Skip to main content
Pen pal season is upon us as Oregon Humanities opens up another round of its Dear Stranger letter-writing project.
Since 2014, the nonprofit has invited Oregonians to exchange letters with people they have never met. More than 1,000 people have participated since then, with the goal of creating a shared understanding among Oregonians with different backgrounds.
To mark the project’s 10th anniversary, Oregon Humanities has placed bright red drop boxes all over the state to collect letters, and partnered with libraries and museums to host fully stocked letter-writing stations. The Portland drop box will be at the Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Ave., through Oct. 31. A map of the locations statewide is available at oregonhumanities.org/programs/dear-stranger/ and shows nearly 20 drop boxes scattered across the state, including in Baker City, Coos Bay, Hood River and Wallowa.
“Dear Stranger is one of many ways that we connect people across distance and difference of experience and belief,” Ben Waterhouse, communications director for Oregon Humanities, said in a statement. “Reading a letter from someone you’d probably never meet gives you a window into the life and mind of another person. We hope participants will find they have more in common than they might have guessed.”
Each round of Dear Stranger comes with a prompt. This year writers are encouraged to address “What is the Oregon you want to live in?”
Letters are swapped anonymously, and each person receives a letter from the person who received the one they wrote. What happens next is up to the writers. If they’d like to write a reply, they can do so via Oregon Humanities.
For this round, Oregon Humanities will exchange letters mailed by Oct. 31. Full instructions, including a release form, are available here. Letters should be addressed to: Dear Stranger c/o Oregon Humanities, 610 SW Alder St., Suite 1111, Portland OR 97205.