The Lyceum Agency was established by Julie Mancini and Miriam Feuerle, who together have more than three decades of experience working with writers and artists.


Julie Mancini has worked in the field of literature, lectures and presenting for twenty years. In 1985 she became the Director of Portland Arts and Lectures, an organization not more than a year old. Over the next fifteen years she developed PAL into one of the largest and most well-attended lecture series in the country, regularly presenting in a 2,700 seat venue and cultivating a stable subscriber base of more than 1700. She has presented more than 180 writers to full houses, including such literary and cultural icons as Wallace Stegner, Phillip Roth, Toni Morrison, Richard Ford, Joan Didion, Paul Theroux, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., David Sedaris and Maya Lin. Literary Arts, with its highly successful series Portland Arts and Lectures (www.literary-arts.org), continues to be Oregon's premier literary institution.

In addition, Julie has consulted nationally on how to establish a successful lecture series. Organizations she that she has worked with range from library systems, to hospitals, to world affairs councils.

Miriam Feuerle has worked with cultural organizations since 1993.  Beginning in the field of artist colonies and residency programs at The Macdowell Colony (www.macdowellcolony.org), she later went on to work for a The Alliance of Artists Communities (www.artistcommunities.org) national organization that focused on policy, funding and management issues related to this field.  More recently she helped start the Caldera artist residency program in Sisters, Oregon and directed a venture philanthropy grantmaking organization. 

She has worked as a consultant to nonprofits in the field of philanthropy and arts and culture and has taught classes through Portland State University's Institute for Nonprofit Management.  She has a MA from the University of Chicago where her research focused on the development of philanthropy in the U.S. particularly as practiced by fraternal orders in the 18th and 19th centuries.