SNS | 7-25-26
Join us online for an evening of literary performance and open mic readings
Featuring:
Jennifer Acker
Theme: Salt
(scroll down for writing prompt)
Hosted By: Hollie Hardy
Saturday, July 25, 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: 845 6017 3161
Passcode: 468177
Author Bios
Jennifer Acker is a writer, editor, and translator. She is founder and editor in chief of the global, award-winning literary magazine The Common. Her debut novel, The Limits of the World, was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award. Her memoir Fatigue is a #1 Amazon bestseller, and her short stories, essays, translations, and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Oprah Daily, the Washington Post, Literary Hub, n+1, Slate, and Poets & Writers, among other places. Acker has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and a BA from Amherst College, where she directs the Literary Publishing Internship and LitFest. She lives in Western Massachusetts and Portland, Maine. Her second novel, Surrender, was released in April 2026 from Delphinium Books.
Learn more: https://www.jenniferacker.com/
Buy Surrender: https://www.delphiniumbooks.com/book/surrender/
Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!
LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!
Join me the week before SNS, on THURSDAY afternoon, July 23, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.
Write-In Details/ Sign Up
July Writing Prompt: Salt
Few substances have traveled so freely between the ordinary and the sacred.
Salt gathers in oceans and tears, on sun-warmed skin and winter roads, in bread dough and blood. Kingdoms have fought over it. Lovers have tasted it. Ancestors offered salt in welcome, scattered it for protection, carried it across deserts, dissolved it in wounds. Salt preserves what might otherwise disappear, yet too much can leave a field barren. Every crystal holds a contradiction.
This month, let salt be your light. Wander toward history or home, science or scripture, love or labor, hunger or healing. Somewhere inside the ordinary grain, something salty and new is already forming.
SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:
Write about a body of salt water—a beach, an ocean crossing, a salt flat, a lake—or invent one that exists only in memory or imagination.
Explore one of the body's salts: sweat after work or desire, tears of grief or joy, the taste of skin, blood chemistry, healing, exhaustion, survival.
Consider something that has been preserved. What have you tried to save? What has been kept alive long past its season? What refuses to decay?
Begin with an idiom or expression: worth one's salt, salt of the earth, take it with a grain of salt, rub salt in the wound, below the salt, salting the earth. Let the phrase lead you somewhere unexpected.
Write about a wound—literal or emotional. What makes it sting? What helps it heal? Is there a difference between pain that cleanses and pain that simply hurts?
Research salt's surprising history or science. Salt has served as currency, sparked revolutions, shaped trade routes, preserved food, and transformed landscapes. Let a fact become the seed of a poem.
Think about flavor. What gives a life, a relationship, a place, or a memory its particular savor? What is missing when the salt is gone?
Explore the spiritual or symbolic dimensions of salt. Across cultures it has represented covenant, purification, protection, hospitality, wisdom, and transformation. What rituals or beliefs around salt have stayed with you?
Write from an unusual perspective: a grain of salt, a salt shaker on a diner table, a salt marsh, a pillar of salt, the ocean speaking to the shore.
As ever, the theme is optional — an invitation, not a requirement; feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.
INSPIRATION
she washes the sea
on her knees.
—salt
(Nayyirah Waheed)
Salt By Melissa Broder
Salt By Philp Levine
Photo of a Girl on a Beach By Carmen Giménez
Salt to Make a Sea By Renée Ashley
Saltine By Michael McFee
Salt and Sea By Ariana Lee
Salt By Charles Wright
Praise Song for Oceania By Craig Santos Perez
Salt Hill By Jane Springer
Love Like Salt By Lisel Mueller