Oakland Book Launch Party

This is it! The lions are here at last!

Come help me celebrate the release of my second full-length poetry collection Lions Like Us, (Red Light Lit Press) back in my Bay Area stopping grounds, with students, friends, family, and local writers. Everyone is invited!

I wanted this reading, the first stop on my summer book tour, to feel like a curated in-person Saturday Night Special reunion reading, with many of my favorite writers reading for just 3 minutes each. I’ll also have a small open mic, time permitting.

Featuring:

Melissa Anderson
Tracy Artson
Sara Biel
Paul Corman-Roberts
Cassandra Dallett
Justin Demeter
Natasha Dennerstein
Hollie Hardy
Yume Kim
Alexandra Kostoulas
Karen Marker
Garrett Murphy
Riley O'Connell
Indiana Pehlivanova
Drew Sage
Elisa Salasin
SB Stokes
Valerie Sopher
Kimi Sugioka
Maw Shein Win
Vagabond Empire

Music:
The Corrupt Money Changer

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Friday, June 7, 2024
7pm

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Studio Morey
5500 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Oakland, CA

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Free Event

Book tour donations welcome!!

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Author Bios

Hollie Hardy is a writer, educator, and author of the newly released Lions Like Us (Red Light Lit Press) and How to Take a Bullet: And Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage Press). She holds an MFA in Poetry from SFSU, teaches private writing workshops online, runs Praxis Poetry: Weekly Prompts for Poets, and hosts the monthly online reading series Saturday Night Special. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. She lives in Austin, TX.
Learn more at: holliehardy.com

Melissa Anderson, a poet, piemaker, neurobiologist, and psychotherapist has been published in Critica, Croneswords, Pacific Coast, as well as Life Sciences, Brain Research Bulletin and the European Journal of Pharmacology. Writing is Life! 

Tracy Artson is a poet and licensed psychologist in California. Poems published in The Passionfruit Review, Colossus Press, The Los Angeles Press, River Heron Review (Fall, 2023). Pushcart nominated by River Heron Review. www.tracyartsonpsychologist.com

Sara Biel is a social worker, corvid negotiator, and poet in Oakland, CA. She is an editor at Colossus Press and a curator with the Starting Points series. Her chapbook, Prescribed Burn was published in 2023.

Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the Firecracker nominated poetry collection "Bone Moon Palace" (Black Lawrence Press) and the self published Graphic Chapbook "The Sincere" (Libran Apocalypse.)  He is also a recovering sports addict and drummer. 

Cassandra Dallett is looking for the next chapter. She is the author of multiple chapbooks and full-length books of poetry, most recently A Pretty Little Wilderness (Be About It Press). On Sunday, A Finch and Collapse (Nomadic Press), were both nominated for CA Book awards.

Justin Demeter is a queer poet and painter who lives in Oakland. He’s been published in Trans Bodies Trans Selves and in anthologies from New Words Press and Beyond the Veil Press. Find his art at justindemeterart.com

 Born in Melbourne, Natasha Dennerstein holds an MFA from San Francisco State. She has had several books of poetry published and her work has appeared in many journals in the USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Forthcoming this summer is Apps Poetica from The Los Angeles Press.

Yume Kim is a poet, essayist, educator, and author of Reserve the Right. She is now working on a new manuscript, which includes poems calling out the racist hypocrisy that still exists in academia.

Alexandra Kostoulas is the founder and executive director of SF Creative Writing Institute. She writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She believes her best work is yet to come.

Karen Marker is an Oakland based writer who is grateful she has teachers like Hollie who inspire her to build a life around writing and reading poetry and get some of her work published.

 Garrett Murphy is an Oakland-based poet and author who has often been considered a "political and human nature satirist."  His most recent publication is MURPHY'S LOG, a compilation of newer and previously published works.

In the first grade, a teacher told Riley O’Connell to “get her nose out of a book and get a life”—advice which she did not heed. Since then, Riley has gone on to have poems published around the world.

 Drew Sage has been writing poetry since 1978. His style consists of an amalgamation of hip hop-like wordplay and iambic pentameter with a special emphasis on rhyming based on manipulated enunciation. He performs in up to 7 East Bay open mics a week.

Elisa Salasin wanders the hills with camera and pen when she isn’t wrestling spreadsheets for the good of the world. Her chapbook, She Watches Wild Horses, is a personal guidebook for sailing straight into the storm and coming out the other side shining.

 Maw Shein Win's full-length collection Percussing the Thinking Jar (Omnidawn) is forthcoming in October, 2024. She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at USF and is a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse, a literary community. mawsheinwin.com

When she’s not taking classes from Hollie, Valerie Sopher sings, plays guitar and gets her hands dirty with fabric and thread. Her first chapbook, Day for Night, is available from The Orchard Street Press.

 Kimi Sugioka, is a mother, educator, songwriter, and author of two books of poetry; most recently Wile & Wing (Manic D Press). She is the poet laureate of Alameda, California, and believes that creating community through art is a revolutionary act.

 Vagabond Empire is a new multidisciplinary art project by Sam Prestianni that reimagines the Great American Songbook for a post-pandemic America. Check out the debut album at thevagabondempire.com and a poetry-painting collaboration at reneekirbyart.com/works-in-progress.html

SNS | 5-25-24

Join us online for an evening of literary performance and open mic reading

Featuring: Hollie Hardy & Tomas Moniz

Theme: Feral
(scroll down for writing prompt)

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday May 25, 2024
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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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

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 836 3483 2432

Passcode: 416346

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Author Bios

Hollie Hardy is a writer, educator, and author of Lions Like Us (forthcoming from Red Light Lit Press on June 7th, 2024) and How to Take a Bullet: And Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage Press, 2014) winner of the Annual Poetry Center Book Award at San Francisco State University. She holds an MFA in Poetry from SFSU, teaches private writing workshops online, and hosts Saturday Night Special: A Virtual Open Mic, originally founded and co-hosted with Tomas Moniz. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. She lives in Austin, TX. Learn more at: holliehardy.com

Tomas Moniz is a latinx writer living in East Oakland, CA. His debut novel, Big Familia, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway and the LAMBDA. His new novel, All Friends Are Necessary, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books on June 11th, 2024. He teaches at Berkeley City College and the Antioch MFA program. He has stuff on the internet but loves penpals:
PO Box 3555, Berkeley CA 94703. He promises to write back. Learn more at tomasmoniz.com

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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 18, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.

Write-In Details/ Sign Up

May Writing Prompt: Feral

adjective: feral
(especially of an animal) wild, untamed, undomesticated, escaped from captivity
or resembling an animal—savage, fierce, unpredictable, untamed

Brainstorm: Neglected garden, tangled fuchsia, feral wind reaching, tasting the hem of your garment, boy next door, teenaged crush, trampled with desire, hair-tearing grief, Texas summer nights, sticky animal aroma, her sharp teeth, this ocean roaring at the feral moon, like a dog abandoned on the median or loping in the back alleys of urban squalor searching for love.

Write a poem (or short prose piece) on or tangential to the theme, or including the word “feral”.

SOME IDEAS:

• Write about a feral animal or a zoo animal or an animal rescue or encounter

• Write about a wild animal heart, feral love, a feral crush

• An animal personified, or person described as animal

• Animal as metaphor

• What else is feral? A city, a garden, a schoolyard, a childhood, a jungle, an outfit, a Taylor Swift fan, a woman you loved, the music you danced to, the tongue of a hummingbird, the possibilities are endless

As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement; feel free to interpret loosely or ignore. The following sample poems offer a wildly diverse approach. Enjoy!

NOTE: The SNS writing prompts will soon be integrated into my new subscription service, Praxis Poetry: Weekly Prompts for Poets

FOR INSPIRATION

Summer Story by Mary Oliver

It Was the Animals by Natalie Diaz

For the Feral Splendor That Remains by CA Conrad

She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo

Studies of an Ox’s Heart, c. 1511-13 by Sylvia Legris

Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out by Richard Siken

Sanctuary by Donika Kelly

Happy Trigger by Carmen Giménez

Sea Krait, Broom by Amanda Joy

Emerald Spider Between Rose Thorns by Dean Young

Inside-Bird and Outside-Bird by Kim Hyesoon (translated by Don Mee Choi)

Summer by Joanna Fuhrman

James Dean with Pig by Sam Sax

Life Is Beautiful by Dorianne Laux

Allegory by Diane Seuss

NOTE: The SNS writing prompts will soon be integrated into my new subscription service, Praxis Poetry: Weekly Prompts for Poets

ATX Red Light Lit Poetry Open Mic

ATX Red Light Lit x Isis Destiny present a Lover Girl Open Mic at Revival
Indulge in an elevated open mic experience
in celebration of Red Light Lit Austin’s third anniversary

Featuring:

Music by Isis Destiny
Poetry by Hollie Hardy
+ local Austin poets and artists
&
books, body paint, henna, jewelry, live art
raffle prizes

Hosted By: Loria Mendoza

Red Light Lit is a reading series and small press devoted to writers, artists, and musicians who explore love, relationships, sexuality, and gender. Since its founding in 2013, RLL has published 10 literary journals and produced over 200 live shows (including in Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle).

Red Light Lit Press will release Hollie Hardy’s second full-length poetry collection Lions Like Us in May 2024. Preorder a signed copy here.

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Sunday, April 28, 2024
2pm - 6pm
(Readings at 3:30pm-ish)

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Revival Coffee
1405 East 7th Street
Austin, TX

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Free Event

SNS | 4-27-24

April is National Poetry Month! Join Saturday Night Special online for an evening of literary performance and open mic reading

Featuring: Dean Rader & Judy Halebsky

Theme: Fortune Cookie
(scroll down for writing prompt)

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday April 27, 2024
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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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

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 856 5388 5137

Passcode: 852089

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Author Bios

Dean Rader has authored or co-authored twelve books, including Works & Days, winner of the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize, Landscape Portrait Figure Form, a Barnes & Noble Review Best Book, and Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry, a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award and the Northern California Book Award. Before the Borderless: Dialogues with the Art of Cy Twombly, was published in April of 2023 and was named one of ten “mesmerizing” books of modern poetry by Book Riot.  His writing has been supported by fellowships from Princeton University, Harvard University, Headlands Center for the Arts, Art Omi, and the MacDowell Foundation. Rader is a professor at the University of San Francisco and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry. 
Learn more at deanrader.com

Judy Halebsky is the author of three poetry collections—Sky=Empty, Tree Line,and Spring and a Thousand Years (Unabridged)—and the chapbook Space/Gap/Interval/Distance. Born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she holds an M.F.A. in English & Creative Writing from Mills College and a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the University of California, Davis. On fellowships from the Japanese Ministry of Culture, she spent five years living in Japan, where she trained in Butoh dance and Noh theatre. She now directs the low-residency MFA program at Dominican University of California.
Learn more at judyhalebsky.com

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Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!

LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!

Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, April 20, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.

Write-In Details/ Sign Up

April Writing Prompt: Fortune Cookie

April is National Poetry Month and many of us are endeavoring to write a poem every day for 30 days! (Some of you are enrolled in my Poetry Challenge getting fresh prompts for inspiration) Let’s have a little fortune cookie fun [in bed]:

Write a poem (or short prose piece) inspired by the fortune cookie.

INCLUDE ONE (OR MORE) OF THE FOLLOWING:

• Adages

• Warnings / Predictions

• Tips / Advice / Instructions

• The words "in bed" at the end of each line or stanza (or some other repeated phrase)

• Confident, assertive, didactic, sarcastic or matter-of-fact tone

• Interpolated lines from a fortune cookie

• [Brackets] with fortune inside

• Made up fortunes (serious or ridiculous)

• Mention of a real or metaphorical fortune cookie

• Second person address (to the reader, as "you")

• A meal eaten alone or with someone else, which includes a fortune cookie

  (and perhaps some setting or narrative details)

Or something else! As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement; feel free to interpret loosely or ignore. Have fun!

FOR INSPIRATION

Fortune [The neighbors will soon spread their confounding potluck before you.] poem by Dobby Gibson

Fortune [There’s only one horizon, yet it can be found] poem by Dobby Gibson

Handy Guide poem by Dean Young

The Moral Kicks In poem by Peter Twal

Cardi B Tells Me about Myself poem by Eboni Hogan 

In Bed poem by Kim Addonizio

Lines For the Fortune Cookies poem by Frank O’Hara 

New Lines for Fortune Cookies poem by James Masao Mitsui

Your Luck Is about to Change poem by Susan Elizabeth Howe

Little God Origami poem by Stefi Weisburd

If You Go to Bed Hungry poem by Angela Narisco Torres 

One Page Salon

Join us on the patio for a lively evening of literary entertainment

Featuring:

Dale Bridges
Hollie Hardy
Greg Marshall
Sergio Muro
Bianca Alyssa Pérez

Hosted By: WLT Executive Director Becka Oliver

The One Page Salon (called “the best literary evening in town” by the Austin American-Statesman) is a monthly reading series presented by the Writers’ League of Texas.

Five outstanding writers will read one page from a work in progress, which means the audience will be among the first to hear new material from our talented line-up. Plus, there will be literary chit chat and fun & games and laughter and so much more.

The One Page Salon takes place on the lovely outdoor patio (weather permitting) at Radio Coffee & Beer in South Austin where attendees can enjoy coffee and beer and other libations. There are some tasty food trucks if you want to pick up a bite to eat and Reverie Books will be on hand selling an assortment of great reads, including our readers’ latest books. Come early to save your seat!

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Tuesday, April 2, 2024
7:30 pm

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Radio Coffee & Beer
4204 Menchaca Rd
Austin, TX

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Free Event

SNS | 3-30-24

Join us online for an evening of literary performance and open mic reading

Featuring: Kelechi Ubozoh & Meg Jerit

Theme: The Sauce
(scroll down for writing prompt)

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday March 30, 2024
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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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

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 810 1670 2337

Passcode: 864243

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Author Bios

Kelechi Ubozoh is a Nigerian-American writer and mental health advocate. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she was the first undergraduate published in The New York Times. Her book with LD Green, We’ve Been Too Patient, elevates marginalized voices of lived experience who have endured psychiatric mistreatment. Her work is featured in Argot Magazine, Multiplicity, Essential Truths, sParkle & bLINK, Trauma, Tresses, & Truth, and When We Exhale. She co-hosts the Bay Area reading series MoonDrop Productions with Cassandra Dallett and has received a Pushcart Prize nomination. 
Learn more at kelechiubozoh.com. IG: @specialkech

Meg Jerit is a creative nonfiction writer, editor, poet, and author of the commissioned children’s book The Moonies: Journey to the Total Solar Eclipse. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia College, where she wrote her memoir, River Talks, a bildungsroman set in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. In 2022, she attended the Kenyon Review Summer Writing Workshop. Her poetry and prose has appeared in various journals such as, Adelaide: International Literary Magazine, Allium: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, The Commercial Appeal, The Southwestern Review, and forthcoming from Take Heart Publications. She is also the host of Smushed Blueberries, a monthly reading series at Epoch Coffee, in Austin, TX.  megjerit.com IG: @megitate @smushedblueberries

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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 23, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.

Write-In Details/ Sign Up

March Writing Prompt: The Sauce

The many meanings of “sauce” include zest, zing, juice, confidence, style, salsa, rizz. It’s the slippery goodness that holds things together. It’s not just hot sauce, tomato, bbq, mustard, mayo, peanut, cherry, chocolate, sriracha, and soy—it’s all the sauces. And their metaphors. All the saucy people and things. Like salsa dancing. Sauce can also mean alcohol—like on or off the sauce, sauced.

Tell us a sauce story; sing us a saucy song; show us your salsa, write us a poem with some sauce in it!

SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:

• Write about a “secret sauce,” literal or metaphorical

• Write about something spicy or zesty—a food, an outfit, a date

• Write about “the goodness that holds things together”

• Write about salsa dancing or traditional dance, or the musical side of the sauce

• Write about (a character with) “rizz” (Oxford’s 2023 Word of the Year)

Or something else! As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement, feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.

FOR INSPIRATION:

The Sauce, a Spotify playlist, short and saucy, to get you in the mood

Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, poem by Cornelius Eady

Calligraphy Accompanied by the Mood of a Calm but Definitive Sauce, poem by Dick Allen

Harold's Chicken Shack #1, poem by Nate Marshall

My Mouth Hovers Across Your Breasts, poem by Adrienne Rich

Wild Tongue, poem by Rebecca Seiferle

November Philosophers, by Katie Ford

Chinese Silence No. 14, poem by Timothy Yu

Tarragon, Are You a Wild Boar?, poem by Vi Khi Nao

Rats, short prose by Matthew Sweeney

SNS | 2-24-24

Join us online for an evening of literary performance and open mic reading

Featuring: Roanna Flowers & SG Huerta

Theme: Love (scroll down for writing prompt)

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday February 24, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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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

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 897 8202 8736

Passcode: 447624

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Author Bios

Roanna Flowers is a comedy writer in Austin, Texas. She has written several award-winning comedic short films, one of which appeared in over 30 festivals world-wide including the Cannes Short Film Corner. Last November, her short story "These Boots. Or The Bitches of Eastwick" appeared in the short story anthology "Mixed Bag of Tricks," a collection of stories by women, about women, published by a woman-owned small press. She is a former student of Amanda Eyre Ward’s, author of "The Jetsetters," and a member of the Writers’ League of Texas. She has a B.A. in English Literature with a specialization in early British Literature and a surprisingly handy minor in Latin. roannaflowers.com

SG Huerta is a queer Xicanx writer from Dallas. They are the poetry editor of Abode Press and marketing co-director for Split Lip Magazine. SG is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Things We Bring with Us (Headmistress Press) and Last Stop (Defunkt Magazine), and the forthcoming nonfiction chapbook GOOD GRIEF (fifth wheel press 2025). Their work has appeared in Barrelhouse, Honey Literary, Infrarrealista Review, and elsewhere. They live in Central Texas with their partner and two cats. sghuertawriting.com

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Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!

LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!

Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, February 17, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.

Write-In Details/ Sign Up

February Writing Prompt:

The theme of love is simple, classic, eternal, and offers a myriad of entry points. There’s romantic love, hungry love, familial love, friendship love, pet love, monster love, lost love, twisted love, unrequited love, self love. There’s new love and seasoned love. Fleeting and forever love.

Tell us a love story; sing us a love song; write us a love poem; compose a love letter.

SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:

• Write about desire using metaphors about food, eating, or drinking. 

• Write a letter poem to a lover or friend about the terribly urgent, wonderful things you must tell them. 

• Write about your/or a character’s best, worst, or ideal date.

• Write a list poem repeating the word "because" or "reasons"

  because of my love for you____
  because I think of you____
  because you are mine____ 
  reasons I love you____

• Write about lost or unrequited love, about breaking up, missing or remembering someone. 

• Write a love story from the point of view of a mythical creature

• Write a how-to poem or essay about love

As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement, feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.

FOR INSPIRATION:

Love Sonnet XI, by Pablo Neruda
Having a Coke with You, by Frank O’Hara
The Friend, by Marge Piercy
To Love as Aswang, by Barbara Jane Reyes
What the Living Do, by Marie Howe
A Bronze God, or a Letter on Demand, Clifton Gachagua
What I Might Carry in the Small Cave of My Mouth +
How to Write a Love Letter by MK Chavez

Sign up for the February Write-In Workshop

A Writer’s Party Online Open Mic

This open mic is the culmination of a multi-day event billed as a free alternative to AWP including online and in-person events in Philly. Join Q&As, workshops, readings, music, a book fair, and more!
Open to all: Feb 8 - Feb 11. RSVP to individual events and panels here

Featuring:

Norm Maddox
Hollie Hardy
Kelechi Ubozoh
Natasha Dennerstein
Tongo Eisen-Martin

Hosted By: K.R. Morrison

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Sunday, February 11, 2023
5pm Central/ 6pm Eastern

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Advanced Registration Required
Click here to RSVP

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Free

Red Light Lit Austin

Join us for an evening of poetry, prose, live music, burlesque, and more on the theme of love.

Featuring:

Hollie Hardy
&
local Austin poets and performance artists (tba)

Hosted By: Loria Mendoza

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Saturday, Feb 10, 2024
10 pm

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Stinson Hall
10203 Old Manchaca Rd
Austin, TX

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RSVP on Eventbrite
$20 suggested donation
(no one turned away)

SNS | 1-27-24

Join me online for the first SNS of 2024, an evening of literary performance and open mic reading

Featuring: Maxine Chernoff & Marisa Crawford

Theme: Simultaneity (scroll down for prompt)

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday January 27, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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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

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 897 8202 8736

Passcode: 447624

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Author Bios

Maxine Chernoff was Dept. Chair and Creative Writing Professor at SFSU. She is the author of twenty books of poetry, most recently Light and Clay and Under the Music, both by MadHat Press of Massachusetts. She is winner of the 2009 PEN Translation Award with Paul Hoover for their translation of Hoelderlin and a 2013 NEA Fellow in poetry. In 2016 she was a visiting writer at the American Academy in Rome and in 2013 she was a visiting professor of Creative Writing at Exeter U in England. Also a fiction writer, her story collection Signs of Devotion was one of the 1993 NYT’s books of the year.

Marisa Crawford is the author of the poetry collections The Haunted House, Reversible, and, most recently, DIARY (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023). She is the editor of The Weird Sister Collection (Feminist Press, forthcoming 2024), and co-editor, with Megan Milks, of We Are The Baby-Sitters Club: Essays & Artwork from Grown-Up Readers. Marisa is co-host of the 90s rock podcast All Our Pretty Songs. She lives in New York.

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Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!

LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!

Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, January 20, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.

Write-In Details/ Sign Up

January Writing Prompt:

Simultaneity: the quality of existing or occurring at the same time; happening at once

“What sense it makes for these two mornings to exist side by side in the world where we live, should this be framed as a question, would not be answerable by philosophy or poetry or finance or by the shallows or the deeps of her own mind, she fears.” ~from Anne Carson’s short story “1=1”

For this month’s theme, I was inspired by a recent episode of The New Yorker Fiction Podcast, in which the speaker in Carson’s story tries to reconcile going for a swim in a beautiful lake while refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean. I was struck by the universality of this challenge—babies are born while others die, we eat while others starve, we are warm in our homes while others sleep outside, while planes crash and bombs drop, we drink our coffee and read the headlines, while the rich and powerful ruin the world. I think there’s something deeply human in these juxtapositions.

But simultaneity doesn’t require opposites, just concurrence. One can hum in the shower while washing one’s hair, dreaming of pancakes, listening to George Winston. One can invite friends over and they can all talk at once.

So, this is your January challenge, should you choose to accept it: write into the idea of simultaneity.

Tell us a story; sing us a song; write us a poem.

SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:

• Make a list of “where you were when” moments

• Let more than one thing arrive at once (or in layers) into your poem or story and allow meaning (or its lack) to arise in the juxtaposition—these might be big ideas, or small observations—a child crying, a cardinal on a branch in a snowstorm

• Perhaps begin with dailiness or interiority and then move outward into the world

• If you want to go more speculative/sci-fi, you might consider alternate realities (watch Everything Everywhere All at Once for inspiration)

• Or something else!

As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement, feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.

FOR INSPIRATION:

Teju Cole Reads Anne Carson on The New Yorker Fiction Podcast
The Children poem by Donald Revell
Simultaneously poem by Kimberly Grey
Emotional Intelligence poem by Pimone Triplett

Sign up for the January Write-In Workshop

SNS | 11-25-23

This is it! Don’t miss it! The last SNS of 2023. Join me online in your post-Thanksgiving afterglow, for an evening of literary performance and open mic reading.

Featuring: S.C. Says & Jeffrey Bryant

Theme: Reflection

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday November 25, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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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

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 861 3916 9297

Passcode: 730944

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Author Bios

Andre Bradford, a.k.a. S.C. Says, is an Austin-based slam poet who has been performing slam poetry since 2013. He's toured and featured at venues and universities across the country, and his work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Write About Now, The Edge radio, The Culture Trip, and Blavity. He is a two time Austin Poetry Slam Champion, the 2022 Texas Grand Slam Champion, and is the author of the poetry collection Golden Brown Skin. He also once popped a bag of popcorn without burning a single kernel, which is arguably one of his greatest achievements. His poetry covers a gamut of topics ranging from being mixed race, to social justice, to mental health awareness, to never settling in relationships. Slam poetry is an art form he loves due to its raw vulnerability and its ability to cultivate transparency and dialogues into many different walks of life.
Learn more at: scsayspoetry.com

Jeffrey Bryant is a queer poet/writer who lives in Los Angeles. He has been or will be published in the Los Angeles Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Poetic Diversity, the New Verse News, Poetrysuperhighway.com, and in the forthcoming November issue of Synchroniciti Magazine. His work has also appeared in the anthologies The Coiled Serpent from Tia Chucha Press; the 2020 Altadena Literary Review from Shabda Press; Shadowplay Literary Journal from the University of Arkansas and Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts from Mystic Boxing Commission Press.

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Write with Friends! Register for The Write-In!

LET’S WORK ON THE THEME TOGETHER!

Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, November 18, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop with Hollie Hardy.

Write-In Details/ Sign Up

November Writing Prompt:

As the year winds down and folds inward, towards food, friends and family, leaves turn to gold, days are shorter and colder—it’s a good time for gratitude, rest and reflection. What has this year meant to you? This life? Where are you going? Where have you been? This month’s theme of REFLECTION invites a multitude of interpretations.

Tell us a story; sing us a song; write us a poem.

SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:

• Reflection as contemplation, as serious thought. Reflect inward on the self, or outward on the world. What matters? What have you learned or achieved? What do you long for? What are you surprised about? What is one good thing? One regret?

• Reflection as self-portrait or ars poetica

• Reflection as mirror— moonlight reflecting in river, cityscape reflecting sky; music reflecting a generation, children reflecting our best and our worst, war in the Middle East reflected in violence in the U.S., but also illuminating our humanity

• Reflection as social commentary on literal reflection—how do we see ourselves clearly in a time when image is so profuse, so filtered and polished?

• Perhaps try a palindrome or mirror poem—forms that repeat in reverse midway through or repeat across two columns like a Rorschach (see Rita Dove and Natasha Trethewey poems below for examples of each)

• The truth is, most writing is reflective in some way, so this theme is wide open. To find your own way in, perhaps start by journaling or brainstorming about the year, then expand out, moving backwards or forward in time until you find a subject that speaks to this moment of reflection or an important past reflection or epiphany.

As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement, feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.

FOR INSPIRATION:

Mirror poem by Rita Dove
Myth poem by Natasha Trethewey
Reflections poem by Yusef Komunyakaa
Reflections on the Ruin of the Asylum at Saint-Rémy poem by Priscilla Atkins
I Make Promises Before I Dream poem by Tongo Eisen-Martin
Mirrored flash fiction by Jennifer Hudak
Mirror poem by Silvia Plath

Sign up for the November Write-In Workshop

Mixed Bag of Tricks Launch Party

Join us for an evening of fiction and fun to celebrate the release of Mixed Bag of Tricks, a new short story anthology of women writers. We’ll have readings by authors, books signings, and a Q&A hosted by the Writers’ League of Texas. Plus free drinks and snacks!

Featuring:

Roanna Flowers
Ilene Haddad
Hollie Hardy
Heidi Kasa
Annie Williams

Hosted by: Britta Jensen

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Saturday, November 18, 2023
6:30 pm

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Alienated Majesty Books
613 West 29th Street
Austin, TX 78705

Free Event

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Other ways to preorder Mixed Bag of Tricks

*Sixty percent of profits from the sale of this book will benefit the Writers’ League of Texas, the largest literary arts organization in Texas, a statewide nonprofit offering programs and services to writers.

SNS | 10-28-23

Join us online for the 13th Annual SNS Halloween Reading & Costume Party!

Featuring: Jan Steckel & E.C. Barrett

Theme: Monsters & Ghosts

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday October 28, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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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

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 840 9660 9338

Passcode: 564897

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Author Bios

Jan Steckel’s debut fiction collection Ghosts and Oceans was released this month on Zeitgeist Press. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won two Rainbow Awards. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her creative prose and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, Canary, Assaracus and elsewhere. She lives in Oakland, California.
Get your copy of Ghosts and Oceans at:
https://www.zeitgeist-press.com/index.php/product/ghosts-and-oceans/
Or, for a signed copy, send $24 via PayPal @Jansteckel or Venmo @Jan-Steckel

E.C. Barrett (they/she) writes folk horror, fabulism, and dark speculative fiction. They are, or have been, an academic, journalist, bookseller, editor, critic, and linocut artist. A Clarion West graduate, E.C. has words in Baffling Magazine, Split Lip, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere, and she serves as the book reviews editor for Reckoning. E.C. is queer, neurodivergent, and enjoys more maker hobbies than is entirely practical. ecbarrett.com

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October Writing Prompt:

For the 13th Annual Saturday Night Special Halloween Open Mic, we’re taking up some classic, spooky themes: Monsters & Ghosts.

Tell us a story; sing us a song; write us a poem.

SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:

• What defines a monster? What monsters have you known? What monsters have you been? Were they real or imagined?

• 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…

• 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!)

As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement, feel free to interpret loosely or ignore.

FOR INSPIRATION:

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
Jane Goodall and Bruce Springsteen Contemplate their Childlessness poem by John Dudek
All Souls poem by Michael Collier
Windigo poem by Louise Erdrich
Ghost poem by Cynthia Huntington
Field of Skulls poem by Mary Karr
Monster in the Lake poem by Martín Espada
Monster poem by Jason Irwin
The Witch Has Told You a Story poem by Ava Leavell Haymon

No Write-In this month!
Join me in Oakland, CA for Half Century Salon live in person on Friday, October 20!

Half Century Salon

In celebration of friendship, birthdays, and books,
join us live in Oakland for an evening of poetry, music, and art. 

Featuring:

Tongo Eisen-Martin
Cassandra Dallett
William Taylor Jr
Riley O’Connell
Tracy Artson
Valerie Sopher
K.R. Morrison
Paul Corman-Roberts
Hollie Hardy
Ryan Snellman

Music by:
The Corrupt Moneychanger

Art by:
Don Morey

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Friday, October 20, 2023
7 pm

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Studio Morey
5500 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Oakland, CA

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Free
Donations for drinks & snacks

SNS | 09-30-23

Featuring: Rick Lupert & Julian Matthews

Theme: How to Change the World
(Annual 100Thousand Poets for Change Event)

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday September 30, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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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

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 828 7608 4004

Passcode: 608683

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Author Bios

Rick Lupert has been involved with poetry in Los Angeles since 1990. He is the recipient of the 2017 Ted Slade Award, and the 2014 Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center Distinguished Service Award, a three time Pushcart Prize Nominee, and a Best of the Net nominee. He served as a co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets for 2 years, and created Poetry Super Highway. Rick hosted the weekly Cobalt Cafe reading for almost 21 years which has lived on as a weekly Zoom series since early 2020. His spoken word album "Rick Lupert Live and Dead" featured 25 studio and live tracks. He’s authored 27 collections of poetry, including “The Low Country Shvitz,” “I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii,” “The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express,” and “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion” (Ain’t Got No Press) and edited the anthologies “A Poet’s Siddur,” “Ekphrastia Gone Wild,” “A Poet’s Haggadah” and the noir anthology “The Night Goes on All Night.” He also writes and draws (with Brendan Constantine) the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” and writes a Jewish poetry column for JewishJournal.com. He has been lucky enough to read his poetry all over the world. Find him here:
poetrysuperhighway.com
jewishpoetry.net
facebook.com/rickpoet
catandbanana.com

Julian Matthews is a poet from Malaysia of mixed-minorities who is published in The American Journal of Poetry, Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Borderless Journal, among others. He stumbled onto poetry by accident six years ago at a writing workshop. That happy accident has turned into a rabid compulsion. He is still extricating himself from the crash. Welcome to his recovery. If you wish to support his practice, please Paypal him at trinetizen@gmail.com or send him Wordle answers at linktr.ee/julianmatthews

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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 23, for the monthly Write-In, a generative online workshop.

Write-In Details/ Sign Up

September Writing Prompt:

Since its inception in 2011, Saturday Night Special has participated annually in 100Thousand Poets for Change, a global literary event “to promote peace, sustainability, and justice, and call for serious social, environmental, and political change.”

This year, SNS’s September reading is dedicated to 100TPC’s late founder, Michael Rothenberg, who passed away late last year. Our theme is “How to Change the World.”

Tell us a story; sing us a song; write us a poem.

SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:

• Write a poem for peace, or a response to Dorothy Oger’s viral poem, written in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, “I shall stand for love.” (See short TEDx Talk below for inspiration.)

• Consider what needs changing in the world. (This is your beauty queen question.) Make a list. Think big and also small. Be specific—plastic in a hot ocean, war in Ukraine, oppression of women in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and other countries, burning musical instruments in Afghanistan, racism, fascism, homophobia, slave labor, homelessness, hunger, climate change, censorship, misinformation, autocracy, disease, Trump running around free in the world. There’s so much to choose from.

• Don’t be daunted by the bigness of the challenge. It’s okay to choose small things for change—more holding hands, fewer cars, cheaper arugula, removal of an ugly billboard you pass on the way to work, better pay for poets, a clean kitchen, a new sweater, cooler weather in which to wear said sweater, etc. What are the small things that would change your world?

• You are welcome to be super serious here—world changing is serious business—but it’s also also okay to be funny or ironic or playful in your approach to the theme.

• A question: Can poetry change the world? Has it? How so?

• You might also consider ways that you have already changed or been changed by the world, or by writing. What are the personal moments or decisions that have changed your life? What national or international events have you lived through that impacted both you and the world? The Cold War, 9/11, COVID, the invention of the internet, the iPhone, AI, the death of Sinead O’Connor…

• Imagine a future in which the world is vastly different in some way. This might be utopian or dystopian. Or neither.

• Maybe this is a how-to poem. Maybe not.

As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement.

FOR INSPIRATION:

Let’s Change the World One Poem at a Time, TEDx Talk, by Dorothy Oger and her poem “I shall stand for love”
Change the World, blog post by Eleni Sikelianos
Love in a Time of Climate Change, poem by Craig Santos Perez
Think, Think, poem by Tara Betts
He Said Turn Here, poem by Dean Young
If I Were in Charge of the World, poem by Judith Viorst
Making Peace, poem by Denise Levertov
I Look at the World, poem by Langston Hughes
Peace Walk, poem by William E. Stafford
What Shall We Tell Our Children? An Addenda, 1973, by Margaret Burroughs

Red Light Lit Austin

Join us for an evening of poetry, music, comedy, and more on the theme of love.

Featuring:

Brandix
She Burns
May Buzzetti
Gabe Davis
Hollie Hardy
Tandie Love
Savannah Marie
Shannon Purcell
Diego De Stefano
Natassia Wilde

Hosted By: Loria Mendoza

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Thursday, September 14, 2023
7:30 pm

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Cloud Tree Studios & Gallery
3411 E. 5th St.
Austin, TX

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Tickets at the door
$10 - $20
(sliding scale)

Cobalt Poets (Zoom Reading)

The Virtual Cobalt Poets series is hosted by Rick Lupert via Zoom every Tuesday night at 9:30pm Central Time. Each evening includes an open reading plus a featured reader (that’s me!).

During and after the event, you can download a digital broadside of my poem titled, “Capitalism or The Guy Who Ate a $120,000 Banana in an Art Museum Says He Was Just Hungry.”

Anyone who wants to read can sign up for the open mic when you join the Zoom meeting.

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Tuesday, September 12, 2023
9:30pm Central Time

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Free Event
Tips accepted via my PayPal or Venmo

SNS | 08-26-23

Featuring: Vanessa Rochelle Lewis & Jim Trainer

Theme: Lies

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday August 26, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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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

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 890 9261 3781

Passcode: 374317

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Author Bios

Vanessa Rochelle Lewis, MFA, is a Queer, Fat, Black, Femme performer, facilitator, educator, writer, activist, healer, and joyful weirdo. Lewis has been a writer and managing editor for Everyday Feminism and Black Girl Dangerous; an instructor at multiple Bay Area community colleagues; the Artist-Facilitator In Residence for the Young Women Freedom Center; and a core team member for Creating Freedom Movements. She is currently the Director of Programming for the Positive Results Center, an organization that addresses trauma and prevents violence within marginalized communities. Lewis founded Reclaim UGLY: Uplift Glorify Love Yourself – And Create A World Where Others Can As Well, which has hosted conferences, teach-ins, and healing workshops.

Visit Vanessa’s Website: reclaimugly.org
Preorder Reclaiming Ugly! A Radically Joyful Guide to Unlearn Oppression and Uplift, Glorify, and Love Yourself: from Penguin Random House
Patreon: @VanessaRochelleLewis
IG: @Black.Woman.Blooming
FB: Facebook.com/subversivepedagogies


Jim Trainer  contributes to Substack, served as columnist for Into The Void and blogged at Going For the Throat for over a decade. Trainer publishes one letterpressed collection every year through Yellow Lark Press. STRIDE is his 8th book.  As a progenitor of Stand UpTragedy™ he performs regularly throughout the world.

Jim’s website: jimtrainer.net
Jim’s Substack: jimtrainer.substack.com
Wastebook:  JimTrainerCommunicator
IG: @goingforthethroat

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Write with Friends! Register for the Write-In!

LET’S WORK ON THE SNS THEME TOGETHER!

Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, August 19, for the SNS Write-In, a generative online workshop.

Write In Details/ Sign Up

August Writing Prompt:

~Tell me lies; tell me sweet little lies…(Fleetwood Mac)

Who lied to you? Your mother? Your father? The media? The culture? Your teachers, your history books, your peers, your president, your lover, your mirror, yourself?

What was the mean little lie you told yourself? Or the lie you pretended was true?The tiny lie you justified. Who else have you lied to? Because you were being nice, or in denial, or covering up guilt or shame, or having some fun with fiction.

As writers, how can we tell lies in order to reveal an “emotional truth”?

Why do we talk about “lies” as plural and “the truth” as singular?

This month at SNS, you are invited to tell us lies! Or write about a lie, or replace the lies with truths. Tell us a story; write us a poem; sing us a song.

SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:

• Make a list of lies, general or specific, personal or political, private or public.

• Consider different kinds of lies—small lies, big lies, white lies, plagiarism, perjury, advertising, lies of omission, or betrayal, of compassion or treason.

• Use the old ice breaker “two truths and a lie” as a writing prompt.

• Think about the lies you’ve told and been told. Excavate the reasons, find the truth.

• Pick one or more lies to write about. Use lots of juicy details!

Or

• Write something completely or partially made up! Be playful. Change directions, change your story, double back, change your mind.

Or

Something else! As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement.

FOR INSPIRATION:

“White Lies,“ poem by Natasha Trethewey
”Two Truths and a Lie,” poem by Hajjar Baban
”Lies and Longing,” poem by Linda Gregg
”Lies Told Honestly,” poem by Sahar Khraibani
”More Lies,” poem by Karin Gottshall
”The Lies of Sleeping Dogs: A Fable,” poem by Susan Dwyer
”Bakery of Lies,” poem by Judith Askew
“How to Tell a True War Story,” short story by Tim O’Brien from his book, The Things They Carried

Colossus: Body (Zoom Reading)

Colossus Press takes over Bird & Beckett’s weekly Zoom reading, hosted by Kim Shuck.
I’ll be featuring along with other poets published in the Colossus: Body Anthology

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Featuring

Hollie Hardy
Jan Steckel
Marisa Lin
Susan Dambroff

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Monday, August 14, 2023
9pm - 11pm Central Time

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Free Event

SNS | 07-29-23

Featuring: Anhvu Buchanan & Kimberly Reyes

Theme: Erasure

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday July 29, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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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

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 857 5010 5806

Passcode: 360894

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Author Bios

Anhvu Buchanan is the author of The Disordered (sunnyoutside press), Backhanded Compliments & Other Ways to Say I Love You (Works on Paper Press) and just releasedfrom ELJ Editions, his latest book: The Peeling of a Name.  He was the recipient of a James D. Phelan Award and an Individual Artists Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State. He currently teaches in San Francisco and can be found online at anhvubuchanan.com.  
Buy his latest book here: https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9781942004578/the-peeling-of-a-name.aspx

Kimberly Reyes is the author of the recently released poetry collection vanishing point (Omnidawn 2023), and the collections Running to Stand Still (Omnidawn 2019) and Warning Coloration (dancing girl press 2018). Her nonfiction book of essays Life During Wartime (Fourteen Hills 2019) won the 2018 Michael Rubin Book Award. Her work is featured in various international outlets including The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, Time.com, The Best American Poetry blog, poets.org, and many more. Reyes has also received numerous fellowships including from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, the Fulbright Program, CantoMundo, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Tin House Workshops, and other places. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and she writes about identity, ecology, sexuality, and Cillian Murphy.
Learn more and buy her books here: kimberlyreyes.online

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The SNS Write-In Returns this Month!

LET’S WRITE TOGETHER!

Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, July 22, for the SNS Write-In, a generative online workshop.

Write In Details/ Sign Up

July Writing Prompt:

To erase is to remove, delete, scratch out, black out, white out, exterminate, nullify, silence, or forget.

Erasure can be literal, as a coffee stain, delete key, snow storm, remodel, drought, forest fire, or murder—the genocide of Indigenous Americans—or it can be less tangible—the erasure of Black history from curriculum, the banning of books, gentrification, the silencing of truth through lies or omissions, the loss of agency or identity through denial of a name, language, media coverage, cultural practice, etc. 

This month at SNS, you are invited to write into the theme of “Erasure.”

SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:

Consider the personal, things you have erased (accidentally or deliberately), denied yourself, ignored, pushed down, forgotten, gotten over, filtered out; or things that have been taken from you—a name, a pronoun, a history, a family, a home, an opportunity, a right. How have you (been) silenced, discredited, ignored, or oppressed? What have you blocked out or silently witnessed? How can you work to undo erasure by writing/righting the narrative?

Or 

Write about partial erasure. Think palimpsest. Think layers. Appropriation, graffiti. That which persists and remains. The past peeking through the weeds of the present like abandoned trolley tracks.

 Or

Try erasure as form:

Erasure poetry, also known as blackout poetry, is a form of “found poetry” wherein the writer takes an existing text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise obscures a large portion of the text, creating a wholly new work from what remains. Erasure poetry may be used as a means of collaboration, creating a new text from an old one and thereby starting a dialogue between the two, or as a means of confrontation, a challenge to a pre-existing text.

Or

Consider erasure within your own poem. Add caesura, white space or [ ] or strikethroughs to emphasize what is missing, what’s been left out or erased.

Or

Something else! As ever, the theme is optional—an invitation, not a requirement.

FOR INSPIRATION:

Pilgrim poem by Megan Snyder-Camp
Dear— poem by Donika Kelly
Erasure in Three Acts: An Essay by Muriel Leung
Erasure of Girlhood The Slow Down 5-minute podcast, with poem by Sarah María Medina.
Or read it yourself here. (Please Note: There’s a trigger warning for this poem).
Four erasure poems by Katrina Roberts
Newspaper blackout poems & process videos by Austin Kleon
Declarations erasure poem read by the author, former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith
The Mannequin short fiction + erasure prompt by Sarah Barkat
Lessons in Erasure micro fiction by Jack Barker-Clark
The Near Transitive Properties of the Political and Poetical: Erasure essay by Solmaz Sharif
Redeclarations.com interactive project by Halim Madi, in which participants create digital erasures from the Declaration of Independence.