SNS | 1-31-26
Join us online for the first Saturday Night Special of 2026 — an incredible evening of literary performance and open mic readings
Featuring:
Jess Hagemann & Laura Villareal
Theme: Dispel
(scroll down for writing prompt)
Hosted By: Hollie Hardy
Saturday, January 31, 2026
8:00pm Central time
Online Event
Free Admission
Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List
The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to 3 MINUTES MAX
Scroll down for monthly writing prompt
Join Event on Zoom
Meeting ID: 896 8816 4851
Passcode: 547256
Author Bios
Laura Villareal is a poet and book critic. Her debut poetry collection, Girl’s Guide to Leaving, was awarded Texas Institute of Letters' John A. Robert Johnson Award for a First Book of Poetry and the Writers' League of Texas Book Award for Poetry. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts, National Book Critics Circle’s Emerging Critics Program, and the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program.
Buy Girl’s Guide to Leaving: https://www.lauravillareal.com/books
Jess Hagemann's recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beneath the Bluebonnets: Tales of Terror from Texas Women, Three Seasons of Winter, and Last Girls Club, among others. Her debut novel Headcheese (2018) won an IPPY Award in Horror. Her sophomore novel Mother-Eating (2025) joins Marie Antoinette and cults. Jess received her MFA from the Jack Kerouac School, and has been awarded a teaching fellowship at McNeese State University as well as a writing residency at Dear Butte. She lives in Austin.
More at jesshagemann.com
Buy signed copies of Mother-Eating: https://ghoulish.rip/product/mother-eating/
Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!
LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!
Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, January 24, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.
Write-In Details/ Sign Up
January Writing Prompt: Dispel
January is a time of quiet reflection, of fresh starts and recentering goals, of healing, (re)committing, and banishing the things that no longer serve us.
To “dispel” is to is to clear something actively—to banish, undo, loosen, scatter, disperse, thin the air. Think: Fog lifting. A body shedding, poison, pounds, or pain. Learning to leave. Grief changing shape. What remains is not always clean, but it is breathable.
The inspiration pieces gathered below approach dispel from different angles: leaving as an art, grief as a slow release, fog as both obstruction and mercy, memory as something the body carries until it doesn’t. These selections remind us that dispelling doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it’s a walk away. Sometimes it’s staying long enough for the mist to thin. Sometimes it’s learning to let go.
This month, let’s write toward something you are (or have) intentionally cleared, excised, left, or dispelled. Let the act of dispelling shape the form—whether that’s a poem, a short prose piece, a list, a fragment, or something in between.
SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:
Write a piece that centers on leaving as a skill—something learned, practiced, revised. What instructions, rules, or missteps does it require?
Begin in a state of obscurity (fog, grief, confusion, sleep, ritual, heat, noise) and let the piece enact the gradual clearing—without promising certainty on the other side.
Write about unselfing: a moment when ego, identity, or certainty thins or dissolves. What replaces it—if anything?
Let the body lead. Write from a physical sensation of release: unclenching, exhaling, loosening, waking, standing up, walking out.
Take a phrase, belief, or inherited story you were taught to hold sacred and write the moment it is quietly undone—not necessarily shattered, just dispelled.
Write a piece that refuses urgency. Let dispelling be slow, unglamorous, ongoing—a grief that softens, a fog that lifts inch by inch.
Experiment with negative space: erasures, gaps, white space, fragments, or lists of what’s no longer there. Let absence do some of the work.
Or something else! Please feel free to mix, match, alter, or follow whatever inspiration takes you! As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement; feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.
INSPIRATION
Girl’s Guide to Leaving By Laura Villareal
The Art of Unselfing By Safiya Sinclair
“the desert dispels this hallowed ground of coarse insinuations” By Julia Wong Kcomt (Translated By Jennifer Shyue)
Good Grief By KB Brookins
A.M. Fog By Mark Jarman
Instructions on Not Giving Up By Ada Limón
A Body Drawn By Its Own Memory By Kate Colby
My Mother's Afternoon Nap By Donald Britton
Diluvian Dream By Wilmer Mills
The Man Moves Earth By Cathy Song
Bonus
To Have & to Hold By Jess Hagemann (short horror story featured on NPR)