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!

FALL Online: Self-Portraits: Writing from Life w David Biespiel

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This workshop, led by Attic Institute founder David Biespiel, is the kind of study every writer needs, from beginners to the most advanced. It's an opportunity to write from studying your own self-portrait via photos, drawings, snapshots, b&ws, candids, distortions, &c. The workshop approach empahsizes the concept of obseravtional writing as a direct route to achieve new imaginative possibilities, whether you're writng fiction, memoir, or poems. The approach demands careful observation and the translation of those observations into clear and precise notes, jottings, and studies. Self-portrait writing is one of the foundational skill sets that all writers should practice. It hones your concentration on details and the language that comes from those details, and it releases you into new zones for your memories and projections to emerge. Our focus will…

$155 – $175

On Becoming 2 / Earth / Aitken

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Becoming Earth, Feat. Neil Aitken: Mapping Loss, Desire, and Place - Sunday, September 27th / 4-6pm / Free Zoom info: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85455519411 Meeting ID: 854 5551 9411 Please note this is a BIPOC only space. Thank you 🙏🏽 - Dust, ash, stone, and soil. Elemental and foundational. The earth is not only where we are, but also part of who we are. We are defined by our ties to the land, as well as how the land shapes us. We carry as well the memories of lands we've left behind. Land that only exists in memory. Language grows out of this fraught relationship with external and internal spaces. In this generative workshop, we will take inspiration from the language of plate tectonics, geological formations, natural paths,…

Free

Belly of the World: a Creative Writing & Critical Discussion Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

IPRC Creative Workshops for Fall 2020 will be held online via zoom, PST. Belly of the World is a writing and discussion-based journaling workshop that deals in writing a biomythography of queer and trans living in both relation and entangled non-relation to the external world. We will hold group workshops on what it means for queer and trans bodies to be “in the world, and not of it” through our crafting of personal poems and reimagining of our own narratives and scripts. This workshop is designed for black, brown and indigenous women, femmes and trans folks. Instructor: loose cornrows Sundays 6-8pm PST: Sept. 20th & 27th, Oct. 4th & 11th Class capacity: 15 Class meetings: 4 Cost: $50 *3 spots available at sliding scale, BIPOC…

$50

An Appointment with Emily and Your Chair: Free Writing Session

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writing, even on a good day, is hard. So how do we do it on the not-good days, on the days when it feels like the world is upside-down? “Butt in chair” is the simple answer. We make ourselves sit down, and we don’t get up until we’ve gotten a few sentences down at the very least. But sometimes it feels impossible to even get to the chair. We’d honestly rather throw the chair out the window than sit in it. But what if we made an appointment with the chair? And we knew that other interesting people were doing it too, at the exact same time? This free Zoom meeting is that appointment. We’ll say hello, and then we’ll work from a writing prompt.…

Free

Write Around Portland: Bi-Weekly Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writing is often thought of as something done in isolation; we know there is immense power when writing is done in community. Join us for 90 minutes of creativity and community-building, with generative writing exercises, sharing and strengths-based feedback. Our workshop model, refined over 21 years, is proven for people of all writing levels: from the budding writer to the published author. Workshops are held via Zoom. Weekly registration opens Mondays at noon and closes one hour before the workshop. Click here for more info. Wednesdays from 4 to 5:30 pm Sliding Scale Registration $5-$30. Register here. $0 registration available for past Write Around Portland participants at a social service agency and people experiencing financial hardship due to the coronavirus. Register here. Thursdays from 11 am to…

$5 – $30

Write Around Portland: Bi-Weekly Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writing is often thought of as something done in isolation; we know there is immense power when writing is done in community. Join us for 90 minutes of creativity and community-building, with generative writing exercises, sharing and strengths-based feedback. Our workshop model, refined over 21 years, is proven for people of all writing levels: from the budding writer to the published author. Workshops are held via Zoom. Weekly registration opens Mondays at noon and closes one hour before the workshop. Click here for more info. Wednesdays from 4 to 5:30 pm Sliding Scale Registration $5-$30. Register here. $0 registration available for past Write Around Portland participants at a social service agency and people experiencing financial hardship due to the coronavirus. Register here. Thursdays from 11 am to…

$5 – $30

October Fishtrap Fireside

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Fishtrap Fireside goes virtual as it returns for its 8th season featuring readings from Wallowa County writers on Friday, October 2nd. This season kicks off with work from Mary Emerick, Cameron Scott, and Fishtrap founder, Rich Wandschneider. Thank you to this month’s sponsor, Copper Creek Mercantile in Joseph, Oregon. Feed the Fish! You can support Fishtrap at by making a donation of any amount at: https://fishtrap.org/donationform-2018/

Free

FALL Online: Creating a Writer’s Notebook: Artifact and Mulch w Wendy Willis

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this two-day workshop, we will explore the practice of creating and sustaining a writer's notebook. On the first day, we will begin to use a notebook to catch the wisps of our days and uncover the musings of the deep imagination.  Two weeks later, we will come together to discover how the raw material in the notebook can be transformed into finished pieces of writing. Register for this workshop NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering our workshops via Zoom. All students must first sign up for a free Zoom account. Setting it up is easy. And we can help you with questions, if needed. For each class, you'll receive a Zoom "invitation," from the instructor. Click the link...follow the simple directions about the settings…

$155 – $175

Looking Back to Look Forward: A Daily Writing Practice

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This class will help you adopt crucial creative habits using your memory of the past to build a practice for the future. Using a series of daily in-class and at-home prompts that focus on ideas of home, trek childhood, and position memory as present, you will generate new work and use research-based ways to bring a sustainable practice into your life. Everyone will have opportunities to give and receive generous feedback on the development of your practice, as well as on your writing. We will pay particular attention to the voice and structure of new work and engage with the common themes that arise out of these prompts: the grief of all families, the complicated solipsism of children, and the way language gives new meaning…

$240

Writing Along the Seam

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Consider the sphinx: head of a woman, haunches of a lion, wings of a bird. A creature powerful and wise enough to guard the seam between the sacred and the secular, life and afterlife. Hybrid forms of writing possess a similar power, harnessing two or more established forms to create something new, unique, and potent. When we reunite these forms, we welcome new, transformative forces into our work. In this course, we will consider various hybrid literary forms: lyric essay, poetic memoir, prose poetry, flash fiction, and visual/verbal hybrids. We’ll consider the unique powers of each of these forms and see what they can offer our writing. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We…

$190