SNS | 9-27-25
Join us online for an evening of literary performance and open mic readings
Featuring: Jessica Hincapie + Cintia Santana
Theme: Strange Days
(scroll down for writing prompt)
Hosted By: Hollie Hardy
Saturday, September 27, 2025
6:00pm Pacific Time
(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: 837 2756 4935
Passcode: 762437
Author Bios
Cintia Santana’s 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, Poetry Northwest, The Threepenny Review, West Branch, and elsewhere. Santana’s work has been supported by CantoMundo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She lives in Northern California.
Buy the book: https://fourwaybooks.com/site/the-disordered-alphabet/
Jessica Hincapié’s debut poetry collection Bloomer won the Louise Bogan Award for Artistic Merit and Excellence (Trio House Press, 2022). She is the winner of RHINO Poetry’s 2024 Founder’s Prize and her work has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes, finalist for Radar Poetry's 2020 Coniston Prize judged by Ada Limón, as well as a recipient of a 2022 Cuttyhunk Writers’ Residency. She has work out in numerous publications, including Gulf Stream Magazine, Poetry Northwest, Narrative Mag, and more. Originally from South Florida, she received her MFA in Poetry from The University of Texas (2018), where she won the Michael Adams Prize in Poetry. She also served as Bat City Review’s first Online Content and Web Editor.
Buy the book: https://www.jessicahincapie.com/bloomer
Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!
LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!
Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, September 20, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.
Write-In Details/ Sign Up
September Writing Prompt: Strange Days
Sometimes the world tilts—ordinary moments shimmer sideways, reality wears a new mask, or what we thought we knew grows alien. Sometimes reading the news renders the whole day strange, the world otherworldly. Strangeness can be absurd and funny, political and sharp, surreal or quietly tender. This month’s theme reminds us that creativity thrives in the uncanny, in the defamiliarizing of the everyday in the bizarre little fractures, where possibility rushes in, unexpected. Lean into the strange. Make it weird.
SOME IDEAS
The Strangest Day — Write about a particular day that stands out in your memory because it felt so strange, so surreal, so different from every other day — perhaps because of a disaster, an election, a holiday, an outing, an unexpected visit, a stroke of luck, a series of surprises.
Reimagine the ordinary — Like Ada Limón’s “Almost Forty” or Jodie Hollander’s “Avenue of Plane Trees,” take something everyday (a birthday, a street, a passing thought) and tilt it until it feels uncanny or surreal.
Prophets and absurdities — Inspired by Barbara Perez’s “Strange Little Prophets” or Kurt Cole Eidsvig’s “Donald Trump Meditating on Love,” invent strange prophets, absurd teachers, or surreal guides to lead us through this moment.
Possibility in strangeness — Following Chen Chen’s “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities,” write a piece that imagines wild, playful, or impossible futures. What strange wish might reframe the present?
The strangeness of time — Robin Ekiss’s “The Bones of August” and Kunwar Narain’s “A Strange Day” remind us how uncanny it feels when time itself feels off-kilter. Write about a day, month, or season that arrived bent, skewed, or haunted.
Apocalypse, again — In Franny Choi’s “The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On,” the surreal overlaps with the political. Write about living through strange times—apocalyptic headlines, climate unraveling, political absurdities—but focus on the surreal textures of daily survival within it.
Space oddities — Bob Hicok’s “The Age of Space Travel” reminds us that science and technology make the present itself feel surreal. Write about invention, science, or technology that makes your life stranger than you expected.
Defamiliarize the familiar — Pick an object in your room right now and describe it until it becomes strange: a spoon, a lamp, a pair of socks, a window. Let it morph into metaphor, prophecy, dreamscape.
Or something else! This month’s theme invites playfulness. Let yourself take wild leaps!
INSPIRATION
The Age of Space Travel By Bob Hicok
Almost Forty By Ada Limón
Strange Little Prophets By Barbara Perez
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities By Chen Chen
The Bones of August By Robin Ekiss
Avenue of Plane Trees By Jodie Hollander
A Strange Day By Kunwar Narain
Donald Trump Meditating on Love By Kurt Cole Eidsvig
The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On By Franny Choi
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