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

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Open Submissions: Old Pal – Issue 6

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

📣 We're open to submissions for Old Pal Issue 6! Visit the link below for more details, and feel free to send any questions our way. We can't wait to see your work! Happy equinox! 🍂🖤 https://www.oldpalmag.com/submissions Old Pal is open for submissions until November 15th, 2022! Read the guidelines below, then send your submission to submissions@oldpalmag.com. Please use a .docx file type for writing, and high resolution images if you're submitting visual art. We publish poetry, fiction, critical non-fiction, excerpts, audio, mixed-media, and various mediums of art. We encourage artists from all experience levels and communities to submit. Contributors are compensated $50 upon publication. We ask that submissions are limited to 15 pages of written work or 6 pieces of other media. Simultaneous submissions…

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Free

Memoir: The Process — with Kimberly Dark — begins September, 22nd

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

STARTS: September 22nd, 2022 WHERE: Zoom WHEN: Four weekly 2-hour sessions over Zoom on Thursdays from 5-7PM PST (9/22, 9/29, 10/6, 10/13) TEACHER: Kimberly Dark COST: $350 (Payment plans always available—please contact Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com) SCHOLARSHIPS: Yes, scholarships are available. Please follow this link to apply. Memoir: The Process Memories aren’t enough. We have to connect them to culture, to history, to zeitgeist—and then be as clear and specific about our unique perspectives as possible. In this generative workshop, we’ll open a number of creative doorways (and windows and portholes and tunnels) into meaning and we’ll discuss how and why they work. We’re going to work on releasing the story without it getting caught in the mind first. We’ll work together in four, two-hour, face-to-face…

Continue readingMemoir: The Process — with Kimberly Dark — begins September, 22nd
$350

Creative Nonfiction III

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In creative nonfiction and memoir writing, the workshop can be particularly supportive and helpful as writers not only get practical help crafting their work from unbiased perspectives, they also share their stories with an encouraging audience who will notice and remark on thematic elements the writer might not have considered. In this class, we will deepen our practice with creative nonfiction forms by working with a new or established draft of a story or essay in a workshop setting. The teacher will provide revision exercises, publishing knowledge, and tips on how to run and maintain a writing workshop so the students can feel more confident facilitating their own. This course is designed for students who have taken Creative Nonfiction 1 and 2, but anyone can…

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$245

Liz Prato in Conversation with Aaron Gilbreath

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

We are thrilled to welcome back Liz Prato, in conversation with Aaron Gilbreath, to discuss her new book Kids in America: A Gen X Reckoning. In this revealing and provocative essay collection, Prato reveals a generation deeply affected by terrorism, racial inequality, rape culture, and mental illness, in an era when none of these issues were openly discussed. Part memoir, part journlistic exploration, Kids in America illuminates a generation often written off as cynical, sarcastic slackers, showing that its impact on culture and society is undeniable. Prato herself is a GenXer, growing up in Denver in the '70s and '80s, so the issues she explores here are issues of her generation, and a lot of the book is about coming to terms with things they…

Continue readingLiz Prato in Conversation with Aaron Gilbreath
Free

Submission Deadline: The Gravity of the Thing

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

We are open for submissions for our seasonal online issues during the months of March, June, September, and December. To submit your work, please visit this page during our open reading windows, or subscribe to our monthly newsletter to receive email updates. The Gravity of the Thing accepts defamiliarized works in the following general categories: Short: Tell us a story in 3,000 words or less; we are interested in fiction, creative nonfiction, self-contained excerpts, and genre-bending forms. Flash: A fiction, creative nonfiction, or genre-bending piece under 500 words. Poetry: Share up to three poems, prose poems, or multimedia works for a combined count of 500 words or less. Six Words: A poem or story in six words; you may share up to five stories per submission, but only one will be chosen. Baring the Device: Essays for our…

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Free

Delve Readers Seminar: Delve for Writers: Joan Didion and Durga Chew-Bose

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

Delve for Writers is a new, occasional Delve series that offers seminars that focus on close readings of narrative, form, and stylistic choices that writers can incorporate into their own writing practice. Creative nonfiction is the perfect place to find voice, ideas and perspective – and nobody does it better Joan Didion and contemporary groundbreaker Durga Chew-Bose, whose collection Too Much and Not the Mood is a wonderful mashup of what Didion has always done so well, mixing cultural criticism and memoir in think-pieces that inspire and challenge us. In this Delve for Writers, we’ll look carefully at the craft of what we’ve read with close readings of style, form, mechanics, and conceptual and narrative choices. This seminar will focus on what we can learn…

Continue readingDelve Readers Seminar: Delve for Writers: Joan Didion and Durga Chew-Bose
$245

If It’s Not One Thing It’s Your Mother: Preparing Nonfiction for Submission w/ Melissa Chadburn—begins October 4th

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

If It's Not One Thing It's Your Mother, Preparing Nonfiction for Submission with Melissa Chadburn The goal of this workshop is to help creative nonfiction writers prepare their work for submission in an inclusive, supportive environment. Classes include reading assignments where we will explore various essay structures, and some short in-class writing assignments to allow writers to discuss and engage other craft techniques. Each writer will workshop one essay, hybrid, or longform piece anywhere from 1200-4500 words, (already in progress). This generative lab is meant to be a supportive environment for writers to actualize the intentions for their piece. Lab Leader: Melissa Chadburn When: October 4th and runs for 4 weeks Where: Zoom and WetInk, our rich, interactive, online platform. Melissa will host a Zoom…

Continue readingIf It’s Not One Thing It’s Your Mother: Preparing Nonfiction for Submission w/ Melissa Chadburn—begins October 4th
$350

PUBLISHING: Literary Agent Rayhané Sanders—Seminar + Consultations—Oct 7th-9th

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

We have the great privilege of hosting Rayhané Sanders, literary agent at Massie and McQuilkin, for a 90-minute webinar on Publishing (with ample opportunity for Q&A) on Saturday October 8th, 2022, from 11:00AM to 12:30PM Pacific. Yes, Rayhané represents our very own Lidia Yuknavitch.) In addition to the seminar, Ms. Sanders is taking on twenty private manuscript consultations. Over the course of a 20-minute meeting, she will give you feedback from an agent’s point of view on the first 25 pages of your manuscript, submitted ahead of time. (Please note, Ms. Sanders comes from New York publishing, and is very encouraging but also very direct!) The deadline for submitting your 25 pages will be September 15th, and you’ll be provided with specific formatting guidelines. Consultations will…

Continue readingPUBLISHING: Literary Agent Rayhané Sanders—Seminar + Consultations—Oct 7th-9th
$150 – $375

Fall | Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Attention to Detail or “Of Thumbs” w Paige Thomas | Oct 11 – Nov 1 | In-Person

Attic Institute 4232 SE Hawthorne, Portland, OR, United States

Before being dubbed the inventor of the essay form, Michel de Montaigne was a grief-stricken man who locked himself away in a tower on his family’s manor on the French countryside where, for years, he labored over what would become his famous essays. In his solitude, he wrote a series of meditations titled “Of _____” — “Of Smells," “Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes,” “Of Posting,” (letters, that is), “Of Sleep,” and "Of Thumbs" — that attempted the impossible task of defining and then exhausting his interest in individual objects or desires. Modern life does not mirror Montaigne’s privilege of time, space, and quietude, but part of his beloved legacy still rings true: the necessity of attention to detail—to singularity—and how dedication to understanding the specific can crack open…

Continue readingFall | Creative Nonfiction Workshop: Attention to Detail or “Of Thumbs” w Paige Thomas | Oct 11 – Nov 1 | In-Person
$175 – $197

Isaac Fitzgerald in Conversation With Lydia Kiesling

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

Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents’ lives — or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts (Bloomsbury), Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self. Fitzgerald’s memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make…

Continue readingIsaac Fitzgerald in Conversation With Lydia Kiesling
Free
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