Write Around Portland

Nonprofit or community organization

Last modified: February 7, 2012, 4:21 PM

Write Around Portland changes lives through the power of writing. We bring 10-week creative writing workshops to homeless youth shelters, senior centers, schools, hospitals, prisons and treatment facilities. With up to 50 workshops each year, we serve almost 500 adults and young people. We provide journals and pens, bus tickets, snacks, childcare and all workshop materials free of charge to remove obstacles to writing in community. Writing workshops culminate in community readings and three beautifully designed books annually.

By many measures Portland is one of the top literary cities in the US. Eliminating barriers in Portland opens the door to a particularly rich cultural landscape. Write Around Portland welcomes the most socially isolated and financially insecure citizens of our community—more than 70% of workshop participants are living below the federal poverty line—to the table to write and share their stories. The telling of these stories enriches the lives of writer and reader alike.

For more than ten years, Write Around Portland has been bringing the healing and connecting power of writing to the places where people live and receive services. In particularly difficult times, our programs have even greater importance. Writing has the power to carry people beyond superficial differences so that no one need suffer alone. Requiring only pen and paper, writing becomes a lifelong tool to express joys, face fears, grieve losses and celebrate successes.