Literary Arts

Join The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for an evening of Hollywood nostalgia and holiday classics!

We’re thrilled to host local author Matt Mikalatos to celebrate his latest, Finding Wonderful: Hopeful Lessons from Jimmy Stewart and It’s a Wonderful Life.

About the book:

It’s a Wonderful Life impacted the lives of many, but no one got more from it than star Jimmy Stewart, who credited the film with giving his life new purpose post-World War II service. Learn the lessons on faith, community, kindness, and more from Stewart and the iconic film with this inspiring gift book.

Beloved star and one of Hollywood’s greatest actors, Stewart achieved fame, fortune, and acclaim—but found that none of it guaranteed happiness. Leaving it all behind to serve as a combat pilot in World War II, he returned home changed by loss and searching for meaning. But while filming the perennial Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life, Stewart learned how to heal and live with gratitude and grace with the help of friends, faith, and purpose. Drawing on his life and words, as well as iconic moments from It’s a Wonderful Life, this book explores how the actor who embodied decency on screen lived it off-screen, too.

Endorsed by the Stewart estate and featuring little-seen photos throughout, Finding Wonderful is a heartfelt series of essays that capture the virtues and values of a man who discovered that the secret to a wonderful life has nothing to do with fame—and everything to do with love, service, and simple goodness.

Journalism isn’t only for journalists. The practice involves skills that are useful to any and all writers across genres and levels of experience. At its core, reporting is the process of asking questions and seeking answers, which is something all writers do in one form or another. In addition to interviews, research is a valuable tool for any writer to deepen and expand their understanding of a chosen subject and fact-checking can heighten the rigor and truth of any work, even the most fantastical fiction.

As part of their training, journalists learn how to distill a story down to its core components, make it legible to a wide audience, and structure information to maximize impact. These are skills and practices that all writers can benefit from. Whether there’s a journalist character in your novel, a historical component to your memoir, a narrative aspect to your academic work, or a poem that provides a glimpse into an unknown world, this class will provide a basic understanding of journalism that any writer can apply to any project.

Course outcomes:
● Writers are introduced to the fundamentals of reporting, research, writing, editing and fact-checking
● Writers explore how to incorporate these skills into their writing practice
● Writers gain confidence applying these skills in their own projects, outside of the classroom

Class schedule:
Week 1: The Journalist Mindset—Week 1 provides an overarching introduction to the key concepts of journalism and how it can be applied to any writing project. Concepts include the “5 Ws + H” and newsworthiness.

Week 2: Reporting and Research—Students will learn interview techniques; discuss other ways to access information, like court documents, public records and archives; and review best practices for research, like relying on primary source documents and vetting journal articles.

Week 3: Writing & Structure—How to write and structure a basic news story, with a discussion of how those core principles (like the inverted pyramid) can apply to any writing project. It will also address how to approach writing a feature story, which requires using information to build scenes and character development.

Week 4: Ethics & Accuracy—How to fact-check and why it matters. Students will learn what goes into fact-checking and how to ensure that the information they have gathered is accurate. They will also learn core ethical principles of journalism, such as objectivity, independence, as well as how to handle attribution (on vs off the record) and how to handle sources requesting anonymity or who are not telling the truth.

Week 5: Organization and Pitching. In this session, students will get tips on how to keep all their reporting notes and material organized to help streamline the writing, editing and fact-checking process. The class will also cover the basics and best practices of pitching so students feel empowered to send their ideas out into the world.

Week 6: Workshop. The final class will be dedicated to discussing each student’s ideas and providing collective guidance and feedback. Whether it’s a question about a story’s angle or a full-fledged pitch, this session will be a forum for everyone to take their journalistic aspirations to the next level, incorporating what they’ve learned over the past five weeks.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Here is an opportunity to share or listen to one page of work in progress from talented writers from everywhere. Come with a single page of work and sign up to read – or come to listen and prepare to be inspired.

Our host is the one and only, Emme Lund. The featured reader for November is H.G. Dierdorff.

The Literary Arts Bookstore is pleased to welcome Kimberly Blaeser to celebrate her latest book Red Ants. Blaeser will be joined in conversation by Christopher Diaz.

About the book:

When the nation and culture you grew up in and love have been taken over by a war-waging fascist dictatorship, how do you come to understand the nature and causes of what has happened? Perhaps you can do this only after you fled for your life. How then would you look at the ruins left inside yourself? This was the situation faced by one of the most sophisticated and profound thinkers of the twentieth century, Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), when he found himself living in Los Angeles during World War II after escaping from Nazi Germany.

In this Delve we will study Adorno’s Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life—the amazing book he wrote between 1944 and 1949 to explore his feelings about the calamitous situation of a world facing despotism. We will read the entire book and focus on selected essays. The book is made up of 153 very short essays, ranging from 1-3 pages. The essays focus his philosophical genius on deeply observed and subtle aspects of ourselves that contribute to or resist the ways in which we are socialized that result in alienation, loss of will and agency, and unfulfillment. He explores consumer culture, the arts, and politics along with his recollections of the rise of fascism. Each essay is a deep and intricate knot of feelings and ideas, presented by a contemplative, perseverant, unblinking thinker of the highest order Although written in grief, Adorno always seeks hope by confronting, with maximum honesty and penetration, the deep roots of the problems human society faces. Minima Moralia is a monument to the sensitive study of culture and our psyches amidst disaster trauma. Adorno’s brilliant and strong style make this book a pleasure to think with. In this Delve we will read the entire book and focus on selected entries.

Text:
Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life<, Theodor Adorno, translator E. F. N. Jephcott (Verso)

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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 rating Small Things Like These 41st on its list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, the New York Times said: “Not a word is wasted in Keegan’s small, burnished gem of a novel, a sort of Dickensian miniature….”

This is an important novella in the vein of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, but with an ending that packs a different punch. At its center is a man torn between family, community, church, and one young woman in a terrible predicament. He must make a choice, and Keegan’s exquisite, concise writing reveals that agonizing choice. It’s a perfect story to ponder and discuss: What would you choose in his situation?

Keegan’s other work, “Foster,” is a long short story with a big impact. No word is wasted as Keegan tells the story of a young girl sent to live with another family when her own mother is fraught with problems of her own. Again, in the New York Times’s glowing review they say: “Keegan makes us complicit in what her characters want, setting us up for utter heartbreak when they don’t get it.”

Foster’s is already considered canonical and is taught as a required text for Comparative Literature in the curriculum for Ireland’s secondary schools.

Join us in this two-week exploration of these incredible short works by an Irish writer of spare prose and mmense talent.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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 rating Small Things Like These 41st on its list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, the New York Times said: “Not a word is wasted in Keegan’s small, burnished gem of a novel, a sort of Dickensian miniature….”

This is an important novella in the vein of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, but with an ending that packs a different punch. At its center is a man torn between family, community, church, and one young woman in a terrible predicament. He must make a choice, and Keegan’s exquisite, concise writing reveals that agonizing choice. It’s a perfect story to ponder and discuss: What would you choose in his situation?

Keegan’s other work, “Foster,” is a long short story with a big impact. No word is wasted as Keegan tells the story of a young girl sent to live with another family when her own mother is fraught with problems of her own. Again, in the New York Times’s glowing review they say: “Keegan makes us complicit in what her characters want, setting us up for utter heartbreak when they don’t get it.”

Foster’s is already considered canonical and is taught as a required text for Comparative Literature in the curriculum for Ireland’s secondary schools.

Join us in this two-week exploration of these incredible short works by an Irish writer of spare prose and mmense talent.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

The Literary Arts Bookstore is pleased to welcome Amanda Uhle to celebrate her memoir, Destroy This House.

About the book:

For fans of The Glass Castle and The Liars’ Club, a tender, heartbreaking, and hilarious memoir written with “unwavering affection” (ELLE) chronicling the challenges of growing up with a desperately scheming father, a mother plagued by an acute hoarding disorder, and parenting parents while seeking independence.

The Long family’s love was fierce, their lifestyle bizarre, and their deceptions countless. Once her parents were gone, Amanda Uhle realized she was closer to them than anyone else, yet she found herself utterly confounded by the lives they had led.

Amanda’s striving fashion designer mother and her charismatic wheeler-dealer father wove a complex life together that spanned ten different homes across five states over forty perplexing years. Throughout her childhood, as her mother’s hoarding disorder flourished and her father’s schemes crumbled, contradictions abounded. They bartered for dental surgery and drove their massive Lincoln Town Car to the food bank. When financial ruin struck, they abandoned their repossessed mansion for humble parish housing, and Amanda’s father became a preacher. They swung between being filthy rich and dirt poor, devious and virtuous, lonely and loved, fake and real.

In this “iconic, only-in-America fable of desperate Midwestern dreamers” (Dave Eggers, bestselling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), Amanda sets out to document her parents’ unbelievable exploits and her own hard-won escape into independence. With humor and tenderness, Uhle has crafted a heartfelt and utterly unique memoir, capturing the raucousness, pain, joy, and ultimately, the boundless love that exists between all parents and children.

Join us at The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe to hand-sew decorative plush to celebrate animals! Sew felt fish, cats, foxes, frogs, and more! ✨ Bring a friend! Make a friend! Grab a beverage, browse the books, and gather round to hand-sew some adorable little friends!

Traceable templates & embroidery stitch printouts provided. Self-guided & beginner-friendly. A SCRAP educator will be ready to assist newer sewists with hand-sewing basics!

This is a ticketed event. Drop-ins welcome. Get tickets here.

Come on down to the Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for our monthly write-in. This month’s theme is Ancestors!

This month’s specialty drink is called Grandma’s Favorite. This drink has all the comfort of a London fog with none of the caffeine. Notes of bergamot, lavender, and vanilla create comfort in a cup!

Stay up to date with the Literary Bookstore news! Sign up for our newsletter and get updates for upcoming write-ins.

About write-ins:
Write-ins are community gatherings where writers come together to share space, write, and make connections. Whether you’re here to hit word count or make a new friend, we’re here to support you!

Slamlandia is a poetry open mic and slam that meets every month at Literary Arts, on the third Thursday. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safe space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community.

Hosted by Julia Gaskill. November’s featured poet will be announced soon.

The Literary Arts Bookstore is pleased to welcome author Rebecca Handler to celebrate her new novel, In the Round. Handler will be joined in conversation by Selina Fillinger.

About the book:

Have you ever been dead certain that you’re being observed, that maybe your very existence is predicated on how others see you? A few minutes after she’s become convinced she’s the victim of a home invasion, In the Round’s brilliant and intimate narrator plunges us into a feminist Kafkaesque literary mystery that unfolds over the course of one weird—and dare we say, dramatic—night in San Francisco. Nothing is missing from her family’s home, but everything feels wrong. So begins a sleepless night of questioning, and a novel packed with the kind of astonishing twists that leave readers wondering: Is all the world a stage, after all? Over the course of the evening, theatrical elements creep in: a cast list, a prop list, an intermission.

At once an avant-garde thriller, a meditation on motherhood and mortality, a full-throated endorsement of gut-level intuition, and a tribute to the rapture of live theater in a post-pandemic world, In the Round is a lively, inventive, and completely singular story.

This monthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color.

Come listen to our featured readers, or sign up to share your work in our open mic. Readings will be followed by a short community discussion. Hosted by Kyle Yoshioka and Jessica Meza-Torres. The featured reader for November will be announced soon.

This event is open to everyone, but only people who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color will be invited to read. If you have any questions, please contact Jessica Meza-Torres at [email protected] or Kyle Yoshioka at [email protected].

Come on down to the Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe for our monthly write-in. This month’s theme is Little Women!

This month’s specialty drink is called March’s Mulled Wine. Sit back and enjoy a mulled wine or cranberry juice, and imagine you’re by the fireplace with the March family, while Beth plays piano and Jo tells you a story.

Stay up to date with the Literary Bookstore news! Sign up for our newsletter and get updates for upcoming write-ins.

About write-ins:
Write-ins are community gatherings where writers come together to share space, write, and make connections. Whether you’re here to hit word count or make a new friend, we’re here to support you!

Looking for a creative outlet or a vibrant community hub? Slamlandia offers a poetry open mic and slam at Literary Arts every month, typically on the third Thursday. It’s a fun, welcoming space for all of Portland’s literary communities, encouraging both new and experienced poets to share their work.

This December, you can join host Julia Gaskill and featured poet Jennifer Nicole. The event strives to be a safe place for poets to read their own verses, witness others’ performances, and participate in a supportive community. No cover. Drop in!

Some critics of British 19th century novels place Dickens’s final completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, alongside other great novels of that era: Middlemarch, by George Eliot; Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray; The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope; and Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.

This novel is darker, more brooding, than any of those. Rather than years or decades in his past to create a feeling of nostalgia, at the end of his 40th year as a published writer and most of the time the most famous and popular writer in the English language, Dickens turns his pen onto a satiric look London’s pursuit of Money and Society, and a bitter one at the state of the poor and those whose living are derived from the great and polluted River Thames, the powerful controlling symbol that unites many of the characters and plots in the novel.

In this six-week Delve we will discuss those issues, the novel’s place in Dickens’s development as an artist, and experience a novel filled with death, deceit, riverside dives, and disguises.

Texts:
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Note the Penguin Classics edition, with notes and introduction by Adrian Poole is the preferred edition for this seminar
(ISBN-13: 978-0-140-43497-2)

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Does what you write or how you write it change with the seasons? In these quarterly gatherings we’ll meet to be inspired by the turn of the world. From autumn leaves to springtime flowers, rain and snow and sun, we’ll consider nature’s shifts and how we can incorporate them into our writing practice. We’ll also reflect on the impact of climate change on our seasonal rhythms and on our writing. Through brief readings, writing prompts, and generative exercises, we’ll welcome in and attune our writing to the time of year.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Kazu is dead. But that doesn’t stop him from reliving his life and his choices in a vulnerable, moving voice, through memories shaped by experience, regret, and ultimate loss.

When Yu Miri’s Tokyo Ueno Station, translated by Morgan Giles, won the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature, the judges described the novel as “an observation of Japan at the gateway of its capital, at multiple thresholds of shifting eras, told in the bardo of a mourning father and compatriot, reciting his surroundings and circumstances as if a prayer, a mantra.”

In this Delve Seminar, we’ll take the path suggested by the prize judges, treating the text as a model and starting point to “recite our surroundings and circumstances.” Through journaling and discussion, we’ll work our way toward a greater understanding of the novel’s view on contemporary Japan, and the fractured structure Yu employs to explore one man’s memories. Over the course of our time together, we’ll gain insights into our own places, decisions, losses, and joys, reading and journaling toward a finer understanding of life’s fragility and resilience.

This seminar will meet four times. Participants should expect 40-50 pages of reading per week and are invited to journal in response to Kazu, his choices, and the novel’s depiction of place. In addition, our discussions will be punctuated by guided reflections.

Text
Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri

Reading Schedule
Week 1
Read pages 1-36. Considering fragmentation, refrain, and the weight of accumulated memories.

Week 2
Read pages 36-82. Considering grief, ritual, responsibility, expectations, and the social/cultural roles we play.

Weekn 3
Read pages 82-136. Considering landscape, history, and the personal inheritances from both; also, re-considering the fragmentation of memory.

Week 4
Read pages 136-180. Considering choice, sacrifice, confession, and how fractured memories come together to form a singular portrait.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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 this four week Delve, we’ll revisit four iconic works of middle grade fiction—Island of the Blue Dolphins, Hatchet, Julie of the Wolves, and Jacob Have I Loved. We will come to these books as adults with new questions. Part of our exploration will be the books’ covers: how they changed across decades, how marketing shaped their reception, and how visual design influenced the way young readers approached them. Throughout the course, we will weave between how the books existed in their time and what they have to offer us now.

We remember the class sets of these books or a well-used copy found in the room of an older sibling. Now, decades later, these stories can offer us something new. They become artifacts of our own reading histories that can provide comfort in stressful times, as well as teach us new things about gender and why certain books get canonized for children. If these books are new, we will also have time to discuss the books you do remember and how different educational experiences shape the titles children are exposed to in formative reading years.

Week 1: Island of the Blue Dolphins: The Complete Reader’s Edition by Scott O’Dell. Edited by Sara Schwebel. University of California Press: 2016. We will be using the annotated version of the text.

Week 2: Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers: 2006.

Week 3: Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George: Harper Collins: 1997.

Week 4: Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson. Harper Collins: 1990.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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 Beautiful Is the World, David Biespiel spans three decades of lyric intensity, tracing the intimate cartography of memory, place, and inheritance. These poems move between the Pacific Northwest’s rain-soaked landscapes and the haunted reaches of Jewish ancestry, between the urgent present and history’s long shadows.

David will be joined in conversation with Director of Programs for Writers Susan Moore.

In this generative writing class, we’ll tackle writing from all sorts of different creative angles. We’ll incorporate doodling, collaging, reading, post-it-noting, flash carding, and all sorts of different forms of fun ways to edit, write, and explore a story. Throughout the class we will also pay attention to short-story fundamentals, including character, setting, plot and conflict.

Over the course of eight weeks, you’ll work to complete a rough draft of a short story, with weekly check-ins to keep you on track. There will be some in-class discussion and feedback for your writing, but there will not be a traditional, dedicated workshop component to the class.

This class is for all writing ability levels.

Class outcomes:
Explore different ways to generate and explore a story
Develop a complete rough draft of a short story

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

If you’re looking to become known for an idea and respected for your expertise – it’s time to write your nonfiction book.
You already have something to say. You’ve said it in rooms, in conversations, in work that has changed people. But the book? That feels like a different thing entirely – bigger, more elusive, somehow always not quite the right time.

This six-week intensive is for the writer who has lived their subject matter. The expert, the advocate, the practitioner, the person who has earned their perspective and is ready to shape it into something that lasts. Each session combines direct instruction with hands-on writing practice, guided research, breakout group work, and mastermind-style coaching — so students leave every class with something made, not just something learned. A craft thread runs through every session: every workshop produces actual writing, not just planning documents.

Who this class is for:
Nonfiction writers at any stage and any publishing path — whether you have a full draft, a half-formed concept, or simply the deep certainty that there is a book inside you. No prior publishing experience required. Especially well-suited to practitioners, educators, advocates, and entrepreneurs who want to translate their expertise into a book.

Class Schedule:

Week 1: Why this book, why you, why now.
Types of nonfiction and publishing paths overview. The identity question: who gets to write a book, and why that question is worth examining before you write a word.
Workshop: draft your three whys and write the first version of your “why you” paragraph — the one that answers why you are the only person who can write this book.

Week 2: Prove there’s a reader.
Market analysis, comp analysis, finding the gap your book fills. How to read a comp not just as a sales tool but as a craft model.
Workshop: guided research session, comp identification, group share-out. Each student writes one paragraph of market analysis for their own book.

Week 3: Build the architecture.
Book structure — chronological, topical, problem-solution. The difference between a book idea and a book argument. Finding your hook.
Workshop: draft a chapter framework and write your opening hook — the first sentence or paragraph that earns the reader’s attention.
Breakout groups workshop each other’s hooks and structures. Optional guest author perspective on structure.

Week 4: Your voice on the page.
What makes nonfiction writing compelling rather than merely informational. Voice, specificity, the role of personal story even in prescriptive work. How to write toward your reader without losing yourself.
Workshop: generative writing exercise — each student writes a scene, anecdote, or opening that demonstrates their voice. Mastermind-style coaching on what’s working and where to push further.

Week 5: Your author identity and platform.
Who you are before the book comes out matters as much as who you are after. Platform audit — what you already have, what you need, how to build now. PR angles, community strategy, the difference between an audience and a platform. Publishing paths in depth and how early decisions shape later options.
Workshop: draft your author bio. Mastermind-style coaching on individual platform gaps and publishing path decisions.

Week 6: Showcase and next steps.
Each student presents their concept to the group: their why, their reader, their structure, their hook, their voice. Structured peer feedback. Optional guest — a working author, publisher, or agent.
Every student leaves with a written concept overview, a comp list, a structural framework, a voice sample, and an author bio draft.
Students pursuing traditional publishing leave with the bones of a proposal. Students going indie leave with a positioning and launch strategy.

Goals and Outcomes:

• A clearly defined book concept with working title and core argument
• A comp list and market analysis paragraph
• A chapter-by-chapter structural framework
• A written opening hook and voice sample
• A drafted author bio
• A clear publishing path and next steps, whether traditional, hybrid, or independent
• A peer community of nonfiction writers to carry the work forward

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Named in a late-spring 2026 Guardian poll as the greatest novel of all time, “as chosen by authors, critics and academics worldwide,” George Eliot’s Middlemarch was also recently described by a Delve participant as her mother’s favorite book. This eight-week opportunity to read Middlemarch, Eliot’s masterpiece of 19th-century provincial English lives, will encourage engagement across whatever distinctions we use to label or group us as readers. After all, as the Guardian concludes about the novel, “[A]ll human life is here.” We’ll find it there, and, in reading, find more of human life in ourselves and each other.

Texts:
Middlemarch by George Eliot

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Get ready for a profound evening as Literary Arts presents Isabel Wilkerson, a true master of American narrative. She’s joining the 2026–27 Portland Arts & Lectures series, bringing her insightful perspective to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. You’ll want to be there.

Her appearance is part of a full series subscription, so this isn’t a single-ticket event. Make sure you’re signed up for the entire 2026–27 season to hear this celebrated author. Secure your spot now!

No poem is written alone. Every poem is in conversation with the writing that came before it. This conversation crosses generations and cultures, erasing distances of time, space, and mortality. In this four-part class, we’ll make that conversation intentional. We’ll consider the what, why, and how of writing in dialogue with other writers: what it means to write “after” someone, why we might quote, echo, erase, or respond to another text, and how we might do so with care, integrity, and proper credit. We’ll read poems by historical and contemporary poets who write in conversation with other poets, novelists, essayists, scientists, journalists, and historical documents. Approaches we’ll consider include: the epigraph and homage, collage and quotation, the cento, found poetry, erasure, and the response poem. In our first two classes, we’ll read examples and try generative exercises. In our second two classes, we’ll share our work and offer supportive feedback on each other’s conversations. No previous experience in writing poetry is required; all are welcome.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Join us for a Delve seminar in which we will explore a wide range of visual art alongside short essays and books by artists, novelists, philosophers, filmmakers, and poets. Together we will read a series of classic unconventional short texts, both old and new, that examine the complex roles color (culminating with a deep dive into the color blue) plays in literature, the fine arts, philosophy, music, and daily life. We are said to be a visual culture, but few people read images as critically as text. To sharpen our seeing in both forms is what this seminar hopes to achieve, as critical reading in one deepens the experience of the other. Together we will consider such questions as: how do we “read” an image as opposed to a text and vice versa? What are the similarities and differences between verbal and visual media?

Our gateway into the world of color will be two classic essays by art critic and Booker Prize winning novelist John Berger devoted to some of the earliest artistic visions extant: the Paleolithic drawings found in Chauvet cave and the mesmerizing Fayum portraits from Greco-Roman Egypt. We will follow these pieces with two sessions on Derek Jarman’s book Chroma: A Book of Color—a genre-bending memoir that examines the color spectrum and its effect on memory in a series of insightful, playful short chapters, written as he was losing his sight at the end of his life. Eventually Jarman was able to see only in shades of blue—circumstances that make his ruminations on color both powerful and poignant. Our next session will take us into Ludwig Wittgenstein’s mind-expanding thoughts on color perception via excerpts from his Remarks on Color, which we couple with painter and writer Amy Sillman’s insights into how artists approach color—both explore their struggle with words to convey the rich spectrum of experience. The seminar culminates with two sessions on Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, an equally genre-bending experiment in autobiography—an exploration of how we see (or what we miss) and a love letter to blue as color, mood (loss, joy), and its role in art and in life.

Alongside these readings, in each session, using the large screen in Literary Arts’ seminar room, we will look at works of art (both painting and photography ranging from the very oldest work to contemporary art) that are either referred to in the texts or that can be placed in fruitful conversation with the readings. Together we will take a chromophilic journey into the realms of vision, visual pleasure, language, and literature.

Texts:
Chroma: A Book of Color by Derak Jarman
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Excerpts from Wittgenstein and the essays by Berger and Sillman will be supplied by PDF. Participants will be sent files of the images we will be discussing prior to each session.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Folkloric writing can take many forms. From the overtly fantastical to the strangely realistic, the old tales are flexible. They shift over times and tellers. Their presence in our work can move from obvious to subtle. In this course, we’ll study writing that engages with folklore in a wide variety of ways: speculative memoir that tangles with witch tales, poems that draw on botanical lore, short story fairy tale retellings, mythic poetry and fiction, and more. Through discussion, reflection, and generative writing exercises, we’ll consider how we use old stories and lore in our own work. Suitable for writers at all stages, you can use this course to start a new project or continue work on an ongoing one. Prose writers, poets, and all writers between are welcome.

Access Program
Our Access Program offers writing class and seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Have you ever wanted to write a work of narrative fiction – a short story, novel, play, or screenplay – but didn’t know where to start? Or have you begun one but haven’t been able to finish? Mapping the Story will teach you the basics of dramatic structure so that you can make it to “The End.”

The workshop will begin with an interactive seminar on narrative structure. Participants will then analyze and present the dramatic beats of one of their favorite pieces of fiction to better understand what makes the story “work.” We’ll then apply those principles to your own work of fiction, devising character-driven scenes for maximum emotional effect.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have honed the dramatic beats of their own work, culminating in an outline to guide their first or revised draft.

Participants should expect weekly assignments but less generative writing. We are not workshopping pages but designing the story. With an open mind and a stack of index cards, we’ll embrace the artistic paradox of freedom through structure. This course is for writers and readers of all levels.

Class outcomes:

Introduce the approach of outlining before drafting
Analyze narrative structure in prose and dramatic works to better understand
how and why certain stories make us feel a particular way
Apply story principles to the participant’s new or revised project outline
Encourage group brainstorming and critique
Create an ambitious but obtainable plan for the first or revised draft ]

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Agents, editors and publishing professionals love to tell us that “memoir doesn’t sell.” If you’re not a celebrity, it’s a tough market out there, right?

But memoirs sell every day—often before they’re fully written, to writers without huge social media followings, in multiple six- and seven-figure deals. The problem is that many memoirs aren’t clearly positioned. Agents and editors are sometimes overworked, underpaid, and moving too quickly to spend the time trying to understand where your book sits in the market.

This class is about doing the heavy lifting for them. Over three sessions, we’ll break down what a memoir book proposal needs, how to prove there’s an audience for your story, and how to make your personal material feel urgent. We’ll talk about platform in terms of “proof of concept” rather than social media followers. We’ll talk aobut essays, local communities, cultural conversations, podcasts, nonprofit organizations, and comparable books that show there’s an appetite for your story. We’ll study real-life successful proposals and revise student material live in class.

Best for writers with at least a partial manuscript or proposal-in-progress.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.
February 6-20, 2027, Saturdays, 1:00-3:00 p.m. (3 sessions)

While Greek Mythology has never truly left the cultural zeitgeist, it’s clear that lately these old stories are at the forefront of the contemporary imagination. Over the past several years, no less than hundreds of retellings of Greek myths have been released in cinematic, best-selling novels, inventive scholarly works, and piles of poetry. What is compelling us to fervently consume these symbolically rich but often fraught tales of gods and goddesses, monsters and oracles, full of brutality, rebirth and transcendence?

In this seminar we’ll read three works that explore this question while updating the stories with poetic insight and contemporary flair: Madeline Miller’s Circe, Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. These books retell these myths through feminist and queer lenses while bringing the characters and their worlds to life in vivid technicolor. We’ll discuss the transformative and tragic quality of these stories, the recovery of the feminine voice out of patriarchal mores, and why these tales, which remain alluring after thousands of years, might still have something vital to say about what it means to be human.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

This class is for fiction writers who have already made significant progress on novels, novellas, or short stories. This six-week workshop will offer in-depth guidance to students on their fiction writing projects. We will follow the traditional workshop model with two modifications.

The first modification is that students will have the opportunity to share additional context about their projects and the level of feedback they wish to receive. They will also have the option of submitting outlines and ideas in the place of manuscript pages. The second modification is that there will be an extra emphasis on targeted feedback from the workshop leader.

In our first class, we’ll get to know each other and our interests as fiction writers. Each student will introduce their project and highlight which aspects of fiction craft they hope to study during our workshop. In our subsequent classes, we will workshop two student submissions per session. Student submissions can be up to 5,000 words.

After six weeks, each student will leave this class with a fresh perspective on their work-in-progress as well as insights into the art of fiction gleaned from our workshop discussions.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

One of the greatest things about writing is that one only needs a pen, paper, and their imagination to do it. But sometimes, looking only within can be a limiting factor in what we can express. This course encourages writers to turn their gaze outward, into the wide world of research, be it through trips to the library, time spent online, interviewing, traveling, and more.

Over six weeks, we will read and discuss prose works that incorporate research in unique ways. Through generative writing and research prompts, participants will begin (or continue) to follow their questions and passions in order to enrich their written work. We’ll conclude with a show-and-tell, in which writers will be able to share some of what they’ve learned, and how they might end up using it.

This course is designed for prose writers—stories, novels, essays, and hybrid work—who are ready to descend the rabbit hole, as well as those who are seeking the just-right factoid to drive their point home and make an impact on readers. We will focus on generating new material or incorporating research into works-in-progress, rather than revising or workshopping finished pieces. Open to writers of all experience levels.

Class goals:
• Read both fiction and narrative non-fiction pieces that employ research, with an eye for how the authors blend personal or creative content with research
• Discuss the infinite forms that research might take in our creative work, and how to incorporate what we learn into our own writing
• Casually share new writing and ideas in a supportive community environment

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Each week, we will read and discuss short pieces and excerpts from contemporary authors who are known to weave their pasts into the present including Annie Erneaux, Joan Didion, Ayad Aktar, Sonya Walger, Aysegul Savas, Rachel Cusk, Emmanuel Carrere, and others. There were also be to weekly craft essays on various genres (memoir, personal essay, autofiction and hybrid).

There will be an opportunity to submit one short excerpt of your own writing within this framework (can be from a short story, a personal essay or a novel-in-progress) to be workshopped during the class.

This course is generative, so participants should plan to write at least 1500 words per week. Most importantly, the goal of this course is to be inspired and to feel supported in your writing. This course is for all levels of writers and readers.

Class assignments:
Excerpts: Frances will provide two short (10-15pp) readings per week, excerpted from novels, memoirs, and stand-alone personal essay, to be discussed during the first part of class
Craft essays: two craft essays/interviews, mostly in relation to the authors and genres discussed for the week, will be provided for discussion during the first part of class
We will workshop two writers’ work per week after the first introductory class; participants should plan to submit 1500 words per week even if you are not being workshopped.

Class outcomes:
• exposure to contemporary writers who blend their past with the present day, namely personal essay, memoir and hybrid forms/autofiction
• inspiring community dialogue and critique of contemporary authors
• opportunity to workshop your writing and get constructive feedback
• looking at your work through a bigger picture lens; where you see yourself in the literary landscape
• writing practice/planning: during the first class and last class, we will discuss overall goals for your work, whether you want to complete a short story or a personal essay, plan a bigger project like a story collection, essay collection, memoir or novel/novella, or to simply establish a more consistent writing practice.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

For many writers, fixed poetic forms such as the sestina or pantoum feel restrictive rather than generative or inspiring. This course is designed to help writers overcome the fear of fixed form through in-class practice, peer workshops, and analysis of fixed form poems. Students will be guided through writing practices and specialized writing prompts to generate words, ideas, or symbols that will serve as catalysts for discovering fresh language. Ultimately, this course aims to revitalize our relationship to language by paradoxically expanding our creative capacities through controlled application.

This course will focus on understanding how to transform our revelatory and expansive ideas into structurally restrictive forms. In other words, this course aims to revitalize our relationship to language by paradoxically expanding our creative capacities through controlled application. In addition, students will analyze fixed-form poems in class to identify how and when poets employ form and how it enhances imagery, texture, and theme.

Class Outcomes:
• Identify the structural significance and rules of specific fixed forms.
• Analyze fixed form poems to understand how the “restrictive” form enhances imagery, texture, and theme, as well as identity when, why, and how to employ form.
• Compose original poems that adhere to the constraints of the chosen fixed form.
• Identify new and exciting ways to generate specific words, ideas, symbols, and metaphors to catalyze the creative process.
•Become comfortable and familiar with fixed forms and ultimately view them as generative rather than restrictive.

Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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 this workshop, we’ll mine minutia. Everyday moments, half-remembered anecdotes, passing observations using them as raw material for telling personal stories that resonate. What makes a story feel big or important? Together, we’ll test that question by looking closely at how you move through your life: the choices you make, the risks you avoid or take, the mistakes you repeat, the things you long for, and the decisions that reveal what matters to you.

Through 5-part story structure, guided prompts, playful exercises, and real-time exploration, you’ll practice noticing what’s already there and shaping it into a story. You’ll learn how small moments carry weight—and how to recognize the ones that want to be told to an audience (whatever audience means to you. Could be stage, or podcasts, or during a pitch, or for documentary)

Taught by BACKFENCE Storytelling producer Frayn Masters, this class is for everyone. Whether you’re experienced and looking for a hot take into your material, quieter and still discovering what your stories might be, or someone who loves being on stage and wants deeper source material, you’re welcome here. You’ll leave with new tools, new perspectives, and a clearer relationship to the stories embedded in your own life—ready to keep excavating long after the class ends.

Comments from previous students:

“Frayn’s workshop was just so magical and life changing.”

“After Frayn’s workshop & showcase, I felt like I was on (legal) drugs. For days. It put a bounce back in my step.”

Access Program
We want our classes and seminars 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 seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most classes have at least one access spot available.

Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at [email protected] if you have questions.

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.

Get ready for a captivating evening as Kiran Desai, the esteemed author, graces the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. She’s the final speaker for the 2026–27 Portland Arts & Lectures series, bringing her unique literary insights to our city. This is a special event.

Desai, born in New Delhi, India, educated across continents, is known for her acclaimed novels like Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, The Inheritance of Loss, and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Don’t miss this opportunity!