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!

Experiments in Creativity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

If you allow them to, ideas for art and writing can come from absolutely anywhere. This creative generation class will put that theory to the test, through a series of experiments in creative problem-solving, spontaneous and chance-based play, and other exploratory prompts that challenge you to work outside your normal modes and investigate how the creative brain works. Prior to the start of this series of classes, each participant will receive a unique packet of random materials in the mail. In-class exercises and weekly assignments will ask you to work with these materials in various ways, including an opportunity to create collaboratively at a distance. You’ll also keep a weekly journal detailing your personal process and ideas about creativity. As support for this process, we…

$300

Delve Readers Seminar: “Real Women Have Bodies”: the grotesque in women writers’ short stories

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Genre-defying writers Carmen Maria Machado, Sayaka Murata and Bora Chung incorporate elements from fairy tales, horror and science fiction to give us lopsided but chillingly familiar scenes from our society. Whether in Machado’s rewriting of folklore in “The Husband Stitch”, Murata’s imaginings of a world where we eat dead people in “Life Ceremony”, or Chung’s nightmarish rendering of a body made of a woman’s excrement in “The Head”, these stories don’t shy away from body horror, rather choosing to dive right into the messy as well as the sometimes disgusting realities of being a human, and woman, in our world. Texts (selected stories) Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung Access Program We…

$160

Writing the Autofiction Novella: twelve week intensive

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Autofiction is a unique genre (or non-genre) that combines the autobiographical with the fictional. In this course, we will take a close look at the craft of autofiction. We will read novel excerpts, short stories and novellas. We will also look at craft essays on the form. The goal over the twelve weeks is to work on a draft of a novella (if not a full draft, then you will get a solid head start), which can be anywhere from 20K-40K words. This course will be generative. You will be expected to write and submit a substantial amount of prose per week (1500-2500 words). We will read about 25 pages of excerpts and craft essays each week and discuss them as a group. And there…

$595

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…

$80 – $200

Grief, Lyrically

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writers often use musical techniques to access states of consciousness we associate with grief. Lyrical writing prioritizes music, rhythm, and emotion over the narrative arc. The goal of this course is to find entry into writing through reading, conversation,and various prompts and exercises to catalyze memory and thinking. We will consider how writers crafting stories and poetry about grief use lyricism, discursiveness, fragmentation, and silence to embody writing content through form. Participants should be prepared to write a lot! Prompts and exercises will allow students to access various parts of memory. In a short period of time, we will get to know one another and provide a sounding board for our stories in a safe space. Access Program We want our classes to be accessible…

$155

Weekly Fiction Critique Group w Joanna Rose | Jan 28 – Apr 1| Online

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Learn to critique your own work and the work of others in non-judgmental, informative terms. Each week participants will share and discuss their stories, novels, or scenes. Together we’ll look at the many ways story happens on the page. We’ll identify how the various tools of showing and telling are being used, and to what effect. And we’ll learn to be there for each other. Maximum: 10 writers Register for this workshop Zoom link provided prior to start of workshop. Teacher: Joanna RoseTime: Saturdays, Jan 28 - Apr 1, 9:30am - 12:30pm Pacific Time, 10 weeksLocation: Online via ZoomTotal Fee: Discounted Early Registration is due seven (7) days prior to the start of the workshop. | Discounted Early Registration: $657 (cash/check); $680 (Paypal). | Tuition Registration: $672 (cash/check); 695…

$657 – $672

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 an Iranian-American poet and scholar, and the author of Pilgrim Bell, published by Graywolf Press; Calling a Wolf a Wolf, published by Alice James Books in the US and Penguin Books in the UK; and the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic, published by Sibling Rivalry Press. In 2014, he founded the poetry interview…

Free

Delve Readers Seminar: Language as resistance, words as collage: Don Mee Choi and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Though published many decades apart, these two texts share similarities both in their subject matter and their experimental qualities. Just as Dictee cannot be merely labeled as a memoir and DMZ Colony cannot be labeled purely as a poetry collection, both texts expand our understanding of genre by weaving together prose, poetry and photographs. Moreover, they “hold history accountable” by integrating historical events into the deeply personal, ranging from Japanese colonization of Korea to the Korean War. In doing so, these Korean American writers give voice to feelings and understandings that have often been silenced. By looking at these two texts in tandem, we will examine their use of language to resist power and silencing as well as how their experimental methods seek to give…

$160

Science Pub Portland: Comics & Women’s Liberation

Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) 1945 SE Water Avenue, Portland, OR, United States

Learn More & Get Tickets In 1977 a comic was launched with the tagline, “This female fights back!” We can’t disclose who the character is, but you would recognize her from her blue and red outfit and oversized fists. Indeed, this character punched her way past a cavalcade of villains, but did so while struggling not to gain weight and keeping her day job as a magazine editor. This character was identified as “This Woman, This Warrior” in the first issue of her solo series, and her story arc offers a complicated response to second-wave feminism in the mainstream media, particularly as she was written by male creators who, based on interviews and letter columns, seemed unfamiliar with key tenets of feminism and were more…

Free – $5

JJJJJerome Ellis

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The PSU Program in Creative Writing is pleased to host an remote event with writer and performer JJJJJerome Ellis. This event is cosponsored by the departments of Black Studies and Speech and Hearing at Portland State. JJJJJerome Ellis is an artist and stutterer from Tidewater, Virginia. His website is jjjjjerome.com. Please register for the event at https://pdx.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_At2scnYfRe-yhzt9f1SWHg.

Free