First Draft Writers’ Series
Third Thursday of each month, always FREE

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Check out the list of esteemed writers who have headlined First Draft since 2013.
Become a Friend of First Draft HERE.

 

Ursula LeGuin reading at First Draft.

The First Draft Writers’ Series brings authors and poets of note to the Pendleton stage to share new work. On the third Thursday of each month people who love the written word gather at the PCA’s Pearson Auditorium to hear our featured authors as well as three to five minute open mic readings by local emerging writers.

“Truly, [First Draft] was one of the best adventures of my writing career, right up there with winning the PNBA awards and being interviewed by Studs Turkel.”   – Craig Lesley

 

Open Mic

Our Open Mic readers add incredible life to First Draft. Whether you’re a professional, emerging literary artist, amateur or just get a burst of inspiration to write one thing, we’d love to have you read your original 3-5 minute piece for the audience. Up to ten people can sign up each month to share their work after the featured author and a quick Q&A. Just send us a note in the Zoom chat that you’d like to read.

UP NEXT

 

Join us for a reading with Chris Anderson

Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024
7:00 p.m. in person at PCA and via Zoom!
(ZOOM Link Here) 

In Chris Anderson’s new book of poems, Love Calls Us Here, he describes two grace-filled women: a bartender and a nurse. The work seeks to describe those moments when “divine love meets us in the real world and nowhere else,” many of them drawn from his experience as a Catholic deacon.

Anderson will read from his new work on Thursday, November 21 as the featured author at
First Draft Writers’ Series at the Pendleton Center for the Arts. While the event is usually
offered in hybrid form, with audiences invited to join in person or online, this event will be a
Zoom only presentation.

Anderson is a Catholic deacon, a poet, and a retired English professor living in Corvallis, Oregon.
He grew up in Spokane, Washington and went to college at Gonzaga University in Spokane,
then to graduate school at the University of Washington in Seattle.

After receiving his Ph.D. in 1983, and teaching for four years at the University of North Carolina,
Greensboro, he taught for 34 years at Oregon State University in Corvallis. He retired in 2020.
Since he was ordained in 1997, he’s served as a deacon at St. Mary’s in Corvallis, and continues
to serve at St. Mary’s in retirement. He also lead retreats and does spiritual direction, and
continues to write.

He’s written fifteen books, including academic books, textbooks, books of personal essays, and
three books of poetry. In 2016 Eerdman’s published a book he put together from pieces of my
homilies, Light When It Comes: Trusting Joy, Facing Darkness, and Seeing God in Everything.
“God is present in our lives ‘between the lines of persons and things,’ Abbot Jeremy Driscoll
says. Our lives are poems. The mystery is in the moment, and we just have to get out of the
way. Only then can we can glimpse at last what Abbot Jeremy calls ‘the hidden radiance we
long to see.’”

 

 

 

Coming Soon:

October – Charles Goodrich

November – Chris Anderson (Zoom only)

December – TBA