W.o.o.t.s.

Tom Brokaw made time during a busy Portland visit to meet with students from Wilson High School at the new Literary Arts event space downtown. He told the student journalists they are coming of age at a critical time. While the future of print journalism is uncertain, Brokaw said he remains optimistic that “the culture [...]

Our second year of matching volunteer mentors with high school students at Franklin High School was a great success! Student interest was even higher this year, with 37 students receiving one-on-one help with their college and scholarship application essays. We’re excited to be expanding the program to Madison High School this year, with a mentoring [...]

This November, Figment is teaming up with The National Writing Project to sponsor the Junot Diaz Writing Contest, judged by Pulitzer prize-winning author Junot Diaz.  Figment is an online writing community where you can share your writing, connect with other readers, and discover new stories and authors.               Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, stands out for his [...]

Each year, Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia sponsors a poetry contest open to high school girls. Now in its 48th year, the contest awards honors and prizes for the best poems submitted by girls who are sophomores or juniors in high school. The contest, named for Nancy Thorpe, Hollins class of 1960, aims to support and [...]

For Stephen and Bianca, teachers at at Metropolitan Learning Center, the city is a classroom. They regularly take their students off-campus to see performances of all kinds, including the Arts & Lectures Series. When asked which part of the Students to the Schnitz program is more important, the free books or the free tickets to [...]

On Tuesday November 18th Literary Arts held its annual WITS fundraiser luncheon, hosted by Blue Hour. Members of the Literary Arts staff and Board of Directors gathered with almost 200 friends, writers, teachers and other members of the community to support WITS. We are thrilled to share that the event was a huge success, raising [...]

Are you a motivated high school student who values writing? If you are, you might be interested in applying to the Young Writers Workshop sponsored by the Kenyon Review and hosted at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. The workshop is an intensive two-week summer program for intellectually curious students, and works with young writers to [...]

In November, The Nature of Words, a literature based non-profit serving the High Desert region of the Northwest, will begin accepting entries in poetry, fiction, literary non-fiction and nature writing for the 2012 Rising Star Creative Writing Competition. The Nature of Words aims to foster appreciation of the literary arts through a variety of programs [...]

            Next weekend, October 8th-10th, Wordstock will kick off their annual book and literary festival here in Portland. Wordstock is a non-profit organization that celebrates and supports writing in the classroom and in the community. The festival, one of the largest of its kind in the nation, showcases the literary achievement [...]

Literary Arts kicked off its new “Students to the Schnitz” program by welcoming 65 students from Bianca Espinosa and Stephen Lambert’s Great Books class at Metropolitan Learning Center in Northwest Portland. Funded by the generosity of Literary Arts’ patrons, “Students to the Schnitz” provides complimentary books, transportation and tickets for Portland Public High School students [...]