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Summer | Write from Life w David Biespiel | July 16 + 17 | In-Person + Online FULL for in-person; ONLINE available

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Praise for Writing from Life: "It was unbelievable. I feel like I just skied down Mt Hood." ~ Phil Meehan This popular tune-up workshop will be run twice this summer, in July and August. It's the kind of study every writer needs, an opportunity to write from studying your own life experiences and then seeing what new subjects that leads you to. The supportive approach emphasizes observation as the route to achieve new material, new possibilities, and new pieces, whether you are writing fiction, memoir, or poems. The approach teaches you new skills that you can use for all your future writing, as well as how to transfer your observations into clear notes, jottings, studies, and pieces of new writing. This method of writing is one of the foundational skill sets that all…

Continue readingSummer | Write from Life w David Biespiel | July 16 + 17 | In-Person + Online FULL for in-person; ONLINE available
$215 – $244

2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Saeed Jones, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Paisley Rekdal

Reed College - Cerf Amphitheater 3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

We are excited to once again be offering in-person readings as part of our 2022 Summer Workshop programming. Starting at 7:30 pm, these events will take place in Reed College’s Cerf Amphitheater and are free and open to the public. Faculty books will be available for purchase at the Reed Bookstore, with authors signing after the event. Masks are not required in the outdoor amphitheater. Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics…

Continue reading2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Saeed Jones, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Paisley Rekdal
Free

Write Your Rant with Lisa Loving

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

"Whatever stories in your community most need to be told, the best person to tell them is you." What really burns your toast? And what’s the best way to tell the world about it? Rose City Book Pub is extremely thrilled to host Lisa Loving's first of three writing workshops: "Write Your Rant." Join journalist and retired talk radio host Lisa Loving for the basics of online research, writing tips, narrative structure and where to bring it. Tickets are 25$ and include a copy of Street Journalist: Understand and Report the News in Your Community as well as a drink and some phenomenal shared appetizers. Get tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/374866454657 Lisa Loving’s Website: http://www.street-journalist.com/ Lisa Loving’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Media4thepeople

$25

Reclaiming Our Lost Selves with Gerette Buglion

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

RECLAIMING OUR LOST SELVES How understanding undue influence builds compassion and resilience In this presentation four questions are presented and aimed to be answered through personal anecdotes, quoted resources and from reading brief sections from An Everyday Cult, Gerette’s memoir. These questions are: What is Undue Influence and Coercive Control? How does indoctrination take place? Who is vulnerable to cultic influence? And perhaps most relevant: how can this exploration support the health and resilience of our communities, neighborhoods and families? IGotOut.org is pleased to sponsor this event. The #igotout movement empowers survivors of cultic abuse to share their stories online as a catalyst for education, prevention, and healing. Learn more at igotout.org

Free

Chris Belcher in Conversation With Katherine Morgan

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

The dominatrix is the id of American femininity. She says the words that we all wish we could say when we find ourselves frozen in the presence of men. No is principal among them. So writes Chris Belcher, who appeared destined for a life of conventional femininity after she took first place in an infant beauty contest — a minor glory that can follow you around a working-class town of 1,600 people in rural West Virginia. But when she came out as queer, the conservative community that had once celebrated its prettiest baby turned on her. A decade later, living in Los Angeles and trying to stay afloat in the early years of a PhD program, Belcher plunges into the work of a pro domme.…

Continue readingChris Belcher in Conversation With Katherine Morgan
Free

Eve Fairbanks in Conversation With Kiese Laymon

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A dozen years in the making, The Inheritors (Simon & Schuster) weaves together the stories of three ordinary South Africans over five tumultuous decades in a sweeping and exquisite look at what really happens when a country resolves to end white supremacy. Dipuo grew up on the south side of a mine dump that segregated Johannesburg’s black townships from the white-only city. Some nights, she hiked to the top. To a South African teenager in the 1980s — even an anti-apartheid activist like Dipuo — the divide that separated her from the glittering lights on the other side appeared eternal. But in 1994, the world’s last explicit racial segregationist regime collapsed to make way for something unprecedented. With penetrating psychological insight, intimate reporting, and bewitching…

Continue readingEve Fairbanks in Conversation With Kiese Laymon
Free

Lyndsie Bourgon in Conversation With Ed Jahn

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

There's a strong chance that chair you are sitting on was made from stolen lumber. In Tree Thieves (Little, Brown Spark), Lyndsie Bourgon takes us deep into the underbelly of the illegal timber market. As she traces three timber poaching cases, she introduces us to tree poachers, law enforcement, forensic wood specialists, the enigmatic residents of former logging communities, environmental activists, international timber cartels, and indigenous communities along the way. Old-growth trees are invaluable and irreplaceable for both humans and wildlife, and are the oldest living things on earth. But the morality of tree poaching is not as simple as we might think: stealing trees is a form of deeply rooted protest, and a side effect of environmental preservation and protection that doesn't include communities…

Continue readingLyndsie Bourgon in Conversation With Ed Jahn
Free

Mikel Jollett

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Hollywood Park (Celadon) is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett, frontman for The Airborne Toxic Event, was born into one of the country’s most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer. His story opens in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country’s most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader’s mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult’s “School.” When…

Continue readingMikel Jollett
Free

Marilyn Milne & Linda Kirk

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

In the 1960s, Tillamook County, Oregon was at war with itself. As the regional dairy industry shifted from small local factories to larger consolidated factories, and as profit margins for milk and cheese collapsed, Tillamook farmers found themselves in a financial crisis that fueled multiple disputes. The ensuing Cheese War included lies and secrets, as well as spies, high emotion, a shoving match, and even a death threat. Sisters Marilyn Milne and Linda Kirk, children of the Cheese War, conducted years of research and have integrated it with tales of their experiences as farm kids living through the all-consuming fight. As Americans become ever more interested in food supply chains and ethical consumption, Cheese War (Oregon State) is the story of the very human factors…

Continue readingMarilyn Milne & Linda Kirk
Free

Write Around Portland: Bi-Monthly BIPOC Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

"I love being witnessed, and I absolutely love witnessing the words of everyone else in the group. It’s our own kind of magic." —BIPOC Online Workshop Participant For people who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC). 2nd & 4th Friday of every month from 4 to 5:30 pm (Pacific Time), Free. Workshops are held via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Registration opens the 1st of the month every month and closes when filled or at 12noon the day before the workshop. Pre-register for our 2nd Friday workshop here. Pre-register for our 4th Friday workshop here.  Click here for more workshop details. 

Free
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