Why Portland?
Portland is a vibrant, beautiful, literary city.
A former logging and port town, Portland today is a culture, and food, and bike and book-focused city, a gem of the Pacific Northwest, which is perhaps why so many writers have called, or currently call, Portland “home”—like Cheryl Strayed (Wild), Ursula Le Guin (The Farthest Shore), Beverly Cleary (Ramona Quimby, Age 8), Katherine Dunn (Geek Love), Patrick deWitt (The Sisters Brothers), Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), and on and on.
At Lewis & Clark, a private college with a public conscience, two National Book Award winning poets, William Stafford and Mary Szybist, have taught or currently teach here. Even more, Kim Stafford, the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark, was named Oregon’s Poet Laureate by Governor 
Lewis & Clark is only ten minutes from the excitement of the urban core of progressive Portland. Participants in the Fir Acres Writing Workshop visit some of Portland’s best attractions for inspiration and for fun, too—like Powell’s City of Books, Blue Star Donut, or Salt and Straw ice cream.
The college is located on a beautiful 137-acre campus in suburban Portland, just minutes from downtown, and nestled beside Tryon Creek Natural Area, a wondrous 650-acre state park.