Celebrate PNCA's New Writing BFA!

PNCA Launches BFA in Writing with Write Now: Tom Spanbauer, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Chuck Palahniuk

 In celebration of the launch of its new BFA in Writing program, Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is pleased to welcome three acclaimed Portland writers - Lidia Yuknavitch, Tom Spanbauer, and Chuck Palahniuk - for an evening of words and on words.  

What: Write Now celebrates this new writing program chaired by associate professor and award-winning novelist Monica Drake.
Who: Tom Spanbauer, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Chuck Palahniuk 
When: Monday, April 22 at 7:30pm 
Where: in the Commons at PNCA (1241 NW Johnson St  Portland, OR 97209)

Tom Spanbauer, founder of the Dangerous Writers workshop and author of The Man Who Fell in Love With The Moon and other novels will read from his works as will Lidia Yuknavitch, editor of Chiasmus Press and author of Dora: A Head Case and The Chronology of Water: a memoir. Chuck Palahniuk, best known for his breakout novel, Fight Club, will lead a discussion of what it means to be a writer now, to pursue the writing life, to try to make a living, and to always make art with words.

Please note that the authors will not be available for book signing at this event.

Portland Bridges Poetry Reading

Join eight Oregon poets in celebration of Portland’s famed bridges and poetry for the launch of Motionless from the Iron Bridge: A Northwest Anthology of Bridge Poems.

 

When: Saturday, April 13, 2013 @ 7pm

Where: St. Johns Booksellers, 8622 N. Lombard St. Portland, OR 97203

 

David Cooke, A. Molotkov, Katharine Quince, Sam Roderick Roxas-Chua, Coleman Stevenson, Mark S.R. Struzan, Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk, and John Sibley Williams will be reading from this exciting new anthology, published by Portland’s own Bare bone books. There will be wine and hors d’oeuvres served.

 

Including both narrative and experimental poetry from 12 renowned and emerging authors from the Portland area, Motionless strives to capture the timelessness of its subject through an incredible diversity of poetic voices, many of whom are leading members of the Northwest’s thriving literary community. The stunning works of Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen and multi-award winning poet and Attic Institute founder David Biespiel weave between poems from up-and-coming names. Combining intimate portraits with conceptual questions, Motionless from the Iron Bridge clears a unique path from which readers can approach the many faces of the classic bridge metaphor.

PDX Writers Day Long Retreat

SUMMER WRITING RETREAT

 

 

What could be better than an entire day in June devoted to your writing? 

 

Join us in the lovely study at McMenamin's Edgefield Hotel. We'll spend half the day writing to prompts and offering one another feedback. There will opportunity in the afternoon for extended writing sessions to deepen your story and then share your day's accomplishments. 

 

Stay if you like: we'll head out at 5pm for happy hour at one of the many bars on site! 

 

Facilitated by Jennifer Springsteen

• Saturday, June 29, 2013
• Time: Arrive at 8:30 for coffee and continental breakfast. Workshop is from 9am-5:00pm.
• Optional informal gathering after.
• Location: Edgefield Hotel (call early to reserve an overnight room)
• Cost: $100--includes breakfast, lunch, snacks and non alcoholic beverages ($100 for cash/check and $103 for paypal/credit)
• Register for this workshop

 

Deep Editing

We love it. We hate it. Without it, a story is doomed. This interactive workshop will walk you through a specific process for deep editing of paragraphs, sentences and words. We will cut and paste and move and chip away at our work until it is powerful. Please bring 3-5 pages of a completed scene from your short story, novel, or memoir.

Facilitated by: Kim Taylor*

• Saturday, March 30
• Time: 10am-12:30pm
• Location: SW Portland
• Cost: $45 cash/check and $48 paypal/credit
• Register for this workshop

 
* Kim is a historical fiction author. Her current mission is to write carefully researched historical novels that bring gay women's stories out of the shadows of history. Her novels include Bowery Girl, a NYPL Best Reads for Teens; Cissy Funk, a Willa Cather award-winner; and Side Dish. Her current work-in-progress, Under the Pale Moon, is set in post-World War II Monterey, California. It explores the relationship of a married woman breaking the bonds of conformity, and a combat nurse struggling with PTSD and haunted by the ghosts of war.  Visit her website at www.outoftheshadowsofhistory.com.

Always Beginning: A Poetry Writing Workshop

Poets, if you’re finding it hard to be inspired to write or miss the company of fellow poets, join us Monday evenings at TaborSpace for two hours dedicated to discussing poetry and sharing work. I’ll provide a model poem and prompt before each session, and we’ll spend the first half hour of each workshop focusing on a particular aspect of craft. We’ll then devote the rest of the workshop to a discussion of participants’ poems. Close reading will be the primary tool for learning various aspects of craft, so its practice will be emphasized in all aspects of the workshop, from discussion of suggested poems to response to one another’s work. Within this supportive setting, students can expect to be respectfully challenged to grow as readers and as writers. This workshop is for the beginning poet as well as for the more experienced writer who knows the value of revisiting the fundamentals. All levels are welcome. 

Meets:  7:00-9:00 PM, Mondays, April 1 – May 20, 2013

Cost:  $185 [Eight two-hour sessions.]

Location: Classroom at  TaborSpace  (map), 5441 SE Belmont St, Portland, OR 97215

Register now!

Cindy Stewart-Rinier’s poems have appeared in Calyx, The Smoking Poet, Crab Creek Review and Ascent, among others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University in 2012. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, selected for the Crab Creek Review 2011 Editor’s Prize, and was awarded first place in the Portland Pen Women Poetry Contest. She has taught creative writing at all levels, from  elementary and middle school to adult students. A board member of the Mountain Writers Series, she lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Link to Workshop Flyer

Summer In Words Conference, 2013

Registration is now open for Summer in Words 2013. 

  

The fabulous line up of speakers/teachers includes: Monica Drake, Melissa Hart, Randal Houle, Lauren Kessler, Kelly James Williams, me, and keynote speaker Jonathan Evison. 

 Manuscript Evaluations also available.

When: June 20-22, 2013

Location: the Hallmark Inn & Resort in Cannon Beach 

 Go to the website for complete information: Summer In Words

Alive at the Center Book Launch

Date: Friday, April 19th

Time: 7:00pm-9:00pm

Location: Literary Arts

Address: 925 SW Washington St, Portland, OR 97205

Price: Free

Description: Emcee Susan Denning presents readings by Alive at the Center poets.

On April 5th, Ooligan Press will celebrate the launch of its forthcoming poetry anthology, Alive at the Center, at Literary Arts in downtown Portland, from 7-9pm. The launch will feature readings by poets Carl Adamshick, Emily Kendal Frey, Paulann Petersen, and other contributors. Drinks will be available.

URL: http://ooligan.pdx.edu/poetry/alive-at-the-center/

Short Stories with Liz Prato

A good short story excites and satisfies its readers, keeping them engaged long after the last word. In this craft-oriented workshop, we'll critique your short fiction in progress, and give close readings to work by modern masters of the form. Whether you're a novelist, memoirist, journalist or good ole' short story scribe, this class will make you a better writer by strengthening your understanding of character, scene, and the ever-elusive story arc. We will use the literary story as our guide, but all genres are welcome.

Teacher: Liz Prato

Time:  Fridays, 10am - 12pm, April 5 - May 10, 6 weeks

Location: Attic Institute, 4232 SE Hawthorne Boulevard

Fee: $242 (cash/check); $250 (credit card)

 

Register at: The Attic

 

About Liz: Liz Prato likes stories, real and imagined. Her own stories and essays have appeared in nearly two dozen journals and magazines, including Hayden's Ferry Review, ZYZZYVA, Los Angeles Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Hunger Mountain. She likes to learn and she likes to teach at The Attic, Willamette Writers, Oregon Writers' Colony, Wordstock and Indigo Editing. Want to know more? Check out www.lizprato.com
 

Amanda Coplin presents The Orchardist

Monday,  03/11/2013 7:00 pm

 

Annie Bloom's Books is delighted to host Portland author Amanda Coplin for the paperback release of her highly lauded debut novel, The Orchardist.

At once intimate and epic, The Orchardist is historical fiction at its best, in the grand literary tradition of William Faulkner, Marilynne Robinson, Michael Ondaatje, Annie Proulx, and Toni Morrison. In her stunningly original and haunting debut novel, Amanda Coplin evokes a powerful sense of place, mixing tenderness and violence as she spins an engrossing tale of a solitary orchardist who provides shelter to two runaway teenage girls in the untamed American West, and the dramatic consequences of his actions.

"Many contemporary novelists have revisited the question of what constitutes a family, but few have responded in a voice as resolute and fiercely poetic." -New York Times Book Review

"A stunning debut…The Orchardist is a poetic book, but its strength doesn’t lie solely in its language. Coplin’s understanding of abuse and the lasting effects of fear and loss on the individual psyche are deeply resonant. As a debut novel, The Orchardist stands on par with Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain." -The Oregonian

Poetry Reading with Wendy Willis and Nancy Flynn

March brings us two fine women poets who are also good friends. Join us for Wendy Willis and Nancy Flynn for a crazy good poems, prompts, cookies, door prizes and of course, open mic. at In Other Words, 7 - 9 p.m., Tuesday March, 19.
 
Wendy Willis splits her time between her roles as mother, poet, and advocate for democracy. Her first book of poems, Blood Sisters of the Republic, was released by Press 53 last fall. She is the Executive Director of the Policy Consensus Initiative, a national non-profit organization devoted to improving democratic governance. In addition to publishing poetry and essays in a variety of national and regional journals and serving as an associate fellow in poetry at the Attic Institute, Willis has served as a federal public defender and as the law clerk to Chief Justice Wallace P. Carson, Jr. of the Oregon Supreme Court. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law Center and holds a B.A. from Willamette University. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, his son and her two young daughters. 
Nancy Flynn hails from the anthracite country of northeastern Pennsylvania where somehow, at an early age, she fell in love with words instead of into a sinkhole or the then-polluted Susquehanna River. She attended Oberlin College, has a B.A. from Cornell University, and an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from SUNY/Binghamton. Her writing’s received the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and an Oregon Literary Fellowship; her second chapbook, Eternity a Coal’sThrow, was published by Burning River last fall. Recent poems have appeared in Blood Orange Review,PANK, and qarrtsiluni among others. A former university administrator and editor, she lives in Northeast Portland with her husband and their two spoiled, blue-eyed cats. More about her writing and publications is at www.nancyflynn.com.

Indigo Editing: March Double Feature

We at Indigo Editing & Publications are proud to welcome Liz Prato and Jessica Glenn as guest instructors of our Saturday, March 16, classes. We value individual attention. Classes are presented in a small-group format at Indigo's offices in downtown Portland (near Powell's Burnside) to ensure participants have a close connection with the instructor. To further that mission, we offer class participants 15 percent off a one-hour consultation with an Indigo editor, to be scheduled within thirty days after the class.

Preregistration and payment are required at http://indigoediting.com/classes.  Saturday, March 16

Narrative Nonfiction, Liz Prato of The Attic Institute
1:00–2:30 p.m., $45, or $70 if paired with the other class
 
This is not your high school essay! It’s lyric essay, memoir, literary journalism and creative nonfiction. Come again? Okay: Narrative nonfiction blends facts with the storytelling techniques of fiction to keep the reader engaged while discovering a new world. We’ll discuss what narrative nonfiction is, and isn’t, and will relish examples from modern masters of the form.  

Book Publicity for Authors, Jessica Glenn of MindBuck Media
2:45–4:15 p.m., $45, or $70 if paired with the other class
 
Book publicity is different than any other type of publicity and often seems to authors like an option rather than a necessity. Before considering your book release date or even contacting agents and publishers, you will need a watertight marketing and publicity plan. Without it, statistically, you are highly unlikely to find receptive agents, publishers, and ultimately readers. You are also unlikely to sell more than 50–150 books total. In this class, Jessica Glenn will lead you through the phases of book publicity from six months before the release date to three weeks after the launch. Learn how book publicity can make the best use of bloggers; how to use radio, print, and TV to your advantage; and why and when to organize book tours. This class is best suited to authors with finished or close-to-finished manuscripts who plan to pitch, authors who already have publishers, or authors who are independently publishing but need to plan their release. 

Kristin ThielSenior Editor & Director of Community Engagement Indigo Editing & PublicationsBringing new color to editing.

Phone 503-629-9216
E-mail Kristin@IndigoEditing.com
Visit website, Facebook, Twitter

VoiceCatcher Reading

VoiceCatcher: Readings

When: Sat, Mar 23, 2013; 1:00 to 3:00

Where Collins Gallery

First come, first served.

 

Celebrate new work by the authors of VoiceCatcher: A Journal of Women's Voices & Visions. Co-editor Celina Wigle will emcee this lively reading of prose and poetry that captures the diverse voices of local talent. Come prepared to add your voice during our open mic segment. VoiceCatcher is an all-volunteer nonprofit that connects, inspires and empowers women writers and artists in greater Portland/Vancouver.

Featuring:

• Melanie Green
• Tricia Knoll
• Sally Lehman
• Donna Prinzmetal
• Kristin Roedell
• Kelly Running
• Penelope Scambly Schott
• Leah Stenson

Write to Publish: Write What You Know tickets are available now!

Portland State University’s Ooligan Press is excited to announce its fifth annual Write to Publish conference, to be held February 23rd, 2013, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. at the Native American Student Community Center on the PSU campus. 

This year’s nonfiction theme, Write What You Know, will feature local authors Floyd Skloot, Lidia Yuknavitch and Kristian Williams, among others, speaking about their personal experiences navigating the industry. They will be joined by other industry professionals, with the goal of demystifying the publishing industry for burgeoning writers.  
Write to Publish is the brainchild of Ooligan Press, a nonprofit trade press run by students of Portland State University’s Book Publishing graduate program. 

This year’s conference will also host a lunch catered by California Pizza Kitchen and a writing contest for non-fiction submissions limited by 2,000 words. The grand prize winner will receive a pitch to agent Betsy Amster of Betsy Amster Literary Agency! Submissions are due by Feb. 9th.
For more information, please visit www.ooliganpress.pdx.edu/w2p. To purchase tickets, go to www.pdx.edu/boxoffice/tickets.

Prompt: A Write Around Portland Community Workshop

Join us for a 10 week workshop devoted to generative writing and the transformative power of writing in community. Based on the successful Write Around Portland (http://www.writearound.org/) model, this dynamic workshop incorporates many of our favorite exercises designed to inspire the writing life, including free-writing; group discussion; imagery, character, plot and poetry development; and early-draft revision.

All proceeds from Prompt go directly toward funding Write Around Portland workshops and programs in hospitals, prisons, schools, treatment centers, low-income housing facilities and more.

Prompt: Meets weekly for 10 weeks

Ten Tuesdays, Jan 29-Apr 2, 6:30-8:30pm

Powell’s City of Books, 10^th and W. Burnside

$285 (Payment plans available. Includes free parking, snacks and access to the “Bowels of Powells.”)

Workshop facilitator Mary Kibbe earned a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from Marylhurst University where she explored communication, writing, and an interdisciplinary approach to the formulation and re-formulation of individual identity. Mary currently focuses her writing time on poetry, and has studied the art of memoir, creative non-fiction and personal essays. She is a founding member of her writing critique group Broads on the Side. As a Write Around Portland volunteer, Mary has facilitated workshops for burn and trauma survivors, at-risk youth, and low-income families.

Registration limited to 12 adults. For more information or to register, please contact Write Around Portland at 503.796.9224.