SNS | 10-26-24
Join us online for the 14th Annual SNS Halloween Reading, Open Mic
& Costume Party!
Featuring:
Traci Kato-Kiriyama & Louise Moises
Theme: Halloween
(scroll down for writing prompt)
Hosted By: Hollie Hardy
Saturday, October 26, 2024
6:00pm Pacific Time
(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: 899 9133 5791
Passcode: 505916
Author Bios
traci kato-kiriyama (they+she) is an award-winning multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary artist, recognized for their work as a writer, performer, theatre deviser, cultural producer, and community organizer. kato-kiriyama is the author of the mixed-genre collection Navigating With(out) Instruments from Writ Large Press (2021). Their recognition & support includes the Art Matters Foundation; the CA State Senate Breaking Silence Award; ONE Archives Pride Publics; and the NEFA National Theatre Project for TALES OF CLAMOR and PULLproject Ensemble. tkk has performed at hundreds of venues and their writing, commentary and work appears in numerous media and print publications (including NPR; PBS; Elle.com; Entropy; Chaparral Canyon Press; Tia Chucha Press; Bamboo Ridge Press; Heyday Books; Temple UP).
Learn more and buy a book at https://www.traciakemi.com/
Louise Moises is an award-winning poet from the San Francisco Bay Area, an antiquarian bookseller, puppeteer, and performance artist. Her first chapbook, Peace Is a Pelican, is newly available from Finishing Line Press and on Amazon. The poems in this collection are based on life experiences and the poet’s interaction with nature. The titular poem “Peace Is…” was a grand prize-winner in the Dancing Poetry Contest, from Artist Embassy International. She’s been featured at Benicia First Tuesdays, Sacred Grounds, Riverside Poets and Voices of Lincoln, and her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including High Shelf Press, California Quarterly, Wingless Dreamer, Carquinez Review, The Write Launch, Tiny Seed, and elsewhere. Louise writes poems about backroad adventures while traveling solo in her RV, crisscrossing the country with her cat, to visit far-flung family and friends.
Pick up Peace is a Pelican here:
https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/peace-is-a-pelican-by-louise-moises/
Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!
LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!
Join me the week before SNS, on SUNDAY afternoon, October 20, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.
Write-In Details/ Sign Up
October Writing Prompt
For the 14th Annual Saturday Night Special Halloween Open Mic, we’re taking up the classic theme.
Tell us a scary story; sing us a spooky song; write us a ghost poem about your pumpkin spice latte. Anything Halloween or Halloween adjacent is on theme.
SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:
Think: evil, demons, zombies, vampires, sirens, witches, werewolves, ghosts, predators, clowns, the circus, the horsemen of the apocalypse, blood-thirsty or benign creatures, Bigfoot, fairies, mutants, psychopaths, politicians, parents, screaming children, bullies, bosses, exes, oppressors, societal cruelties, false fears, monsters in masquerade, the misunderstood…
Think: pumpkins, scarecrows, cemeteries, black cats, bats, harvest moons, apple cider, candy, hay rides, trick-or-treat
What costumes have you dressed up in? What costume parties have you attended?
What defines a monster? What monsters have you known? What monsters have you been? Were they real or imagined?
What is grotesque? Unthinkable?
What are you afraid of? How is that fear literalized?
Think: things in the woods, under the bed, outside the window, inside the house, in the past, in your dreams.
Think: pool drains, sharks, heights, blood, poison, ants, failure, the sun, disfigurement, dying alone
Think: fire, flood, earthquakes, war, death, prejudice, injustice, grief, silence
Have you ever seen a ghost? An apparition? Experienced the supernatural? Or know someone who has? What happened?
In what ways are legacies, generational pain, memories, photos, even DNA kinds of ghosts?
Consider: palimpsest as ghost, the way a city builds on the bones of the past.
Think: haunted house, graveyard, poltergeist, possession, exorcism, bumps in the night
Whom have you lost? What would you say to their ghost?
What’s your best, craziest, strangest, or scariest Halloween story? Make a poem or flash story of it (3 minutes or less!)
Or something else! As ever, please feel free to follow whatever inspiration takes you! As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement; feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.
Below are some of my favorite Halloween poems and short stories on our theme to inspire you.
INSPIRATION
Poems
Jane Goodall and Bruce Springsteen Contemplate their Childlessness by John Dudek
All Souls by Michael Collier
Windigo by Louise Erdrich
Bildungsroman by Sam Sax
Ghost by Cynthia Huntington
Field of Skulls by Mary Karr
Monster in the Lake by Martín Espada
Monster by Jason Irwin
The Witch Has Told You a Story by Ava Leavell Haymon
Halloween in the Anthropocene, 2015 by Craig Santos Perez
Strange Are the Products by George Oppen
Halloween by Lindsay Turner
Short Fiction
The Hitman short short fiction by T. C. Boyle
Pumpkins flash fiction by Francine Prose
The Anatomy of Desire flash fiction by John L’Heureux
Bonus
It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers! McSweeney’s Essay by Collin Nissan