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!

Write Around Portland: Bi-Monthly BIPOC Online Writing Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

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. (No workshop 12/25.) Workshops are held via Zoom. Pre-registration is required. Registration opens the 1st of the month every month. Pre-register for our 2nd Friday workshop here. Pre-register for our 4th Friday workshop here. Click here for more workshop details.

Free

Attic Institute: SPRING Online: Art of Personal Essay and Memoir w Lee Montgomery

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Personal Essays and memoir represent some of the most adventurous writing today. Pushing narrative boundaries, utilizing traditional and nontraditional forms, this type of writing explores individuality and the minutiae of life unlike any other form. This workshop will help students explore the world of memoir and personal essay writing and understand both traditional and nontraditional narrative strategies available to them. Though the class will be run as a classic workshop, where students will submit their work to be reviewed in class, it will also combine craft lectures, outside reading, and in-class exercises. Students are expected to workshop twice. This will include their original essay submitted to class plus a revision. | Maximum: 12 writers Register for this workshop NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering…

$538 – $569

VIRTUAL Risograph Basics with Outlet!

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Welcome to our Risograph Basics course: a printing, collage, experimentation, and mark making extravaganza! Get to know Outlet and our RISO sisters (Barbara, Janet, Corita, and Tina) and learn the basics of this fun and unique print method with Kate Bingaman-Burt! This workshop is a great place to start if you’re new to riso, or if you’d like a refresher! We’ll take a deep dive into risograph history, an overview of how these machines work, the stencil-duplicator process, and the quirks and fun (sometimes unpredictable) outcomes of riso printing. The main focus of this class is EXPERIMENTATION. We’ll share print and zine inspiration, favorite mark making tools and how to use them for riso, and we’ll walk through a print demo on two of our…

$15 – $100

Attic Institute: SPRING Online: Story Building Workshop w Joanna Rose

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.…

$430 – $458

Contents Under Pressure: Using Constraints to Stretch Your Creativity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

for BIPOC writers only Putting constraints on our writing can feel like a challenge, but sometimes a little pressure is what’s needed to push our writing in a new direction or to find language for what seems unsayable. We’ll draw on Oulipian constraints like the lipogram and the Beatiful Outlaw, as well as visual constraints such as erasures and collage, to radically depart from our typical writing habits. We’ll also invent our own extreme constraints to discover what happens when we challenge ourselves to write our way out of seemingly impossible restrictions. 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…

$240

Attic Institute: SPRING Online: Introduction to Flash Nonfiction w Brian Benson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Flash nonfiction, simply put, is true-to-life writing defined by extreme compression: it's saying what you've got to say using as few words, and as much beauty, as possible. An endlessly accessible, playful, potent form, flash nonfiction is evermore popular; from Brevity to Barren, The Forge to The Sun, legions of journals are eager to publish great flash. In this prompt-driven workshop, we'll read short nonfiction by master writers, including Ross Gay, Natalie Lima, Ira Sukrungruang, Roxane Gay, Jerald Walker, Ruth Ozeki, and many more; we'll talk about what stories are suited for flash, how to tell them well, and where to publish them; and most of all, we'll write, and write, and write, via in-class exercises and take-home prompts. Students will leave the class with reams of new writing and ideas for where to publish. Register for…

$215 – $242

Attic Institute: SPRING Online: Prompts with Whitney Workshop w Whitney Otto

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Eight weeks of writing and reading. Try your hand at characterization, dialogue, plot, finding the telling detail, playing with points of view. Develop a “writing practice” while generating ideas for short stories, memoirs, even novels. 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 for your microphone and in-computer video, and you're immediately in the "room" for the workshop. For critique workshops, instructors will communicate with students about the process of sharing work. For more generative workshops, students…

$344 – $367

Attic Institute: SPRING Online: The Future: a Generative Fiction Workshop with Elinam Agbo

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In the Netflix anthology series Love, Death, and Robots, the future takes many forms. Cats survive the apocalypse while humans are extinct. Farmers fight an endless battle. Sentient yogurt takes over the world. Many of these episodes are adapted from short stories, writers envisioning a range of possibilities, given what they know of the past and the present. So, how do we imagine the future when the present feels like dystopia? What remains the same in a world of endless innovation? What has the potential to change? In this generative workshop, we will explore the future through weekly writing exercises. And through the work of writers like Rivers Solomon, George Saunders, NK Jemisin, John Scalzi, and Octavia Butler, we will examine the many paths humanity can…

$215 – $242

The Writers’ Gymnasium: The Writing Workout

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

How can we build a better writing practice? This prompt-driven generative workshop will give writers an opportunity to flex their literary muscles. Classes will provide an intimate, structured, and supportive time to broaden basic and complex writing skills. Through a series of experimental and innovative exercises we will explore the concepts of character, setting, plot and scene, as well as voice, form, and technique. Close attention will be paid to literary and poetic devices as we take a deep dive into the craft of prose writing. Supportive in-workshop sharing and feedback will be an integral part of the process. All genres welcome. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure…

$285

April 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, and writer who strives to lead through a love ethic and believes in the power of stories to change hearts and minds. Her writing has been published in the Oregonian, The Learning Network of the New York Times, and Beacon Magazine. Currently, she is working on a speculative future novel exploring intergenerational experiences of survival…

$15