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!

jay dodd, The Black Condition, Live!

PICA 15 NE Hancock St, Portland, OR, United States

From PICA's website: Portland-based curatorial initiative Nat Turner Project presents The Black Condition, Live!, the materializing of a multimedia lyric essay by Los Angeles-based artist jayy dodd. This audio-visual performance retells an account of fetishization, technology & obsession. Spectators, acclimate at your own risk.

Free

Fall 2019: Grief and the Lyric Essay

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

It can be a challenge to access grief, not to mention represent it in word and forms, yet writers like Claudia Rankine, Ann Carson, and Maggie Nelson pull it off beautifully and in wildly different ways. We will try different ways into the conversation with grief, first through reading other writers, then in our notebooks. Writing exercises will allow you to explore memory, specifically as it can be accessed through the body. You will leave with a solid start into a new piece of writing or a fresh take on an older draft. About the instructor:Wendy Noonan’s poetry has been featured in 2River View, Poor Claudia, Muzzle, Painted Bride, and Crazy Horse. Recently, her creative nonfiction was shortlisted for PRISM international’s writing contest. Wendy is…

$135

Exploring the Lyric Essay

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

A flexible, hybrid form, the lyric essay employs techniques from poetry, nonfiction, and fiction to create a single work. In this workshop, we’ll experiment with lyric essay techniques and structures, read a variety of examples that employ these techniques, and craft our own lyric essays on subjects of our choosing. You will also learn revision techniques you can implement as you continue to work with your pieces after the class has ended. Miranda Schmidt‘s work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Orion, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Collagist, and other journals. She has taught creative writing at the Loft, the University of Washington, and Portland Community College. Miranda grew up in the midwest and now lives in Portland. They are currently at work on a novel about haunting and a series of lyric…

$275

Grief and the Lyric Essay

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

For writers at all levels It can be a challenge to access grief, not to mention represent it in word and forms, yet writers like Claudia Rankine, Ann Carson, and Maggie Nelson pull it off beautifully and in wildly different ways. We will try different ways into the conversation with grief, first through reading other writers, then in our notebooks. Writing exercises will allow you to explore memory, specifically as it can be accessed through the body. You will leave with a solid start into a new piece of writing or a fresh take on an older draft. Saturday, February 22 from 10:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. Sunday, February 23 from 2:00–5:00 p.m. (two sessions) CLASS LIAISONS: All classes have one liaison position. Liaisons receive free tuition in…

$135

Spring 2020 ONLINE: The Lyric Essay: Braiding the World

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This class will take place online. Instructions for how to access the class online through Zoom will be sent to participants. The lyric essay is a form which allows many small fragments to be drawn together to create a whole. A lyric essay might hold memories, research, a bit of poetry; it celebrates mixing genres. In this workshop, we will write a series of fragments, and then stitch them together into short essays. Call it a collage, a mosaic or a quilt; you will leave the workshop with a sense of how small pieces of writing can grow into essays. Perrin Kerns served as the Director of Writing at Marylhurst University for 15 years. She currently teaches literature and creative nonfiction for Prescott College and…

$135