Raise Your Pen

Raise Your Pen connects book lovers and writers with folks who most need access to artistic expression. Your donation will directly support our free writing workshops in homeless shelters, prisons, retirement communities, low-income housing, and much more!

Write Around Portland changes lives through the power of writing.

Since 1999, we’ve run a free creative writing and publishing program for people in our community with the least access to the arts, using writing to reduce isolation, improve mental health, and promote creative self-expression. We’ve held hundreds of writing workshops for more than 7,000 Portlanders, prioritizing outreach to people living on low incomes, experiencing homelessness or incarceration, living with a disability or illness, or who identify as Black, Indigenous, or a Person of Color. We’ve organized more than 250 community readings and published 60 anthologies of our participants’ work, amplifying underheard voices and utilizing the written word as a tool for personal and societal change.