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!

Art of the Full Length Play with Matthew B. Zrebski

Portland Center Stage 128 NW 11th Avenue, Portland, OR, United States

This class meets for Four Saturdays 2/1 – 2/29 no class on 2/15 Great plays need to strike hard, fast, and powerfully, never letting an audience off the hook. Exploring both no-intermission and multi-act formats, this intensive introduces exciting techniques that help to quickly engage an audience, successfully build to a satisfying climax, and conclude so as to spark dialogue long after the curtain has fallen. By the end of class, students will have a strong outline as well as two to three fully written scenes.  They will leave ready and confident to complete a full draft.  No preparation is required.  All material will be developed and written in class.  Bringing an electronic device that can connect to the internet will be helpful so as…

$130

Intro to Risograph Printing

IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) 318 SE Main Street #175, Portland, OR, United States

In this 4-hour introductory course, participants will learn the basics of risograph (riso) printing and will leave with an understanding of how to use this print technology to create zines, fliers, posters, or other printed matter. While this technology is not new, riso printing has recently become one of the most exciting developments in independent printing and publishing because of its cost-effectiveness for print runs between 25 and 1,000. Workshop participants will learn how to best maximize the many quirks of riso printing to achieve striking results. Participants are also encouraged to bring files of artwork that they’d like to print (files should be 100% grayscale, letter or tabloid size). For more information on riso printing and the modern riso resurgence, check out the riso wiki.…

$100 – $200

Exploring the Lyric Essay

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

A flexible, hybrid form, the lyric essay employs techniques from poetry, nonfiction, and fiction to create a single work. In this workshop, we’ll experiment with lyric essay techniques and structures, read a variety of examples that employ these techniques, and craft our own lyric essays on subjects of our choosing. You will also learn revision techniques you can implement as you continue to work with your pieces after the class has ended. Miranda Schmidt‘s work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Orion, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Collagist, and other journals. She has taught creative writing at the Loft, the University of Washington, and Portland Community College. Miranda grew up in the midwest and now lives in Portland. They are currently at work on a novel about haunting and a series of lyric…

$275

Impossible Language: the Digital and the Divinatory

IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) 318 SE Main Street #175, Portland, OR, United States

This is a class about discovering what you can learn from randomness. The instructors will guide you through activities, both material and digitally-facilitated, that aim to disrupt your creative process through a variety of techniques. Throughout the class, you will have the opportunity to both generate new work and re-envision poetry in process. Students will take home a workbook with an overview of the class activities, links to online resources, and space for their new creations. Let instructors Eva Bertoglio and Natalie Jane Edson guide you through a series of analog and digitally-assisted exercises designed to reinvigorate your creative process and connect you to your subconscious mind through pattern recognition and ritual.

$25 – $40

To Invent What We Desire

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

It’s easy to become separated from our writing, and sometimes we don’t know how to return from that stuck place. This course explores experiences of being lost—and ways of getting found. We’ll start with nine strategies drawn from Adrienne Rich’s essay “To invent what we desire” (in What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics), then go deeper, using guided meditation and self-hypnosis to encounter and soften our resistance and reconnect with the artist within us. We’ll finish up with discussion and plans for diving back into the heart of our work. Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet is the author of The Greenhouse and Tulips, Water, Ash. Her poems have appeared in journals including Plume, Zyzzyva, and the Kenyon Review and in anthologies including Nasty Women…

$65

Grief and the Lyric Essay

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

For writers at all levels It can be a challenge to access grief, not to mention represent it in word and forms, yet writers like Claudia Rankine, Ann Carson, and Maggie Nelson pull it off beautifully and in wildly different ways. We will try different ways into the conversation with grief, first through reading other writers, then in our notebooks. Writing exercises will allow you to explore memory, specifically as it can be accessed through the body. You will leave with a solid start into a new piece of writing or a fresh take on an older draft. Saturday, February 22 from 10:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. Sunday, February 23 from 2:00–5:00 p.m. (two sessions) CLASS LIAISONS: All classes have one liaison position. Liaisons receive free tuition in…

$135

Delve Readers Seminars: The Autofiction of Rachel Cusk

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

This Delve seminar will explore the recent trilogy—Outline, Transit, and Kudos—by Rachel Cusk and contextualize it within the developing literary form of autofiction. In reading these novels, we will continually ask a series of questions that the publication of these novels poses. Why are so many contemporary writers turning to fictionalized autobiography that refuses the constraints of narrative convention? What is it about the current moment that has made authors embrace autofiction? What does this new form of writing allow authors to accomplish that more established forms of fiction do not? READING LIST: Outline by Rachel Cusk Transit by Rachel Cusk Kudos by Rachel Cusk Delve Access Program We want Delve seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that…

$220

Intro to Screenprinting

IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) 318 SE Main Street #175, Portland, OR, United States

Join us to learn about silkscreen printing! Learn how to create stencils, prep and process screens while gaining knowledge about tools, tips, and tricks for the photo emulsion process. You’ll have the chance to acquire best practices for setting up your print station, printing and registration while gaining practice with the medium. Our studio area uses only water-based silkscreen inks and is a primarily a non-toxic studio environment. *Screen printing is also called silkscreen or serigraphy *Completion of this course grants Studio Members access to the Screen Printing studio to print during open studio hours. Non-members and Basic Members receive one trial month of Studio Membership after the completion of the workshop. Purchasing a personal screen is not required Screen Printing Resources:  RC SCREEN SHOP &…

$125 – $225

Youth Intro to Screenprinting

IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) 318 SE Main Street #175, Portland, OR, United States

Join us to learn about silkscreen printing! Learn how to create stencils, prep and process screens while gaining knowledge about tools, tips, and tricks for the photo emulsion process. You’ll have the chance to acquire best practices for setting up your print station, printing and registration while gaining practice with the medium. Our studio area uses only water-based silkscreen inks and is a primarily a non-toxic studio environment. $50-125 Sliding Scale

$50 – $125

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