Emilly Prado is an award-winning writer, educator, and cultural worker living in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of Funeral for Flaca (Future Tense Books, 2021), a Pacific Northwest Book Award–winning essay collection praised by Ms. Magazine as “utterly vulnerable, bold, and unique,” and Examining Assimilation (Enslow, 2019), a nonfiction interdisciplinary book at the intersections of culture, history, and identity for youth readers. As an educator, Emilly has taught in public high schools, correctional facilities, MFA programs, and through organizations such as Tin House, Literary Arts, Corporeal Writing, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Her writing has appeared in 30+ outlets including NPR, Marie Claire, and Eater, and has been supported by fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Oregon Humanities, and Randolph College, amongst others. She is a co-founder of BIPOC arts non-profit, Portland in Color, and the Latiné DJ collective, Noche Libre. Currently at work on her debut memoir, Emilly also teaches creative writing at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Learn more at emillyprado.com or @emillygprado.

Funeral for Flaca (essay collection) (+ FFF excerpt links)

“More Than Words” (longform multimedia journalism)

“How ‘To the Bone’ Contributes to the Whitewashing of Eating Disorders” (cultural criticism + personal essay)

Bitch Media archive (cultural criticism, reviews, music journalism, etc)

Google Meet Link: https://meet.google.com/cfs-ktvd-pto

Come outside, come together, come as you are to experience a full afternoon of joy, healthcare, and community love!

Bring your people. Bring your kids. Bring yourself.

We’re taking it to the parking lot of our new building to celebrate the inner SE healers, movers, artists, and most importantly, YOU.

Our community deserves care that feels like home, and that’s exactly what we’re building together.

SE Portland Heath & Wellness BIPOC, queer and trans healthcare providers who are building the world we deserve.

This is one way community care can look, not just appointments and waiting rooms, but moments for us to share together in the fullness of who we are.

Come for the community. Stay for the joy. Leave feeling held.

Inspired by the author’s own family history, and spanning the past hundred years of Chinese history, Kangkang Li Kovacs’s multi-generational family saga explores how women survive the tsunamis of history.

What happens when a story refuses to stay linear? Sometimes that story needs to be told slant—or squiggly, or sparsely, or outside the margins entirely. In this generative craft intensive, we’ll explore hybrid and lyric forms that blur the line between poetry and prose, image and text, memory and imagination. We’ll look at writers who try to define the undefinable, and who follow the threads of their truths outside chronology by looking to fragments, letters, and lists.

We’ll read work that resists neat classification but may be referred to as hermit crabs, braids, essayettes, hermit crabs, and/or epistolary by writers such as Chet’la Sebree, Traci Brimhall, Chelsea Biondolillo, Randon Billings Noble, Ross Gay, Elissa Washuta, Carmen Maria Machado, and Anna Joy Springer, among others.

Through short writing bursts, close readings, and playful experimentation, you’ll be invited to try on new forms—or invent your own. This intensive is a rich springboard for writers feeling stuck or simply seeking fresh inspiration and new ways of seeing. While we won’t be able to cover every possibility, you’ll walk away with a robust reading list and plenty of generative starts to fuel future experiments. The class is designed for those new to hybrid writing, but all genres and experience levels are welcome.. Come ready to write, explore, and delight in the expansive possibilities of form. A full reading list with PDFs will be emailed in advance.

OUTCOMES:
– Students will walk away with a deeper understanding of lyric and hybrid definitions
– Students will experiment and play with short writing prompt bursts with opportunities to share
– Students will read, analyze, and discuss model texts together
– Students will learn foundational experimental craft forms to incorporate into future writing projects

Scholarship
We have one scholarship available for this intensive. Scholarships are awarded via a random lottery drawn at least a week before the intensive. Please submit your name here to enter.