We’re celebrating these friendly (and COVID-safe!) faces who accomplished a BIG milestone with us. They are newly minted volunteer Write Around facilitators, who completed 27 hours of training last month!

We’re cheering for Lora Lafayette, a writer from one of our very first workshops! Lora’s memoir, Possums Run Amok: A True Tale Told Slant was published to great acclaim and is now nominated for an Oregon Book Award!

We are so happy to share that Chris McDonald has accepted the role as Write Around Portland’s new Executive Director.

Change is in the air. We are excited to welcome two new positions to help us achieve our mission of respect, writing, and community even more profoundly.

At the start of 2021, Write Around Portland added this resource and advocacy section as a new part of our monthly e-newsletter.  You can revisit all of the posts, resources, and prompts from 2021 in this post!

It is with both an excited and a heavy heart that I write to you to share the news that after 5+ years as Write Around Portland’s Development Director I will be transitioning out of my staff role at the end of this year.  

Celeste Jones first wrote with us in 2009 at Home Forward, Ruth Haefner Plaza for adults living in affordable housing. Her piece above, “Touch of Life,” was published in our Fall 2017 anthology, Know These Mountains.

Kari Baher participated in our spring 2021 hybrid online and by-mail workshop at Friendly House for members of Friendly House’s community, recreation and education (CRE) program. Read her piece, “The Edge of the Sea”.