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!

Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This workshop is virtual, PST Register here Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms In this 6-week class, we will experiment with short form creative writing. Our focus—whether it’s flash fiction, lyric essay, prose poetry, or hybrid—will be on the art of compression. Each week, participants will be given a writing exercise, a short reading, and two workshop submissions from their peers. Class time will include workshop as well as discussion of readings and craft. Our workshop will be guided by observations, questions, and possibilities. We will be thinking less about how to “fix” a piece of writing and more about what we see, our curiosities, and how to recognize hidden opportunities. Each participant will receive feedback from the instructor and from the other participants.…

$80 – $200

BIPOC Writing Workshop: October

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

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 writing classes and Delves to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and Delve tuitions at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available. Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at…

$20

Form As Listening: On the Spiritual & Ecological in the Sentence & Story — with Janice Lee October 15th

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Form As Listening: On the Spiritual & Ecological in the Sentence & Story Saturday October 15th, 2022 1PM—3:30PM Pacific over Zoom (A recording will be made available to all registrants for a limited period afterwards.) “Form is about listening.” – Teresa Carmody “The ear is the first organ to develop in the fetus and the last one to stop functioning during the process of death. This prominence at the beginning and end of our life cycle indicates that the ear may hold valuable keys to the mysteries of life… While our eyes help light our path through this world, we also know that we came from darkness and will return to darkness… Where we cannot see, sound can guide us.” – Russill Paul, The Yoga…

$50 – $250

Writing the Weird and Wonderful: Nonfiction

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

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. In this workshop, students will take their bits of brilliance and turn them into finely-honed pieces of nonfiction. We’ll take an idea from start to finish: generating story ideas, discussing options for research, conducting interviews, gaining trust with subjects, writing effective pitches, outlining and playing with structure and the editing process. Discussions and lectures will focus on the building blocks of great nonfiction stories, including visceral scenes, effective interviews, interesting…

$285

Leave the Door Open On The Way Out: Endings in Fiction

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

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 sometimes this pattern can leave a story flat, without room for wonder. 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 to fully burst into the mystery and unpredictability of human experience? In this workshop we will look at a few endings to short stories by Anton Chekov, Alice Munro, James Joyce, Charles Baxter, Tessa Hadley, ZZ Packer, Carmen Maria Machado, and others, for ways they use time, imagery, dialog, and omission to open…

$145

Ecstatic Aesthetics w/ Amanda Montei — begins October 20th

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Ecstatic Aesthetics Begins October 20th, 2022 Four weekly 2-hour sessions over Zoom on Thursdays from 4-6PM PST (10/ 20, 10/27, 11/3, 11/10) Joy and pleasure are what we strive for as humans, and in an era that often feels grim, artistic representations of awakening and enjoyment are increasingly compelling to readers and writers. In this class, we will ask ourselves what the purpose of representing ecstatic experiences might be, as we examine our assumptions about the symbolism and syntax we use to communicate pleasure on the page. What does it mean to experience overwhelming delight, as both writer and reader? Can we give voice to exhilaration while avoiding nostalgia and denial? Together we will read theories and representations of heightened spiritual, sexual, and communal pleasure…

$200 – $400

Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This workshop is virtual, PST Register here Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms In this 6-week class, we will experiment with short form creative writing. Our focus—whether it’s flash fiction, lyric essay, prose poetry, or hybrid—will be on the art of compression. Each week, participants will be given a writing exercise, a short reading, and two workshop submissions from their peers. Class time will include workshop as well as discussion of readings and craft. Our workshop will be guided by observations, questions, and possibilities. We will be thinking less about how to “fix” a piece of writing and more about what we see, our curiosities, and how to recognize hidden opportunities. Each participant will receive feedback from the instructor and from the other participants.…

$80 – $200

The Anatomy of a Wave — A Generative Retreat at the Oregon Coast — Oct 21-24

The Corporeal Writing Center 510 SW 3rd Ave #101, Portland, OR, United States

The Anatomy of a Wave w/ Lidia Yuknavitch & the Corporeal Writing Squad October 21st-24th, at The Salishan Coastal Lodge near Lincoln City, OR ***SOLD OUT*** — please fill out the form below to add yourself to the waitlist In this creative retreat we will explore the motion and space of waves as a means of creating deeper, more rhythmic, and sustainable writing practice, both in terms of present-tense projects as well as the longevity of your writing practice over time. Put simply, we can learn a great deal about writing from the motion of ocean waves. The movement of water can teach us about some kindred motions: the motion of the imagination and the subconscious, the motion of language, the motion of storytelling. In…

Free

Ekphrastic Creative Writing Lab

Carnation Contemporary and Well Well Projects 8371 N Interstate Ave #3, Portland

Ekphrastic Creative Writing Lab *This workshop meets in-person. Masks & Proof of Vaccination + Booster required **This workshop meets at Carnation Contemporary & Well Well Projects located at 8371 N Interstate Ave #3, Portland, OR 97217 Register here Instructor: Stephanie Victoire This 4-week writing lab series explores the further imagination, narrative and creation that awaits us within the consciousness of visual art. Students will experience how art communicates with its viewers and anticipates its reincarnation into multiple streams of language and ideas. Throughout the course of the workshops, students will learn how to transcend the messages, concepts and threads of thought they pull from the pieces in the gallery that speak to them, and respond creatively in any written form they wish. Each week there…

$100 – $200

Fall | Prose Poetry II w Ruben Quesada | Oct 23 – Nov 20 | Online

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Break It and Remake It This new course focuses on workshopping prose poetry and building on ideas from Prose Poetry I. We'll explore forms of prose poetry. Generative writing assignments will focus on storytelling, sound, and structure. Writing exercises will require more time beyond our time together. Students are expected to bring thoughtfully composed prose poems to every class for the workshop. Feedback is expected during the workshop and in writing. Zoom link provided prior to start of workshop. Teacher: Ruben QuesadaTime: Sundays, Oct 23 - Nov 20, 8 - 10am Pacific TimeLocation: Online via ZoomTotal Fee: Discounted Early Registration is due seven (7) days prior to the start of the workshop. | Discounted Early Registration: $219 (cash/check); $233 (Paypal). | Tuition Registration: $234 (cash/check); $248 (PayPal).

$219 – $248