SNS | 5-31-25
Join us online for an evening of literary performance and open mic reading
Featuring: Karen Marker + Cintia Santana
Theme: I Said What I Said
(scroll down for writing prompt)
Hosted By: Hollie Hardy
Saturday, May 31, 2025
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: 821 3936 2412
Passcode: 753660
Author Bios
Karen Marker studied Greek classics and drama, ran a children’s theater, and wrote plays before training and working for thirty years as a school psychologist in Oakland, CA. After retiring four years ago she returned full time to her first love, writing poetry, mostly inspired by her family roots and branches. Her first book of flash memoir/ poetry, Beneath the Blue Umbrella, was recently published by Finishing Line Press. It explores issues of mental illness, stigma and misdiagnosis. She has also recently begun a project of writing a poem a day of protest and hope in response to current political events.
Learn more: https://www.karenmarker.com/
Buy the book: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/beneath-the-blue-umbrella-by-karen-marker/
Cintia Santana is a poet, translator, and interdisciplinary artist. Her debut poetry collection The Disordered Alphabet (Four Way Books, 2023) won a Northern California Book Award. She teaches fiction and poetry workshops in Spanish, as well as literary translation courses at Stanford University. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2016 and 2020, Beloit Poetry Journal, Guernica, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Narrative, Pleiades, The Threepenny Review, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Santana’s work has been supported by CantoMundo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She lives in Northern California.
Learn more: https://www.cintiasantana.com/
Buy the book: https://fourwaybooks.com/site/the-disordered-alphabet/
Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!
LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!
Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, May 24, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.
Write-In Details/ Sign Up
May Writing Prompt: I Said What I Said
The phrase "I said what I said" means to stand firmly behind what one has already stated, even if it's controversial or unpopular. It's a way of emphasizing confidence and unwillingness to retract or apologize for a statement. It's a refusal to back down from an opinion or assertion, even if it might be met with disagreement or criticism. If can also be used ironically, if one is standing for something trivial. For our purposes, we’ll include the serious and unserious definitions, and expand outward to include various kinds of dialogue. Things said and unsaid, he said she said they said we said, even last words. As ever, please feel free to interpret loosely.
SOME IDEAS
Write about something you stand for, or a time you stood up for someone or something controversial, something you believe strongly in.
Write about some kind of protest (that you participated in, or witnessed, or read about or had an opinion on)
Write a monologue in which you assert a deeply held belief
Write a dialogue in which 2 people disagree
Write about something left unsaid
Write something funny, sassy, defiant, subversive
Write something where you assert something but then reverse course in the poem or change your mind. Think: volta; think: swerve.
Or something else! We’re writers. Everything we write is something we said.
INSPIRATION
I Forget Who I Said It To, But I Remember How, Afterwards, They Looked at Me As Though I Had Driven A Steak Knife Through Their Mother’s Hand by Rachel McKibbens
What It Looks Like To us and the Words We Use by Ada Limón
Tonight, in Oakland by Danez Smith
What I Never Told You About the Marriage by Esperanza Hope Snyder
Ars Poetica #1,002: Rally by Elizabeth Alexander
Unlawful Assembly by Kimberly Blaeser
What I Said by Hilda Conkling
Said by David Rivard
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