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!

June BIPOC Craft Series: Setting

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This monthly craft series for BIPOC writers invites you to stretch into new forms of written expression. In June, we will breathe life into the setting of your stories. Using beloved and renowned BIPOC writers as models for captivating narratives that draw us into place, we will notice, play, practice, share and grow as writers. Access Program We want our writing classes 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 registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classses have at least one access spot available. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you would…

$50

Delve Readers Seminar: Tove Jansson: The Summer Book

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

If you already know Tove Jansson as the author and illustrator of the Moominfamily stories and comic strips, you will meet her in this Delve seminar as the author of her superb The Summer Book. This is a novel that is so deep and yet so apparently casual that it will repay the close reading we will give it in this four-week seminar. We will also observe her imagination for fiction in her short stories, letters, and other works. But we won’t forget the Moomins, for life on the island in The Summer Book echoes life in the Moominvalley. These books and a look at Jansson’s artwork will help us understand the fascinating account of the passages of life that The Summer Book gives us.…

$160

Craft Conversations: Dialogue

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Dialogue, as much as anything else, reveals the character to the writer and, ultimately to the reader. I don’t have a very clear idea of who the characters are until they start talking. ~ Joan Didion Sometimes, when I’m lucky, a line of dialogue, either something I’ve dreamed up or overheard, will spark a story. Because dialogue is so revealing it can be an entrance point, a moment when a character speaking, reveals themself on the page. Because dialogue is the only time the reader directly hears from the characters without the filter of the narrator, the spoken words become a measure for the heart and mind of the characters. What do they want? What are they trying to gain or conceal? How is dialog…

$75

For the Love of Roaming: Walking into the Lyric Essay

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

From Hemingway’s Moveable Feast to Thoreau’s meditation on “Walking” to Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting” to Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust, writers have connected the act of writing with the art of roaming. During this weekend together, we will spend some time reading poems and personal meditations on walking, and use them as prompts for our own writing. By the end of the weekend you will have a draft that includes memories of roaming, accounts of current saunters, quotes from other wanderers, and even some research perhaps — all braided into a lyric essay. Access Program We want our writing classes 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…

$290

SUMMER: A Generative Collaboration Through a Sensual/Sensory Lens — begins

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Collaboration Leader: Domi Shoemaker, alongside weekly videos featuring Domi and Lidia Yuknavitch in conversation When: Begins July 15th, and will run for five weeks. Where: Videos are hosted on our site—you’ll receive a link to one each week, and then have access to them always. Domi will host a Zoom meeting every Thursday from 5:30-7:30PM PST. (Meeting dates: July 15th, July 22nd, July 29th, August 5th, August 12th.) Cost: $250—payment plans are available. Please contact Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com. Scholarships are also available—Apply Here. Sex. Heat. Abundance. Excess. Juice. Long hot nights, cool rivers, the moon the only witness. In this generative workshop we will take “excursions” into the belly of summer to generate writing and art. For the adventurous and sly. Experimental, mixed genre, utterly…

$250

Delve Readers Seminar: Shuggie Bain

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Douglas Stuart won the 2020 Booker Prize with this debut novel about young Hugh (Shuggie) Bain, growing up in 1980s Glasgow and struggling to care for his wayward, alcoholic mother. Drawing on his own experience, Stuart portrays the difficulties of a working-class, queer childhood with heartbreaking tenderness, bringing Shuggie and his world vividly to life. This seminar will introduce readers to one of the most exciting new voices in literature. Access Program We want our writing classes 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 registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classses…

$120

Love Notes: Flash Prose

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this prompt-driven 2-day intensive participants will create a series of connected flash love stories. With the aid of experimental exercises exploring prose and poetry (epistolary, lists, photo captions, etc.) we will celebrate and write about love in all its forms, including the flip side of love and more! Special attention will be paid to voice and technique. Fiction, non-fiction, all genres welcome. Access Program We want our writing classes 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 registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classses have at least one access spot available.…

$145

Beyond the What: Swapping Art for Plot in Memoir, with Lidia Yuknavitch

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHAT: A three-hour online webgasm with Lidia Yuknavitch and at least one special guest. (With a 15-minute intermission.) WHEN: Saturday, July 24th 1PM-4PM Pacific (4PM-7PM Eastern) WHERE: ZOOM. Meeting ID will be provided ahead of time. (Interested in this event but unable to join it live? All registered attendees will receive a link to a recording of it that will be viewable for one week afterwards.) HOW MUCH: $150. Payment plans are available, contact Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com SCHOLARSHIPS: Scholarships are always available. Click here to apply. (Note: This offering is available as part of a three-webinar bundle along with Unlikeable on Purpose and Revivify: Breathing Life into Dead Matter. Each webinar is $150, but you can sign up for all 3 for $395. Just…

$150

July BIPOC Craft Series: Poetry

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This monthly craft series for BIPOC writers invites you to stretch into new forms of written expression. In July, we will enter the boundless realm of poetry. Using beloved and renowned BIPOC writers as models for poems that let the words flow, we will notice, play, practice, share and grow as writers. Access Program We want our writing classes 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 registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classses have at least one access spot available. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you would like to take…

$50

Oracles, Intuition, and Creativity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Forge a deeper connection with your intuition in this 5-week course exploring intuitive processes and symbolism in creative practice. Students will work with The Personal Oracle deck, designed by instructor Coleman Stevenson, to stretch their symbolic awareness and sharpen their creative instincts. The cards and other divinatory methods will be used as prompts for storytelling and other creative writing exercises as well. This is a great class for card readers who want to expand their reading methods to include visual and intuitive reading AND for writers who want to explore alternative composition methods. No prior experience with cartomancy is required. Tuition for the course includes a copy of The Personal Oracle (Second Edition) and an accompanying journal for exploring the cards. Access Program We want…

$280