History
Founded in 1999 by Liza Halley and Ben Moorad, Write Around Portland is a nonprofit organization dedicated to changing lives and building community through writing. Write Around Portland has provided more than 500 writing workshops for more than 4,000 adult and youth participants, published 43 anthologies, trained over 273 volunteer workshop facilitators and partnered more than 200 community organizations, social service agencies, the state, county and public schools. Write Around Portland has served as a model for writing programs in Washington, Arizona, Utah, New York, North Carolina, Idaho, Texas, and Colorado and has inspired workshop participants to complete their GEDs, attend college, stick with treatment programs, transition back to our community after incarceration and break cycles of abuse.
Specialties
Write Around Portland provides high quality, skillfully facilitated writing workshops in safe, accessible and respectful environments for people to write and share in community, holds community readings to promote the exchange of stories and publishes anthologies to connect writers and readers.