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Everybody Reads 2020: Tommy Orange

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 1037 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Celebrate the power of books to create a stronger community by attending the 2020 Everybody Reads author event with Tommy Orange. Literary Arts is proud to host an evening with award-winning author Tommy Orange as the culminating event of Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads program. This year’s programming will center on Orange’s debut novel, There There. Tickets start at $15, available at Portland5.com With the selection of There There, Everybody Reads 2020 centers around the experience of urban Native Americans in Oakland, California. Through a shared reading experience, we will explore a multitude of themes in the book, from identity and ownership to the urban-rural divide. About There There: Orange’s shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow,…

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$15

Planning and Writing Your Book with Kristen James

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

THIS MEETING IS ONLINE and FREE to all. (Details below the talk decription.) Planning and Writing Your Book: How to Apply Methods and Tips from Bestselling Writers Kristen Chaney James, author of Blockbuster Books, Broken Down and other writing books will share the methods and tips she’s picked up during her writing career to plan and write an engaging novel. You don’t have to choose to “write from the middle” or only use the “three legged outline” because you can use a combination of methods to ensure your story is solid and hits all the plot points readers look for. **You can join us on your phone or on your computer. You do not need to have video, but it is helpful if you can.…

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Free

The Art of Marketing Your Book

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This meeting will be ONLINE ONLY. We will post a link for you to watch on your computer as well as a phone number where you can call in to listen. We are determined to make the online experience as seamless as possible. “Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” Lao Tzu Dami will present steps for marketing your first book and guide you through the planning of a marketing journey that can start small and lead to great and unexpected places. She will share the lessons learned from her mistakes and share the unexpected successes and new worlds that have opened up…

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Free

Southern Oregon Online: Writing and Marketing Short Pieces with Sheila Bender

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Get Flashy - Writing and Marketing Short Pieces with Sheila Bender Flash nonfiction, flash fiction and flash series have gained traction in the publishing and literary worlds over the last years with iStories, New York Times Tiny Love Stories, Brevity, A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, and anthologies such as Flash Fiction Funny, Flash Nonfiction Funny and You Have Time for This. The form, you may recognize, has been around for decades, even centuries, though not named flash. If you've been wondering about short pieces and how to get them published and marketed, join us at our online chapter meeting with author Sheila Bender. Sheila will discuss some of her favorite work from many sources and exercises for developing one's own flash pieces, sometimes by…

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Free

World-Building for the Real World: Strategies for Fictionalizing

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

World Building in the Real World: Strategies for Fictionalizing the World We Live In with Bill Cameron ** World building isn't just for science-fiction and fantasy. It's just as important for fiction set in our everyday world. I'll discuss strategies and potential pitfalls when using the settings we know (or want to know) in our fiction. ** When he’s not tending his chickens, W.H. Cameron shapes unruly words into captivating people caught in harrowing situations. As Bill Cameron, he’s the author of the critically-acclaimed Skin Kadash mysteries, and his YA mystery PROPERTY OF THE STATE was named one of Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2016: Teen. His latest, CROSSROAD, introduces prickly apprentice mortician Melisende Dulac as she navigates a new landscape that’s both alluring and…

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Free

2019/2020 Portland Arts & Lectures: Colson Whitehead (Sold Out)

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 1037 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Colson Whitehead is a novelist, essayist, and reviewer whose most recent works include 2019’s The Nickel Boys and 2016’s The Underground Railroad, a New York Times best seller which won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the National Book Award and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by theNew York Times Book Review. NPR hailed The Underground Railroad as “an American masterpiece, as much a searing document of a cruel history as a uniquely brilliant work of fiction.” Whitehead’s other books include The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and The Colossus of New York. He is a recipient of the MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, and a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. The 35th season…

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SOLD OUT

Compose Creative Writing Conference

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Explore the practices and professions of creative writing and publishing at Clackamas Community College’s annual Compose Creative Writing Conference, hosted by CCC's English Department. Compose 2020 — online and FREE this year "See what can be found for remedy and comfort by writing stories down" - Kim Stafford, Compose 2020 keynote speaker Saturday, May 16, 10 a.m. Cost: Free! Location: Online. Details on accessing the conference via Zoom will be provided to registered attendees. This event has reached capacity and registration is now closed. Calling all writers and lovers of the written word. The annual Compose Creative Writing Conference is going online! The May 16 conference is offered for free and entirely online this year. Join Oregon Poet Laureate Kim Stafford as he delivers his keynote address, "Who…

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Free

(Play)Writing During the Quarantine

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

One of the most beautiful aspects of playwriting is that it is an invitation for others to collaborate, from the actors, directors, designers, stage managers and finally the audience. Playwriting is community-making.  And that is something we surely and sorely need through such isolating times. And so, we welcome all to take part in a Remote Playwriting Class, taught by award-winning playwright and screenwriter Dan Kitrosser. Each session will be divided into two parts: Part One Lectursize! 1 hour Part Lecture / Part Discussion / Part Exercise. Each week we’ll cover one element of playwriting, we’ll read a play, discuss the element of playwriting through that play, take part in playwriting exercises, commune & laugh. Part Two Workshop Time Up to 2 hours After the…

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$150

Creating a Movie in Your Reader’s Mind- C. Lill Ahrens

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

MAY 25 - Join Lill via Zoom for her info-packed presentation about the what-why-when-where of Emotional Truth (ET). While actors convey ET through body language and line delivery, writers convey ET by describing those things and employing ET tools such as metaphor and inner monologue. Everything in a written story can have ET -- Every person, place, thing, animal, vegetable, mineral, and weather phenomenon. Successful stories are infused with ET. The effect hooks readers on page one and keeps them under a spell, happily unaware of how the magic is made. Aspiring writers can also be unaware of it, so they might omit ET in their own work, unwittingly sapping tension, losing readers, or even pushing them away. In this fun presentation, Lill shows how…

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Free

Salman Rushdie: Quichotte

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Presented by the Wisconsin Book Festival in partnership with The Believer Festival, Literary Arts, and The Loft’s Wordplay, Salman Rushdie will appear live on Crowdcast. Join us at: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/quichotte Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where “Anything-Can-Happen.” Meanwhile, his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own. Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a…

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Free
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