Autumn with Brian Doyle: A Shared Reading and Writing Group

This four-week reading and writing group will introduce participants to the work of Brian Doyle (1956–2017), the beloved Catholic essayist, novelist, and longtime editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland.

If you’ve never read Doyle before, you’re in for a treat. His writing is funny, exuberant, tender, and alive with wonder. He writes about God and family, birds and basketball, illness and friendship, paying close attention to the ordinary moments through which grace so often arrives. His essays have a way of making readers feel more awake to their own lives.

Together, we’ll spend four weeks reading a selection of Doyle’s essays, alongside a handful of tributes, interviews, and reflections on his life and work. Participants will receive weekly reflection questions and creative writing prompts inspired by the readings, and we’ll gather over Zoom for conversation, companionship and shared attention.

Whether you’re meeting Brian Doyle for the first time or returning to a familiar voice, I hope you’ll join us to encounter a writer whose work continues to nourish readers years after his death, and to practice seeing the world with a little more curiosity, gratitude, and delight.

Each gathering will begin with a prayer from Doyle’s “A Book of Uncommon Prayer.”

Participants will be expected to purchase a copy of “One Long River of Song” (2019). Click here to find a copy! Readings sourced elsewhere will be provided by the instructor, and are noted in the course outline with an asterisk. Pages from “Leaping” and “How the Light Gets In” will be shared virtually.