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!

Craft Conversations: Place: Setting Down Roots

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Everything that happens in our lives and in our stories happens somewhere. Setting is a building block of fiction and memoir. During this discussion and workshop we will take a thorough look at how to build a vibrant and invigorating setting. Be it the cereal aisle of a grocery store, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, a classroom, or in bed at night—settings are opportunities to reveal character, heighten theme, and create tone. Through writing examples, prompts and ample discussion, you will leave this workshop with a firmer grip on how to enliven your work with setting, specifically: How the right detail can activate a setting How setting reflects/reveals interiority and puts pressure on our characters (even when the character is you!) How place can trigger…

$75

Attic Institute: APPS DUE: May 16: Atheneum Master Writing Program for 2021-2022

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

An annual certificate program, the Attic Atheneum melds independent study under close faculty supervision, student receptions, public readings, and other special Atheneum events created around good food and great conversation, dialogue, and literary community. Running for just under a year, the Atheneum is designed to advance your writing and seed literary life in the city. Atheneum Fellows form a unique community of literary artists and citizens. (** Please note: if you are having trouble getting your app to us in time, need support or extra time with your letter of recommendation, please email us. We know this is a difficult time to be applying for something in the fall, and we want to make it work for you.) Learn more and apply

Free

May BIPOC Writer Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For BIPOC writers 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. Scholarships are available. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org for more information. Jacqueline Fitzgerald is an educator, coach, writer, and musician who believes that creation is a catalyst for transformation. Working at the cross-section of art, healing, and change work, Jacqueline has a passion for stories and their ability to cultivate belonging. Her writing has been published in the Oregonian, The Learning Network of the New York Times, and Beacon Magazine. Currently, she…

$15

Bodecker Foundation Workshops for High School Students – Summer Registration Opens

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Led by professional artists, writers, musicians, and educators, our FREE creative workshops for high school students include a mix of online group activities and offline individual and/or collaborative project work. Class size is generally limited to 12 students. Summer Term Registration Opens Monday May 17

Free

Talking Back: Writing in Conversation with Other Texts

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

for BIPOC writers only We all know that words carry weight, but some words—especially those bound up with the cultural power of political speeches, sacred texts, and canonical literature—can seem overwhelming in their authority. We’ll choose texts that have influenced us—for better or for worse—and use a variety of techniques to respond to them, play with them, challenge them, and upend them. 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…

$240

A Conversation with Author Sarah Federman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The French National Railways and the Journey to Accountability In the immediate decades after World War II, the French National Railways (SNCF) was celebrated for its acts of wartime heroism. However, recent debates and litigation have revealed the ways the SNCF worked as an accomplice to the Third Reich and was actively complicit in the deportation of 75,000 Jews and other civilians to death camps. Sarah Federman delves into the interconnected roles—perpetrator, victim, and hero—the company took on during the harrowing years of the Holocaust. This talk will address the war years as well as the SNCF’s journey toward accountability in France and the United States, culminating in a multimillion-dollar settlement paid by the French government on behalf of the railways. Sarah Federman is an…

Free

Virtual Event: Living in Global Community, A Conversation with Katherina Audley & Lucas Spiegel

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In March of 2020, the people of the world went home and shut their doors in an effort to combat a global health crisis. In the days that followed, our social media feeds filled with images of wildlife roaming newly emptied streets and beaches. It prompted many of us to question the scope of our role and impact in the world. Katherina Audley is a National Geographic Explorer who has spent the past 27 years connecting people around the world with nature through programs, writing, and activities that inspire connection and environmental stewardship. Today she is the Founder and Director of Whales of Guerrero a non-profit based in Mexico that exists to facilitate community-driven conservation through whale science, education, and capacity-building programs. Lucas Spiegel is…

Free

Queer Bodies/Queer Forms: Leaving Behind the Retrograde w/ Cooper Lee Bombardier

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Queer Bodies/Queer Forms: Leaving Behind the Retrograde A 6-week online workshop STARTS: May 23rd, 2021 COST: $350 (scholarships available - priority to queer/trans POC writers - click here to apply) Cooper Lee Bombardier says: “To me, queer is expansive, queer is hybrid, queer is taking what works and leaves behind the retrograde.” Yes, for many queer is also an identity but you don’t have to identify as queer to benefit from a look at queer forms, or attempting to queer your own work. We’ll look at work that might be considered queer in content as well as form, and will embark on multiple generative writing “experiments” where we try on the forms and constraints studied, enter into conversation with them, become inspired by them, apply them to our…

$350

Application Deadline: Tin House Fall Residency: YA

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Now accepting applications for our YA Residency. This two-week program runs from Sept 3rd-19th & comes with a $600 stipend & studio apt in PDX. Application fee waivers are available. The deadline to apply is 5/23.

Free

Jonathan Taplin in Conversation With Robbie Robertson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Jonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of major films in the ’70s, an executive at Merrill Lynch in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium. His is a lifetime marked not only by good timing but by impeccable instincts — from the folk scene to Woodstock, Hollywood’s rebellious film movement, and beyond. Taplin is not just a witness but a lifelong producer, the right-hand man to some of the greatest talents of both pop culture and the underground. With…

Free