Upcoming Events
Workshop : Writing for Musicians
Writing for Musicians
This is a workshop for musicians who want to explore or develop their writing. Our focus will be on exploring the sonic nature of narrative voice, particularly through sentence cadence, language intensity and mood, pace, and structure. The point of this class is to generate new work through experimentation and having some gritty fun. Our time together will be a mix of mini craft lectures, discussion, writing prompts, and experience with homework assignments. While this workshop is designed for musicians, all artists are welcome, including those whose primary artform is writing.
Cost: $400
Available Spots: 20
Duration: Runs 4 weeks - May 19th through June 9th.
Time: Meets Tuesdays from 6:30-8:30pm.
Location: Third Floor, Classroom. **Please note: There is no elevator.
While our intention is to make workshops accessible, we have some limits in this case.
Please reach out with needs and we will attempt to accommodate to the best of our ability.
Vanessa Veselka is author of the novel, The Great Offshore Grounds, which was nominated for the 2020 National Book Award and won the Oregon Book Award. Her first novel, Zazen, was awarded the 2012 PEN / Bingham Prize for debut fiction and her essays appear in The New York Times, GQ, and The Atlantic. She has been at various times, a musician, a union organizer, a cab driver, and a union organizer.
Workshop : Writing for Musicians
Writing for Musicians
This is a workshop for musicians who want to explore or develop their writing. Our focus will be on exploring the sonic nature of narrative voice, particularly through sentence cadence, language intensity and mood, pace, and structure. The point of this class is to generate new work through experimentation and having some gritty fun. Our time together will be a mix of mini craft lectures, discussion, writing prompts, and experience with homework assignments. While this workshop is designed for musicians, all artists are welcome, including those whose primary artform is writing.
Cost: $400
Available Spots: 20
Duration: Runs 4 weeks - May 19th through June 9th.
Time: Meets Tuesdays from 6:30-8:30pm.
Location: Third Floor, Classroom. **Please note: There is no elevator.
While our intention is to make workshops accessible, we have some limits in this case.
Please reach out with needs and we will attempt to accommodate to the best of our ability.
Vanessa Veselka is author of the novel, The Great Offshore Grounds, which was nominated for the 2020 National Book Award and won the Oregon Book Award. Her first novel, Zazen, was awarded the 2012 PEN / Bingham Prize for debut fiction and her essays appear in The New York Times, GQ, and The Atlantic. She has been at various times, a musician, a union organizer, a cab driver, and a union organizer.
Workshop : Writing for Musicians
Writing for Musicians
This is a workshop for musicians who want to explore or develop their writing. Our focus will be on exploring the sonic nature of narrative voice, particularly through sentence cadence, language intensity and mood, pace, and structure. The point of this class is to generate new work through experimentation and having some gritty fun. Our time together will be a mix of mini craft lectures, discussion, writing prompts, and experience with homework assignments. While this workshop is designed for musicians, all artists are welcome, including those whose primary artform is writing.
Cost: $400
Available Spots: 20
Duration: Runs 4 weeks - May 19th through June 9th.
Time: Meets Tuesdays from 6:30-8:30pm.
Location: Third Floor, Classroom. **Please note: There is no elevator.
While our intention is to make workshops accessible, we have some limits in this case.
Please reach out with needs and we will attempt to accommodate to the best of our ability.
Vanessa Veselka is author of the novel, The Great Offshore Grounds, which was nominated for the 2020 National Book Award and won the Oregon Book Award. Her first novel, Zazen, was awarded the 2012 PEN / Bingham Prize for debut fiction and her essays appear in The New York Times, GQ, and The Atlantic. She has been at various times, a musician, a union organizer, a cab driver, and a union organizer.
Workshop : Writing for Musicians
Writing for Musicians
This is a workshop for musicians who want to explore or develop their writing. Our focus will be on exploring the sonic nature of narrative voice, particularly through sentence cadence, language intensity and mood, pace, and structure. The point of this class is to generate new work through experimentation and having some gritty fun. Our time together will be a mix of mini craft lectures, discussion, writing prompts, and experience with homework assignments. While this workshop is designed for musicians, all artists are welcome, including those whose primary artform is writing.
Cost: $400
Available Spots: 20
Duration: Runs 4 weeks - May 19th through June 9th.
Time: Meets Tuesdays from 6:30-8:30pm.
Location: Third Floor, Classroom. **Please note: There is no elevator.
While our intention is to make workshops accessible, we have some limits in this case.
Please reach out with needs and we will attempt to accommodate to the best of our ability.
Vanessa Veselka is author of the novel, The Great Offshore Grounds, which was nominated for the 2020 National Book Award and won the Oregon Book Award. Her first novel, Zazen, was awarded the 2012 PEN / Bingham Prize for debut fiction and her essays appear in The New York Times, GQ, and The Atlantic. She has been at various times, a musician, a union organizer, a cab driver, and a union organizer.
Monthly Café Littéraire — French Conversation Classes “The Art of Argumentation à la Française”
This winter and spring, L’École Buissonnière invites you to a monthly Café Littéraire, a French conversation class rooted in literature, seasonal culture, and thoughtful exchange.
Inspired by French cafés as places of ideas, debate, and imagination, these gatherings offer a slow, intimate approach to the French language. Each 90-minute session opens a thematic doorway through short literary texts, guided conversation, and gentle creative practices.
The focus is not performance or fluency at all costs, but presence, curiosity, and pleasure in thinking together.
Each month highlights a seasonal cultural moment in France, including traditions that shape language and collective imagination.
MAY 3rd | The Art of Argumentation à la Française
L’art de l’argumentation à la française
Seasonal focus: La Fête du Travail — le 1er mai & le muguet
From 10:30 to 12 pm (90 minutes)
📍 Practical Information
When: First Sunday of each month, February–May
From 10:30 to 12pm (90 minutes)
Where: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop
Group size: Limited to 10 participants
Pricing: Full bundle: $90
→ Includes all 4 sessions + a convivial Garden Party (a French-style apéro) celebrating French culture at the end of the cycleSingle session: $20
Drop-in: $25
Celebrate International Day of the Book at Mother Foucault’s Bookshop!
Mother Foucault's Bookshop is bringing International Day of the Book to Portland. International Day of the Book is an annual event organized by UNESCO to promote reading and publishing. It has its roots in the Catalonian celebration of St. George's Day, or the Day of Books and Roses, during which lovers exchange books and roses as tokens of affection.
A celebration of literature, love, and Spanish and Catalan language and culture, the event will also support local nonprofit Street Books, a mobile library that provides community, resources, and advocacy for people living outside or at the margins in Portland.
12 pm — Open to All
The event is free and open to the public. The Bookshop will have books and roses—as well as other flowers—for sale. 10% of their proceeds will go to Street Books, who will join the celebration by providing services outside the shop.
7 pm — Evening Program
The nonprofit l'école buissonnière will present an evening program inside Mother Foucault's Bookshop inspired by the traditional celebration of St. George's Day in Catalonia. Readings of Catalan and Spanish-language literature will accompany music and a version of jocs florals (floral games, a Catalonian literary competition similar to an open mic). Refreshments will also be served.
The evening's readings will be organized by two Spanish Language Scholars, Andreu Borrego Asensi and Angeles Bellitti.
““It is a pleasure to celebrate this day with Mother Foucault’s Bookshop, who also maintains the hope that things can be done well despite the constant onslaught; they also see in books the gathering point of their community. Even though Spain and the rest of the world enjoy Book Day, in Sant Jordi something extraordinary happens: the festivity of the book but also of love. To unite both concepts is not a coincidence: annotations, doodles, recommendations, underlining, presents... all manifestations where the traces of a social space struck by literature are observed… There is something extraordinary in a population that dedicates one day to books and its literature.”
”
Workshop: Writing Through the Collapse
Tuesdays, April 7 – May 5, 2026 | 6:30 – 8:30pm
Writing Through the Collapse is an ecosystem co-created by those who wish to surrender to the word of their own artistry. Designed as a supportive and generative space in which to deepen, begin, or confront your writing practice within an increasingly terrifying time.
In this workshop we bring reflection, resistance, and submission to the art and survival of creation. A ritual and a devotion to ourselves and to the altar(s) of the dream space.
What happens in between the words and the page?
Who do you carry with you? What does ownership look like?
Guided by your co-facilitators R. Stranger & Makayla Terrell this five-week workshop centers hybrid work spanning prose, poetry, visual art, or anything from the in-between.
In this workshop, we will look at a range of texts from revolutionary thinkers and world builders to invite our creativity to counter the disillusionment that we are witnessing in real time.
Monthly Café Littéraire — French Conversation Classes “Read Little, Read Together”
This winter and spring, L’École Buissonnière invites you to a monthly Café Littéraire, a French conversation class rooted in literature, seasonal culture, and thoughtful exchange.
Inspired by French cafés as places of ideas, debate, and imagination, these gatherings offer a slow, intimate approach to the French language. Each 90-minute session opens a thematic doorway through short literary texts, guided conversation, and gentle creative practices.
The focus is not performance or fluency at all costs, but presence, curiosity, and pleasure in thinking together.
Each month highlights a seasonal cultural moment in France, including traditions that shape language and collective imagination.
APRIL 5th | Read Little, Read Together
Lire peu, mais lire ensemble
Seasonal focus: Poisson d’Avril médiatique & la tradition du chocolat et des œufs de Pâques
From 10:30 to 12 pm (90 minutes)
📍 Practical Information
When: First Sunday of each month, February–May
From 10:30 to 12pm (90 minutes)
Where: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop
Group size: Limited to 10 participants
Pricing: Full bundle: $90
→ Includes all 4 sessions + a convivial Garden Party (a French-style apéro) celebrating French culture at the end of the cycleSingle session: $20
Drop-in: $25
Monthly Café Littéraire — French Conversation Classes “The World of the Francophonie”
This winter and spring, L’École Buissonnière invites you to a monthly Café Littéraire, a French conversation class rooted in literature, seasonal culture, and thoughtful exchange.
Inspired by French cafés as places of ideas, debate, and imagination, these gatherings offer a slow, intimate approach to the French language. Each 90-minute session opens a thematic doorway through short literary texts, guided conversation, and gentle creative practices.
The focus is not performance or fluency at all costs, but presence, curiosity, and pleasure in thinking together.
Each month highlights a seasonal cultural moment in France, including traditions that shape language and collective imagination.
MARCH 1st | The World of the Francophonie
Le monde de la francophonie: Aimé Césaire and Négritude: poetry as resistance, identity, dignity
From 10:30 to 12 pm (90 minutes)
📍 Practical Information
When: First Sunday of each month, February–May
From 10:30 to 12pm (90 minutes)
Where: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop
Group size: Limited to 10 participants
Pricing: Full bundle: $90
→ Includes all 4 sessions + a convivial Garden Party (a French-style apéro) celebrating French culture at the end of the cycleSingle session: $20
Drop-in: $25
Monthly Café Littéraire — French Conversation Classes "The Café as a Place of Thought"
This winter and spring, L’École Buissonnière invites you to a monthly Café Littéraire, a French conversation class rooted in literature, seasonal culture, and thoughtful exchange.
Inspired by French cafés as places of ideas, debate, and imagination, these gatherings offer a slow, intimate approach to the French language. Each 90-minute session opens a thematic doorway through short literary texts, guided conversation, and gentle creative practices.
The focus is not performance or fluency at all costs, but presence, curiosity, and pleasure in thinking together.
Each month highlights a seasonal cultural moment in France, including traditions that shape language and collective imagination.
FEBRUARY 1st | The Café as a Place of Thought
Le café comme lieu de pensée
Seasonal focus: La Chandeleur (crêpes, light returning)
We’ll explore how cafés have shaped French intellectual and artistic life, read a short text together, and reflect—en français—on solitude, presence, and the art of being together.
From 10:30 to 12 pm (90 minutes)
📍 Practical Information
When: First Sunday of each month, February–May
From 10:30 to 12pm (90 minutes)
Where: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop
Group size: Limited to 10 participants
Pricing: Full bundle: $90
→ Includes all 4 sessions + a convivial Garden Party (a French-style apéro) celebrating French culture at the end of the cycle
Single session: $20
Drop-in: $25