If you have read my blog anytime throughout its lifetime, you know that I am a huge advocate for and user of narrative medicine. It’s been a personal lifeline for me since early adolescence and continues to be so as I journal: exploring emotions, misgivings, triumphs, and life with chronic pain and the mental aspects that come with it.
Write Around Portland brings free healing creative writing programs to people who need them most: people who are houseless, incarcerated, in addiction recovery, living with illness, or experiencing trauma, supporting the power of healing through writing.
Writing brings a humanness to the surface, to a public space.
Kim, Write Around Portland Workshop Participant
I fell in love with the mission of Write Around Portland during my first Prompt in 2015 (a fee-based version of their core programming) and have been involved ever since, as a participant and volunteer, and then a facilitator in 2024. After joining Write Around this year as the Administrative Specialist, I can say I am most excited to be in a career where I can use both sides of my brain—and also my heart.
As such, my heart and brain warmly invite you to check out the services of this nonprofit and year-end fundraising campaign. No worries if you can’t donate this year, please consider sharing this post with your networks or buying an anthology for your book collection or as a gift for those fellow readers in your life.
Countless Vibrant Lives is an anthology of local writers from Write Around Portland’s community workshops. Published authors from this collection are from the Spring 2024 Cohort. Many participants have never written creatively before their first workshop and I am blown away by the pieces the participants published in this anthology!
This season’s reading will take place at the Albina Public Library, the title of the newest anthology, I Was Always There, is taken from a featured poem (hint—it will be the last poem in the book). The selection is a balance of poetic form and life events so evocative I cry every time I read it. You can buy anthologies in person at Powell’s City of Books, Broadway Books, or online. Online order fulfullment is done in house by yours truly. I look forward to mailing you your copies via USPS media mail!
It’s true that now more than ever, the arts need support from people that care about writing. Donations in any amount will go a long way for my favorite organization and place of employment. Funds support a core workshop with a nonprofit agency, reading snacks, participant publication (twice yearly anthologies), free BIPOC writing circles, fee-based creative workshops, and more.
Everyone deserves access to the arts. You can help. Your gift will be used immediately to provide safe, healing spaces infused with creative writing across the Portland Metro area. And, if made by December 31, your gift is DOUBLED! A group of generous donors will match every dollar up to $20,000.
Frequent Gift Guide Giver? Here’s your link!
Writing lets other people know just how tough a journey I’ve had and how strong I am able to be.
Marquette, Write Around Portland Workshop Participant
P.S. If I ever won the lottery, I would start something like Write Around Flagstaff and Write Around Gallup.
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