WEALTH MANAGEMENT MEANS: Turning your financial dreams into reality. LEARN MORE AT: COLDSTREAM.COM to speak. She’d get other cities' phone books and call authors like John Updike and ask them to come to Portland, sometimes shipping them boxes of smoked salmon to pique their interest in the city. In 1993 Portland Arts & Lectures merged with the Oregon Institute for Literary Arts, founded in 1986 by Portland attorney, writer and arts advocate Brian Booth to fund the work of new writers and recognize and support them in other ways, like the Oregon Book Awards. The organization began expanding its educational programming, adding projects like the Writers in the Schools program. Literary Arts continues to bring writers and lecturers of note to Portland — Connie Chung kicked off this year’s sold-out season at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, touring in support of her new memoir, and upcoming speakers include historian Timothy Egan and journalist Masha Gessen. And at the same time the organization is moving and physically expanding into a new space, it’s taken ownership of another literary landmark: This summer the organization announced plans to turn Portland science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s Northwest Portland home into hosting space for a writers residency program. If all goes according to plan, the new building will be open in time for the Portland Book Festival in November. Proctor isn’t planning on holding any festival events at the new space, though, and is committed to making sure the festival stays downtown. The festival — which includes vendor booths from publishers and booksellers around the country as well as dozens of readings and panel discussions — was founded in 2005 as Wordstock by Portland writer Larry Colton. Literary Arts took over and relaunched it as the Portland Book Festival in 2015. During that shift, organizers also moved the festival from the Oregon Convention Center to a cluster of venues — including the Portland Art Museum and the First Congregational United Church of Christ — centered around the downtown park blocks. “I think the arts are playing an anchoring and essential role — maybe a sometimes unacknowledged role — in keeping downtown’s heart beating,” Proctor says. “The Schnitzer is being filled by arts and culture, comedians, and also musicians, and all kinds of things. The festival itself brings 8,000 people downtown who are taking public transportation, who are buying coffees and eating and parking and buying a lot of books.” Proctor stresses that his organization is committed to being part of Portland’s recovery story—and that continuing to host events downtown and investing in the Central Eastside is a part of that. But he thinks leaders could be thinking bigger. “I’m not interested in ‘Let’s bring Portland back.’ I understand the sentiment, and I totally support it, but I would prefer different words for that, because I think we have an opportunity to build something on the history of the city that is better,” Proctor says. “That’s the opportunity. We need to choose that future.” “We’re really trying to make a space where people could come in, look at books, buy a cup of coffee. Maybe they don’t even know who Literary Arts is, but they’ll find it about us when they come into the space.” AMY DONOHUE, LITERARY ARTS BOARD MEMBER 33
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