SNS | 3-28-26
Join us online for an evening of literary performance and open mic readings
Featuring:
Sara Bawany & Claire Bowman
Theme: In Living Color
(scroll down for writing prompt)
Hosted By: Hollie Hardy
Saturday, March 28, 2026
8:00pm Central time
Online Event
Free Admission
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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: 846 5359 7762
Passcode: 384048
Author Bios
Sara Bawany, MFA, MSSW, is an award-winning poet, author, and clinical social worker based in Austin, TX. She is the author of two poetry books: (w)holehearted: a collection of poetry and prose, and Quarter Life Crisis (Flowersong Press, 2023). She manages her own mental health practice and serves as the Lead Writing Instructor at House of Amal, with whom she co-edited and curated the Threads of Palestine anthology for charity. You can learn more about her work at www.sarabawany.com.
Claire Bowman is an Austin-based writer and editor originally from St. Joseph, Missouri. She is the author of Dear Creatures (Sutra Press, 2017) and her poetry has been published in Narrative Magazine, PANK, Black Warrior Review, A Dozen Nothing, I Scream Social Anthology and elsewhere. She is a former recipient of the Michener Center for Writers fellowship at University of Texas, where she served as Assistant Poetry Editor for Bat City Review. Claire is the current editor in chief at Host Publications where she champions the poetry of historically marginalized writers. By night, she moonlights as a tarot reader, teacher, and membership coordinator with Typewriter Tarot. Learn more at: clairebowmanpoet.com
Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!
LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!
Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, March 21, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.
Write-In Details/ Sign Up
March Writing Prompt: In Living Color
"In living color" describes something seen in full, vibrant, and realistic color, rather than in black and white. Originating from the advent of color television, it now often signifies seeing something firsthand, in vivid detail, or in a particularly striking and memorable way. Where the literal meaning holds imagery bursting with color, the figurative meaning offers realism, vivid intensity, immediacy, or honesty.
The inspiration poems gathered below explore color in many different ways. Some focus on the lush physical world— the peonies in Mary Oliver’s garden, the orchard in Ross Gay’s poem. Others use color as metaphor, memory, or identity: Natasha Trethewey reflecting on race and childhood, Maggie Nelson’s whole book about blue. Kim Addonizio’s desire as a red dress. Frank O’Hara’s famous poem considers color through art and process, while Jillian Weise’s “Color Study in Blue” reimagines perception through a technological and embodied lens. In each case, color becomes a medium of art and a way of seeing.
Color can hold emotion, culture, memory, and meaning. It can illuminate joy, reveal injustice, capture a fleeting moment, or transform an ordinary object into something luminous. Color can also stand in for mood, tone, and atmosphere—the color of grief or longing, the color of a rainy afternoon.
This month, your invitation is to create something that lives in color. That might mean writing vividly about the sensory world, exploring the symbolic meaning of color, or capturing a moment of experience so clearly that it feels immediate and alive on the page.
Write a poem, essay, short scene, flash or hybrid piece inspired in some way by the idea of In Living Color.
SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:
Write a piece centered on a single color—red, blue, gold, chartreuse, bruise-purple. Where does it appear? What memories, objects, emotions, or histories attach themselves to it?
Write about an object that holds color — A dress, a painting, a fruit, a childhood toy, a stained glass window, a traffic light, a bouquet, a bruise. Let the object anchor the piece while the meaning of its color unfolds.
Write a memory through color rather than chronology — Instead of telling the story in order, move through the colors you remember: the green carpet, the yellow kitchen light, the red bike leaning against the fence.
Explore the emotional life of color — What color is grief? What color is anger, joy, boredom, jealousy, or relief? Write a piece that treats color as emotional language.
Write about color and identity — Skin tone, clothing, cultural symbolism, hair, uniforms, flags, makeup, paint. How does color shape the way people see one another—or themselves?
Write about making art — Frank O’Hara’s poem begins with painting but becomes something else entirely. Write about drawing, painting, crafting, cooking, decorating, or any act of creation where color matters.
Write about a moment of vivid perception — Capture a moment so sharply that it feels alive on the page—a sunset, a neon sign in the rain, the inside of a grocery store, a field in spring.
Write about something that changes color — Leaves turning, the sky at dusk, rust spreading on metal, dye soaking into fabric, a bruise healing. Let the shift in color guide the structure of the piece.
Write about color in unexpected places — The colors of sound, taste, numbers, cities at night, silence. Let your imagination stretch what color can mean.
Write about a moment when the world suddenly felt more vivid — A realization, a revelation, a news story, a memory that refuses to fade. What does it look like to experience life “in living color”?
Feel free to follow your own path if something else emerges. Let the idea of color, literal or metaphorical, lead you somewhere surprising. As ever, the theme is optional — an invitation, not a requirement; feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.
INSPIRATION
Why I Am Not a Painter By Frank O’Hara
Sorrow Is Not My Name By Ross Gay
Peonies By Mary Oliver
“What Do Women Want?” By Kim Addonizio
Excerpt of Bluets By Maggie Nelson
White Lies By Natasha Trethewey
Some Days By Billy Collins
Tiara By Mark Doty
Parsley By Rita Dove
Color Study in Blue By The Cyborg Jillian Weise