LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.

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The Break with Kaveh Akbar

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In partnership with Alano Club of Portland, “The Break is a monthly virtual gathering of writers and artists lead by Kaveh Akbar, celebrating amongness, collaboration, and interdisciplinary creative experimentation. Though many of the activities and discussions orbit or are inflected by recovery themes (Akbar has been in active recovery for eight years), participants are not required to self-identify as being in recovery to participate.” Register at: https://www.portlandalano.org/the-break Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar is a poet, teacher and the poetry editor for The Nation. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Paris Review, Poetry, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. His newest book, Pilgrim Bell, was published by Graywolf in 2021; he is also the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James,…

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Free

Writing Dynamic Dialogue

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Dialogue is like music: on the page it may look great, but what it’s like when you hear it aloud? This workshop will examine what dialogue does, how to write it – and when to use it. We’ll practice shaping and creating dialogues we can share. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves 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 and Delve tuitions at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available. Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you have…

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$55

Calligraphy

IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center) 318 SE Main Street #175, Portland, OR, United States

*This workshop meets in-person. Masks & Proof of Vaccination + Booster required Register here Experienced and beginner scribes are welcome to join this 6-week class with instruction and quiet practice of 3 different calligraphic hands. Learn to use the edged pen, an edged brush, rule your paper, and study Uncial, Roman Capitals, and Italic. Instructor: Jade Novarino Sundays 10am—12pm November 6—December 18, with a break on November 27 Class Meetings: 6 Capacity: 10 $60-135 *2 no-cost spots available; BIPOC & 2S prioritized About the Instructor: Jade Novarino is an artist, farmer, pen-pal, and scribe.

$60 – $135

Fall | Sustaining a Writer’s Notebook: A Yearlong Practice w Wendy Willis | Dec 2022 – Dec 2023 | Online

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In this year-long class, we will explore the practice of creating and sustaining a writer’s notebook. Using prompts both in class and between sessions, each participant will develop and strengthen a notebook practice that works for them.  We'll use notebooks to catch the wisps of our lives and our wildest ideas. We will read excerpts of writers' and  other artists' notebooks and consider how a notebook is both an artifact in and of itself and mulch for other art--poem, novel, memoir, essay, painting, pasta sauce. At the end of the year, we'll  have a reading and an opportunity to display pages from our notebooks. Primer Session: December 10, 2022, 9am - 2pm Pacific Time. / 2023 Sessions: First Saturday of every month, 9am -12pm Pacific Time . . .…

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$899 – $914

Submission Party

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

Bring a story, essay, nonfiction, hybrid piece – anything you feels is ready to submit. We’ll review how submission works, how to research the literary magazines that might be a good fit for your work, and then, we’ll submit! Liaison position Every in-person class and seminar at Literary Arts has one liaison position. Liaisons perform specific duties for each class meeting. If you are a liaison for a class or seminar, the full amount of your tuition is covered by Literary Arts. Apply here for the liaison position. In-Person Class Note: This class meets in-person at Literary Arts, 925 SW Washington. Literary Arts will require proof of full COVID-19 vaccination, or a negative test result (within 72 hours) from a healthcare provider, for entry into…

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$35

Writing With Constraints

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham on a bet—that he couldn’t write an entire book using only 50 words. Here’s another dare: Write about a trek through the desert without using the words “sand,” “cactus,” “water,” “sun,” and “heat.” In this generative workshop, we’ll look at examples by writers, then engage with inventive writing exercises, freeing our own imaginations. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves 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 and Delve tuition at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classes have at least one access spot…

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$75

Delve Readers Seminar: Vanity Fair

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

Vanity Fair (“A Novel without a Hero”), by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848), belongs on the same shelf with other towering novels of the Victorian age: Bleak House, Middlemarch, Jane Eyre, and The Way We Live Now. Its protagonist, Becky Sharp, is one of the most tantalizing, bewitching, infuriating, charming, scheming, and amoral characters in all of literature, and as we watch Becky negotiate poverty, war, marriage, and scandal, the reader constantly wonders: do I like her? Should I like her? Is she evil, or just practical? And what won’t she do to survive? In this five-week Delve, we will explore Thackeray’s brittle, cynical, and witty masterpiece of social manners, and see how the pressures of class, money, and Empire shape the lives of ordinary people…

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$210

Cultivating a Sustainable Writing Practice

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Cultivating a Sustainable Writing Practice Instructor: Alissa Hattman This workshop is offered via Zoom PST Register here Class Meetings: 1 Saturday, Jan. 7th; 1-4pm $15 – $75 sliding scale *6 no-cost spots available; BIPOC & 2S prioritized Our practice—how we labor as writers—is highly personal. When we create a writing habit, it helps to consider our individual creative processes, life priorities, writing goals, and all the ways that we get in the way of our own writing. How we labor is also bound up in cultural notions of productivity and success that can often kill the creative drive. It can be hard to consistently carve out time in order to cultivate the type of patient, inner stillness required to write, but it is possible. Necessary,…

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$15 – $75

Six Month Short Story Intensive

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This class is for experienced writers who are dedicated to starting the first draft of a story collection over the course of six months. Participants should have experience writing stories and familiarity with the elements of literary short fiction including scene, character, conflict, place, and revision. We will study individual stories by authors, read craft essays, and discuss several published collections and how the stories unite to form a book. Access Program We want our 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 class registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classes have at…

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$1,100

Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms This workshop is virtual, PST Register here Pushpins & Portals: Experimenting with Short Forms In this 6-week class, we will experiment with short form creative writing. Our focus—whether it’s flash fiction, lyric essay, prose poetry, or hybrid—will be on the art of compression. Each week, participants will be given a writing exercise, a short reading, and two workshop submissions from their peers. Class time will include workshop as well as discussion of readings and craft. Our workshop will be guided by observations, questions, and possibilities. We will be thinking less about how to “fix” a piece of writing and more about what we see, our curiosities, and how to recognize hidden opportunities. Each participant will receive feedback from…

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$80 – $200
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