Dangerous Lexicons of Sex, Gender & Politics

The state demands our “legal sex”, suggesting the inverse must exist: unlawful sex. Language shapes our reality by codifying gender and sex — dictionaries recognize emergent vocabularies, diagnostic manuals outline rigid definitions, and new laws spell out restrictive realities. However, this language engenders lethal consequences, persisting across decades, cultures, and locales. This poetry workshop is open to all experiences. Participants will study work from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ poets as we confront historical, legal, and found texts.

Radically Tender

Embracing our own softness can feel impossible in a world which tells us we must develop hardness in order to survive. How can we allow ourselves to find the power in tenderness, in softness? This workshop explores the capabilities of tenderness, focusing on self-care and communal care, through writing exercises and group dialogue. This workshop is discussion-based and ideal for beginner writers.

Poetry & Technology: Experimental Forms

A generative workshop that invites participants to explore how poetry can subvert—and survive—technological systems of control. We engage with poems that gaze back at surveillance apparatuses like drones, immigration forms, and algorithmic codes, centering writers like Lillian‑Yvonne Bertram, Vanessa Villareal, Solmaz Sharif, and Jennifer Tamayo. Attendees leave with a deeper understanding of experimental poetic forms, plus take home prompts that awaken poetry as both theory and resistance. Taught through Brooklyn Poets and Ellipsis Writing (and also at the 2024 Southern California Poetry Festival).

Dinétics

A workshop for Diné and Indigenous students that reimagines poetry outside Western contexts. Students will be asked to write poetry through the lens of Indigenous epistemology and methodology.

Getting Interactive: Writing Digital "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure"-style stories and Games

If you've ever read a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, or "played" Netflix's "Bandersnatch," you are already familiar with the concept of a branching narrative. In a branching narrative, a reader experiences a story that occasionally allows them a choice which changes the results of the narrative. The good news is you don't have to know much about computers to write one. And knowing how to write interactive fiction is key to opening up an industry that hires hundreds of creative writers a year (the video game industry). In this talk, we will learn about the unique affordances and challenges of writing an interactive narrative, as well as go over a quick tutorial of how to get started immediately. No knowledge of games or programming needed!