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!

Events Search and Views Navigation

Event Views Navigation

Today

Attic Institute: FALL Online Campus: Writing the Autobiographical Novel Workshop w Karen Karbo

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Nothing is more intriguing than the idea of telling your true-life story – until the moment you realize you have a terrible memory, there are some pesky facts that are both inconvenient and unavoidable, and your spouse (who has a terrific memory) promised to kill you in your sleep if you ever wrote about them. Enter the autobiographical novel, a timeless genre that is based on the truth but not bound by it. The AN can be a faithful recounting of an event in your life, or a loosely related tossed salad of facts seasoned with fantasy. There’s a reason why everyone from Charles Dickens to Maya Angelou has written one. Through in-class prompts and take-home assignments, this 8-week course will help students conceive, structure and begin an autobiographical novel. Participants…

Continue readingAttic Institute: FALL Online Campus: Writing the Autobiographical Novel Workshop w Karen Karbo
$344 – $370

Portland Storytellers’ Guild: Storytelling 101

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A virtual workshop on Zoom For aspiring, beginning and intermediate tellers Hone your craft! Shape and practice your story! Are you working on a short story to share with family, to tell at the Moth or a story swap, or to another audience? Would you like to polish a story to submit to the Guild Selection Committee in hopes of appearing in the Guild Storython, where many tellers share 5 minute stories? (The Storython is a prerequisite for new tellers to be considered for a PSG main stage show.) Join us in the workshop with a 5-6 minute story that you wish to prepare for presentation. Please check the story timing before the workshop. Aim for 5 minutes. Stories should be spoken rather than read.…

Continue readingPortland Storytellers’ Guild: Storytelling 101
$25

2021 Tin House Virtual Craft Intensive: Seeding a Speculative World, with Dominica Phetteplace

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This class will explore the joys of creating a world that departs from our agreed-upon reality in significant ways. Science-fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism and other genres have exciting storytelling potential arising from the way characters interact with their surroundings. This class will focus on character and world building exercises that set up narratives with depth and momentum. Tin House is proud to announce our latest virtual Craft Intensives Series. A series of 3-hour-long masterclasses lead by  Tin House Residents and Tin House Books Authors, these Intensives combine close reading, discussion, and in-class writing to offer a potent dose of inspiration and explore what makes writing work when it works. Join us! Applying Admissions are rolling—first come, first served—and will fill fast! You do not…

Continue reading2021 Tin House Virtual Craft Intensive: Seeding a Speculative World, with Dominica Phetteplace
$75

2021 Tin House Virtual Craft Intensive: Character in Scene, with Kim Fu

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

*Saturday is sold out, join waitlist by emailing workshop@gmail.com or purchase Sunday below* The best fictional characters, like real people, can seldom be boiled down to a simple list of traits and adjectives. They exist in communities and relationships, are borne from and generate conflict, and are inseparable from the story being told. They might draw from the writer’s personal knowledge and experiences, while blossoming into someone wholly different and new. Who they are dictates what they do, but what they do also tells us who they are. In this class, we will practice building story and character in tandem, and writing key scenes that reveal a character to the reader—and to the writer. Participants will leave with new writing: new ways to understand and…

Continue reading2021 Tin House Virtual Craft Intensive: Character in Scene, with Kim Fu
$75

The Trauma-Informed Creative Writing Classroom

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The creative writing classroom is not an explicitly healing space—yet writers regularly bring their stories of trauma into workshops. What are our obligations to these students as instructors? What are the best practices for managing workshop discussions about potentially triggering material? In this 6-hour intensive, learn when writing heals and harms, discuss syllabus disclaimers and content warnings, identify craft issues common to trauma writing, consider how feedback lands in an activated nervous system, and assess your own self-regulation skills. This class is limited to 15 students. October 23 and 24, 2021 Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (two sessions) Online via Zoom Katherine Standefer Katherine Standefer is the author of Lightning Flowers: My Journey To Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life, which…

Continue readingThe Trauma-Informed Creative Writing Classroom
$145

Zine Making @ Outlet!

Outlet 2500 Northeast Sandy Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

It’s zine making time! Dive into all things zine with Outlet and zine queen Kate Bingaman-Burt! In this IN PERSON(!) workshop we’ll explore zine history, types of zines, talk about where to find zines, how to share them, and experiment with different zine formats (including the versatile and ubiquitous one page zine)—also we’ll spend some time actually sort of DEFINING what a zine is for those who are new to this amazing medium for sharing ideas and knowledge! Kate will give tons of prompts, tips, and inspiration to take those ideas and turn them into a tangible lovely THING. This class culminates in making a collaborative zine that is riso printed and mailed to you! Supplies Needed You don't need to bring a thing except yourself! We provide…

Continue readingZine Making @ Outlet!
$50 – $75

Portland Storytellers’ Guild: Guild EXTRA Show

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Long time Guild member Ken Iverson shares many of his favorite Halloween stories. The program will include original stories as well as ones he's collected over 40 years of story telling. "Make some popcorn, get a favorite drink, turn the lights down and settle in. We'll have fun! These stories will help you laugh your way through the darkness." Ken Iverson has brought stories to life for audiences for over 35 years. He loves how a story can bring people together. He tells original stories and traditional and contemporary folktales and myths from around the world for all ages. Ken believes that the old adage “laughter is the best medicine is close to true. “It's not the only medicine,” he says, “but it is certainly…

Continue readingPortland Storytellers’ Guild: Guild EXTRA Show
$10

Submission Deadline: Tin House 2022 Winter Workshop

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Applications Open: October 4th With ongoing concerns about the increase in Covid numbers and our ability to safely gather indoors, we have decided to hold our 2022 Winter Workshop online again. 2021 Winter Scholars: A. Meinen, Angelique Stevens, Christopher James Llego, Jeanetta Craigwell-Graham, Kimberly Reyes, Krys Malcolm Belc, Luke Dani Blue, Lydia Abedeen, Marissa Davis, Marlanda Dekine-Sapient Soul, Michaeljulius Y. Idani, Naphisa Senanarong, Reena Shah, Sabrina Imbler, Tatiana Johnson-Boria, Vincent Chavez

$600

2021 Tin House Virtual Craft Intensive: Character in Scene, with Kim Fu

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

*Saturday is sold out, join waitlist by emailing workshop@gmail.com or purchase Sunday below* The best fictional characters, like real people, can seldom be boiled down to a simple list of traits and adjectives. They exist in communities and relationships, are borne from and generate conflict, and are inseparable from the story being told. They might draw from the writer’s personal knowledge and experiences, while blossoming into someone wholly different and new. Who they are dictates what they do, but what they do also tells us who they are. In this class, we will practice building story and character in tandem, and writing key scenes that reveal a character to the reader—and to the writer. Participants will leave with new writing: new ways to understand and…

Continue reading2021 Tin House Virtual Craft Intensive: Character in Scene, with Kim Fu
$75

Pre-Show Author Talk & Book Signing with Emilly Prado

Portland Center Stage 128 NW 11th Avenue, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for a special pre-show author talk and book signing with Chicana writer Emilly Prado, author of Funeral For Flaca. She will read a brief excerpt from the book that retraces her experience coming of age as a prep-turned-chola-turned-punk in this collection that is one-part memoir-in-essays, and one-part playlist, zigzagging across genres and decades, much like the rapidly changing and varied tastes of her youth. For anyone that purchases a copy of the book at the event, Emilly will stay after and sign them for the guests in attendance. All guests who attend events or gatherings at The Armory must provide documentation that they have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19 by the date of their visit. If you are unable to be vaccinated, you may provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken…

Continue readingPre-Show Author Talk & Book Signing with Emilly Prado
Free
Click a category label below to view the calendar with only events in that specific category.