Portland’s Literary Arts Celebrates 30 Years

Monday, September 08, 2014

Deborah Reeves, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Photo credit: Sam Beebe on Flickr (Image cropped and brightened)

Portland’s premier literary organization is celebrating a milestone 30th anniversary this month.

With humble origins in a basement, Literary Arts was formed in 1984 with the hopes of attracting a few authors and thinkers to the Northwest.

Those small hopes exceeded any possible expectations at the time. Literary Arts has expanded and evolved into one of the largest—and leading—lecture series in the country. In the past five years alone, Literary Arts’ operating budget has doubled to $1.8 million and the organization continues to be a linchpin and a catalyst in Portland’s literary community.

“Generally speaking, nonprofits either live to 25, die at 30, or go on to be 100,” says Andrew Proctor, who assumed the role of executive director in the organization’s crucial 25th year. “It’s a broad conclusion, but the idea is that an organization is invented by a generation and lives to serve out a generation.”

Central to Literary Arts’s continued success was balancing its service to that generation while remaining dynamic and evolving to serve the constituents of the future.

More than a lecture series

Proctor uses the word "constituents" as opposed to strictly "audience" when talking about Literary Arts. The organization is more than a lecture series in and of itself. As well as bringing the international literary community to the city, Literary Arts has served 45,000 high school students through its Writers In The Schools program, and supports regional writers through fellowships and the Oregon Book Awards.

Literary Arts serves people in vastly different ways and thrives by responding thoughtfully to the push and pull of culture and the literary community’s needs.

"There's a time when we're the lead on projects and a time when we're not," says Proctor.

Verselandia, the recently added High School Poetry Slam series, is a perfect example.

“We’re not here to tell people what to like,” says Proctor. “High school librarians came to us saying, ‘We have these slam teams but there’s no organizing structure.’

"It would have been easy to say, ‘No, we’re busy,’” he says with a laugh. Rather, the organization responded to the enthusiasms of the community; elevating the work already being done by other people, it developed the vital infrastructure that was lacking, resulting in other high schools responding and wanting to be a part of it.

“It’s not static,” says Proctor. “It’s dynamic.”

Quickly evolving

Nationally, there are few comparable organizations and Literary Arts is evolving quickly. “I feel like so much of what we’re doing is improvisatory. There’s a plan, of course, but we’re making something kind of new.

"It’s endlessly surprising.”

Naturally, as director of a literary organization, Proctor draws inspiration from language and the arts. In an interview on leading change without crisis, Proctor cites an 1817 letter from John Keats to George and Tom Keats that describes how great artists are often in the process of creating without knowing the final outcome.

He found that a useful idea when thinking about Literary Arts and the future: “You can be in the middle of changing a place, a thing, or making something, even if you don’t know what that something is going to be,” he says .

“The Keats letter is very reassuring still,” says Proctor. “People want you to have the answer and often you don’t.”

Also inspiring to him is a poem by William Stafford, "Traveling Through The Dark," which was read and discussed at Literary Arts’s William Stafford Centennial Celebration last year. The poem is difficult in itself, but especially important was the complex way in which it was discussed that night.

This coming March, Literary Arts will host Mitchell Jackson, whose novel, "The Residue Years," is set in a neglected Portland neighborhood and is Multnomah County Library’s ‘Everybody Reads’ choice for 2015.

“The 'Residue Years' is an enormously difficult, complex, and very challenging work,” says Proctor. “It doesn’t present the city in a flattering light.”

Proctor adds, however, that that's what is great and important for Literary Arts as an organization.

“I don’t find any softness in the community,” he says. Literary Arts—its staff, its board, its audience and its sponsors—accepts the complexity of literature and are willing to do the difficult work that comes with that. That’s what makes it valuable to the city and will guide it on its way to 100 years and the service of generations to come.

Literary Arts celebrates its 30th anniversary tonight with a special event featuring Elizabeth Gilbert and Calvin Trillin, who was the first-ever Portland Arts & Lectures speaker in October 1984. Musical guest Colin Meloy of The Decemberists will make this a birthday bash to remember at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. 7:30 p.m.-9 p.m., 1037 SW Broadway, Tickets available at Portland5.com.

Photo credit: Ian Reeves

Deborah Reeves is an Irish writer, happy to call Portland home after many years of traveling. An avid reader, she blogs about books and writing at deborahrosereeves.com. You can reach her @debrosereeves on the Twitter.

Homepage photo credit: Kamil Porembiński on Flickr. CC license. (Image cropped)