Study Groups
Soapstone offers a program of six study groups each year on women writers. People of all genders and identities are welcome. Scholarships are available.
To register for a study group send an email to soapstonewriting@gmail.com, and once you receive a reply saying there is room in the group, we'll ask for payment through Zelle, or, if you prefer, a check made out to Soapstone, 622 SE 29th Avenue, Portland, OR 97214.
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Fall 2025
Reading Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
Led by Judith Barrington
Six Sunday mornings: September 7 through October 12 11 am to 1 pm PST
on Zoom
$75
Limited to 16 participants
I have loved Virginia Woolf’s Orlando ever since the first time I read it decades ago. With each re-reading I’ve found more brilliant Woolfian language and more astonishing wisdom to stop me in my tracks. It is, without a doubt, my favorite novel.
First published in 1928 when Woolf was forty-six, it has a contemporary feel. It is described by Carmen Maria Machado as many things at once including “a satire of English literature” and a “fabulist fantasy novel that rarely receives that label.” Nigel Nicolson called it “the longest and most charming love letter in literature" while Jeannette Winterson called it "the first English language, trans novel” and “a savage satire on sexism.” Woolf herself, writing in her diary, described it simply as "a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day”.
The recipient of this two-hundred-page "love letter" was the aristocratic lesbian Vita Sackville-West who lost her ancestral home, Knole, because, as a woman, she was unable to inherit it. Orlando, who might be considered a version of Vita, is inexplicably, but easily, transformed from a handsome young man into a beautiful woman, causing her to think deeply about what it means to be a man or a woman while romping through 350 years of history.
All through this “biography”, as a man and as a woman, Orlando pursues becoming a writer and faces all the frustrations common to aspiring writers, whether writing with a quill in the 16th century or a favorite pen in the 20th.
It doesn’t matter if this is your first Woolf novel or you have read them all more than once. I welcome you to join me in the reading, pondering, puzzling and marveling as we dig deep into Orlando together.
Text: Any edition of Orlando is fine. I will provide additional (optional) material to read.
Judith Barrington is a memoirist and poet whose most recent book is Virginia’s Apple: Collected Memoirs. The title refers to an incident that took place at Monk’s House, the one-time home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf in Sussex, not far from where Barrington grew up. She has published five collections of poetry, most recently Long Love: New and Selected Poems. Lifesaving: a Memoir won the Lambda Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. Her book for writers, Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art is used in classes and by individuals around the world. JudithBarrington.com
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Reading Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth
Led by Jules Ohman
Six Sunday mornings: October 19 through November 23 10 am to 12 pm PST
on Zoom
$75
Limited to 16 participants
Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth feels like a family does— funny amidst the darkest moments, emotionally complicated, yet brimming with affection. It’s one of my favorite novels—I regularly return to it when trying to figure out what makes a novel compulsively readable and its characters both interesting and real.
“The christening party took a turn when Albert Cousins arrived with gin,” is the first line; two families are on the verge of blending into one—Albert Cousins’ gin instigating an affair that sparks at a neighborhood party. The narrative follows the siblings and step-siblings across five decades, both before and after a tragic event during their childhood. In Curtis Sittenfeld’s review for The New York Times, she writes that Commonwealth “...recognizes that the passage of time is actually the ultimate plot…Patchett also skillfully illustrates the way that seemingly minor, even arbitrary decisions can have long-lasting consequences and the way that we often fear the wrong things.”
A child of a blended family herself, Ann Patchett dedicated the book to her stepfather, and as a reader you can feel how lived-in the emotional landscape of the novel is. (Patchett’s mother said about the novel: “None of it happened and all of it’s true.”)
Reading an Ann Patchett novel often feels like diving underwater and not coming up for air until it’s over. I’m looking forward to living in the story alongside you, exploring its gifts and its mysteries.
Text: any edition of Commonwealth, paperback or hardcover.
Jules Ohman is the author of the novels Fire Years (forthcoming from Dial Press) and Body Language. Jule's writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Buckmxn Journal, Willow Springs, Camas Magazine, and others. She has most recently taught at the University of Montana, PNCA, and the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology. julesohman.com
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For a list of past study groups go to Previous Study Groups