginning, or somewhere in between, together we’re going to make progress. Through reading memoir samples, craft talks and readings, plus specific writing exercises, we’ll examine what makes a reader engage with your story. We will look at ways to organize and shape life-chaos into art. Through vivid details, authentic voice, inventive uses of form, captivating dialog and invigorated settings, we can indeed make our personal stories universal. During the first half of class we will workshop short…

$695

Delve Readers Seminar: Søren Kierkegaard: What is Our Situation?

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In the six meetings of our Delve seminar we will read selections from books by Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), a philosopher of the highest importance and influence in general philosophy, moral philosophy, and religious thought. In Western philosophy, he stands with Plato and Nietzsche alone as a literary stylist of the greatest genius. The most familiar characterization of Kierkegaard is that he is the founder of existentialism. In this seminar we will try as best we can to look at him with fresh eyes. Most of us have never met a person like him. We’ve known lots of rebels, and lots of amazingly human and loving persons, lots of intense cranks and some brilliant conversationalists, and probably a few geniuses. But a person who combines all…

$240

2020 Oregon Literary Fellows Reading & Conversation

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join the 2020 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients for a reading and conversation. There will be time for a “Q&A” session at the end. Register for this Webinar here.

Free

Delve Readers Seminar: Joy Harjo: American Sunrise

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

…we still want justice. We are still America. We know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die soon. -Joy Harjo,“American Sunrise” Our current poet laureate Joy Harjo describes her work as writing that both “tells the truth and creates the truth”, providing a “memory on which to build.” Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is the author of nine books of poetry, one memoir, several plays, children’s books, and most recently, the editor of the first historically comprehensive Native poetry anthology. She is also an accomplished saxophonist and vocalist who has released four albums of original music. In this seminar, we will read her latest poetry collection American Sunrise and her 2012 memoir Crazy Brave. Participants need not be…

$240

Mind Fuck: A Seminar on Writing Better Sex with Melissa Febos

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHEN: Saturday, March 27th, 2021 :: 1PM—3PM Pacific WHERE: ZOOM! (But of course.) Meeting ID will be provided ahead of time. HOW MUCH: $100. Payment plans are available, please contact Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com SCHOLARSHIPS: Scholarships are always available. Click here to apply. Mind Fuck: A Seminar on Writing Better Sex Desire drives any story worth telling. One of the most notoriously difficult forms of desire to write is the sexual. As Audre Lorde wrote, “The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation.” To write scenes that remove sex from patriarchal structures means to (re)place them in the context of their inhabiting corporeal bodies and realities, to engage topics…

$100