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Attic Institute: WINTER Online: A Writer’s Toolkit: How to Get Started As A Writer w Wayne Gregory | Jan 14 – Feb. 11

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.” ~ Pablo Picasso You have a story to tell, but you’re not sure how to get started. The Writer’s Toolkit is the class for you.  In this workshop, you will discover how to transform your ideas from imagination to a cohesive and compelling story that engages readers and keeps them turning the pages for more. You will learn some of the basic conventions for good writing that successful writers use: how to develop plot, how to create compelling characters, how to build dynamic scenes, and how to show rather than tell. You will learn by doing and will take away a wealth of writing tools and resources to keep honing your…

Continue readingAttic Institute: WINTER Online: A Writer’s Toolkit: How to Get Started As A Writer w Wayne Gregory | Jan 14 – Feb. 11
$215 – $242

Collisions: Short Story Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For writers at all levels In this fiction workshop, we will explore how to use all manner of combustible collisions, both small and large, as generative fuel. Have a slew of disparate ideas stewing in your brain? We’ll investigate the power of unexpected pairings—how colliding seemingly unrelated images or ideas can spark something entirely original and point your work forward. And we’ll study different ways authors can open up possibilities for a story and introduce tension that keeps readers engaged. You will build your own stories and receive the focused attention of a workshop environment. Thursdays, January 14-March 4, 2021 from 6:00-8:00 Pacific (eight sessions) online via Zoom Instructor: Josha Nathan Josha Nathan is a 2017 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipient. He earned his MFA at…

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$385

PSU MFA Alumni Showcase: C. R. Grimmer, Genevieve Hudson, & Suman Mallick

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

C. R. Grimmer, who also goes by Chelsea Grimmer, is a poet, scholar, and lecturer at The University of Washington Seattle and Bothell campuses. Their latest collection is The Lyme Letters, which was completed with support from a Harlan Hahn Disability Studies Fellowship and won the Walt McDonald First Book Award from Texas Tech University Press. They are also the author of O–(ezekiel's wife), a chapbook and audiobook collaboration from GASHER Journal and Press that features visual art by PSU alum Colleen Burner and sound art by Judy Twedt. C. R. received their MFA from Portland State University and Ph.D. in Literature and Cultural Studies from The University of Washington, Seattle. They are the creator and host of The Poetry Vlog (TPV), a YouTube and Podcast teaching…

Continue readingPSU MFA Alumni Showcase: C. R. Grimmer, Genevieve Hudson, & Suman Mallick
Free

Attic Institute: WINTER Online: Story Building Workshop w Joanna Rose | Jan 16 – Mar 20

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Stories have component parts, and they interact. Starting with the basic building block of scene we’ll start with character and move step by step through the micro-levels of sentences, concrete detail, cause and effect, narration, and structure. Each week includes a close read of an excerpt of a published work and a discussion of specific craft elements. Participants will be invited to turn in work each week and can expect to develop a language of non-judgmental critique that will lead to a supportive, in-depth conversation about each other’s work. We’ll look deeply into what it takes to build a prose narrative, real or imagined, long or short. | Maximum: 12 writers Register for this workshop NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering our workshops via Zoom.…

Continue readingAttic Institute: WINTER Online: Story Building Workshop w Joanna Rose | Jan 16 – Mar 20
$538 – $569

Intersections of Identity and Experience

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this webinar, open to prose writers and poets of all ages and backgrounds, participants will use freewriting, revision, and in-depth feedback as tools to create work that can spark new writing possibilities or build on an existing project. The class will address these types of questions: How do we synthesize our experiences and histories with acts of imagination? How do we break silences and heal from trauma through storytelling? How do we write about intersections between race, gender, sexuality, disability, and other aspects of our identities in effective and nuanced ways? Participants will be encouraged to draw from personal, family, and cultural histories, in a supportive yet critically constructive writing environment. Please register using “ticket” link below. Brian Komei Dempster’s debut book of poetry,…

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$40

Building a Writing Habit

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For writers at all levels Using The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron as a resource, this workshop gives writers the tools to establish a disciplined writing practice full of healthy habits so they can keep writing. Class time will be spent in discussion, writing and learning strategies for establishing a consistent writing practice. 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…

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$285

Hope is the Howl with Lidia Yuknavitch and Pam Houston

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHAT: A three-hour online webgasm. WITH: Pam Houston and Lidia Yuknavitch WHEN: Sunday, January 17th, 2021 from 1PM to 4PM PST WHERE: ZOOM! (But of course.) Meeting ID will be provided ahead of time. HOW MUCH: $150. Payment plans are always available, contact Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com SCHOLARSHIPS: Click here to apply. In this duet collaborative Pam Houston and Lidia Yuknavitch will open up the space of the howl, in our throats and bodies, speaking to our rage and sorrow and fear so that we might bring a reinvented kind of hope to the page differently than we ever have before. Living on the brink globally has brought us to the cusp of new possibilities: how do we go about living our lives differently? how…

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$150

Delve Readers Seminar: The “Middle space between languages”: Julia Alvarez and Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This seminar will be an exploration of what Ingrid Rojas Contreras so accurately refers to as, “the middle space between languages,” in her essay, Translation as an Arithmetic of Loss. We will discuss the ways in which the characters in the two novels, Afterlife by Julia Alvarez and Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras, as well as the speakers in the additional poems, navigate the in-betweenness of being bilingual. Each text is a discovery of the ways in which people live both within and between two cultures, languages, and often, identities, and how this shapes their stories. We will also read the Rojas Contreras essay to question what is, both lost and gained, for the characters in the novels whose stories are…

Continue readingDelve Readers Seminar: The “Middle space between languages”: Julia Alvarez and Ingrid Rojas Contreras
$240

WITS Reading: Gresham High School

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writers in the Schools (WITS) has served public high school students with creative writing residencies in Portland, and more recently Gresham, since 1996. Published local writers collaborate with classroom teachers to lead an immersive semester-long workshop series designed to further class themes, curricula, and student interests. Each residency culminates with a public reading, ordinarily held in a local café or bookstore. With distance learning, we look forward to hosting our reading on Zoom and invite you to join us in celebrating these students and their work. This end-of-residency reading will feature students who worked with WITS writers Brian Benson, Valarie Pearce, Bruce Poinsette, and Dey Rivers. Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUkceqtrj0jEtFY8_hup8LY5RdjSWL-6eKq After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining…

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Free

Attic Institute: WINTER Online: Short Fiction Workshop w Thea Chacamaty | Jan 19 – Feb 16

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Alice Munro says, "A short story is not like a road...it's more like a house." Do you want to write a short story, but you're not sure where to start? Or how to finish? In this craft-focused course we will write a short story from start to finish by studying the architectures of great short stories by authors like Alice Munro, Edward P. Jones, Frederick Busch, Lesley Arimah, and others. We will read short stories and dissect how they are constructed to determine how writers make their careful choices, and to what effect. Each week, we will focus on specific craft elements centered around form: plot, scene, and story shape. Along the way, targeted writing exercises will aid us in our efforts, as we share and critique one…

Continue readingAttic Institute: WINTER Online: Short Fiction Workshop w Thea Chacamaty | Jan 19 – Feb 16
$215 – $242
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