2020 Virtual Conference for Readers and Writers
Join us for our first-ever Virtual Conference for Readers and Writers!
October 17th – November 18th, 2020
For 41 years, Nimrod has hosted an in-person, all-day writing conference in conjunction with the publication of our fall issue. While we’ve had to cancel this year’s in-person events due to the pandemic, we’re thrilled to host our first-ever all-virtual Conference for Readers and Writers. This year’s Conference will feature a month of virtual panel discussions, craft talks/writing workshops, Q&As, and one-on-one critique sessions with members of our editorial team.
Schedule of Events
Saturday, October 17th, 2:00 p.m. CST
Novel and Memoir Writers: Chapter One: Where Do I Start? — Sandra Hunter
Craft Talk/Workshop
[This craft talk/workshop is currently full. To be added to the waitlist in case of any cancellations, please email nimrod@utulsa.edu with your name and the title of this session, along with a brief note saying you would like to be added to the waitlist.]
You know it’s crucial to have a riveting opening and a compelling first chapter, but how do you do this? In this workshop, we’ll look at examples of successful book openings and practice writing our own. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have the tools to generate a strong, engaging start.
Sandra Hunter is the founder of the Writers Festival in Ventura County. She teaches creative writing at Moorpark College, California. Her fiction won the 2018 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, the 2017 Leapfrog Press Fiction Award, and the 2016 Gold Line Press Chapbook Prize. She is a 2018 Hawthornden Fellow and the 2017 Charlotte Sheedy Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. She is also member ofNimrod’s editorial board.
Saturday, October 17th, 5:00 p.m. CST
Awards 42 Book Launch: A Reading with Rebecca Foust and Janine Certo
Reading and Author Chat
Join us as we celebrate the winners of Nimrod’s 42nd Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry: First Prize-winner Rebecca Foust and Second Prize-winner Janine Certo. Rebecca and Janine will read their winning poems, and we’ll chat with them about poetry, their tips for aspiring writer, what’s next for them, and more.
Rebecca Foust is the author of seven books including Paradise Drive, The Unexploded Ordnance Bin, and ONLY, forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2022. Her recognitions include the C. P. Cavafy and James Hearst poetry prizes, Marin Poet Laureateship, and fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee. The First Prize-winner of Nimrod’s 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, she is poetry editor for Women’s Voices for Change and an assistant editor for Narrative Magazine.
Janine Certo is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Elixir, winner of both the 2020 New American Poetry Prize and the 2020 Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize (forthcoming, co-published by New American Press and Bordighera Press) and In the Corner of the Living, first runner-up for the 2017 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award (Main Street Rag, 2017). Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Rumpus, New Ohio Review, The Greensboro Review, Nimrod, and other journals. The Second Prize-winner of Nimrod’s 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, she is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University.
Sunday, October 18th, 5:00 p.m. CST
Young Writers Under 25: BreakBread Literacy Project — W. David Hall, Sandra Hunter (moderator), Crystal AC Salas, Jamie Lyn Smith
Panel Discussion
BreakBread is dedicated to raising and empowering the voices of young writers. In the first part of the panel, the staff of BreakBread will discuss the project and their plans to develop a new, inclusive platform for young writers. During the second part, two young writers will discuss their experiences with BreakBread. Attendees will learn about the programs offered by BreakBread and how to submit their work, join workshops and readings, and belong to a young writing community. The audience is encouraged to submit questions via chat.
W. David Hall is president and CEO of BreakBread Literacy Project. He teaches English at Valley International Preparatory High School in Chatsworth, California. He was on-site director of the Kenyon Young Writers Program. His work can be seen in The Kenyon Review, Callaloo, and After The Pause, as well as The Best African American Fiction 2010.
Sandra Hunter is the founder of the Writers Festival in Ventura County, CA. She teaches creative writing at Moorpark College. Her fiction won the 2018 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, the 2017 Leapfrog Press Fiction Award, and the 2016 Gold Line Press Chapbook Prize. She is a 2018 Hawthornden Fellow and the 2017 Charlotte Sheedy Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. She is also a member of Nimrod’s Editorial board.
Crystal AC Salas is a Chicanx poet, essayist, educator, and community organizer. Her work has appeared in [PANK] Magazine, PCC Inscape, Chaparral Poetry, The Acentos Review, and other publications. She lives in Los Angeles where she writes about community landscapes of grief, remembrance, and memorialized and un-memorialized spaces. She is currently completing her M.F.A. at the University of California, Riverside, and is working on two manuscripts.
Jamie Lyn Smith is an alumna of Kenyon College, Fordham University, and Ohio State University. Her short story collection Township is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2021. Her work has appeared in The Pinch, The Mississippi Review, American Literary Review, Barely South, Bayou, The Kenyon Review,and other literary magazines. She received a 2020 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for her forthcoming novel, Hometown.
Wednesday, October 21st, 7:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time (8:00 p.m. Eastern / 6:00 p.m. Mountain / 5:00 p.m. Pacific)
Ask Us Anything: Editing and Publishing Q&A — Cassidy McCants, Eilis O’Neal
Q&A Session
Have questions about getting your work ready to submit or about the publishing industry in general? Want to know what catches an editor’s eye or turns them off your work? Join Nimrod’s Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editor for answers about anything and everything publishing. Editing, revising, the role of literary agents, writing query letters, traditional vs. small press vs. self-publishing, using social media—it’s all on the table in this open Q&A session!
Cassidy McCants received her M.F.A. in fiction writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is an Associate Editor withNimrod and is the creator/editor of Apple in the Dark. Her work has appeared in The Lascaux Review, Liars’ League NYC, Gravel, and elsewhere. She won the 2020 Innovative Short Fiction Contest from The Conium Review.
Eilis O’Neal has worked at Nimrod for twenty years and is currently the journal’s Editor-in-Chief. She is also the author of the young adult fantasy novel The False Princess, and her short fantasy has appeared in Strange Horizons, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and other publications.
Saturday, October 24th, 1:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time (2:00 p.m. Eastern / 12:00 p.m. Mountain / 11:00 a.m. Pacific)
Conceit: The Third Foundation of Fiction — Christopher Murphy
Craft Talk/Workshop
Plot and character form two fundamental driving forces of fiction. There is another, however: conceit. From worldbuilding to metafictional devices to rare points-of-view to extended symbol and metaphor, conceits can enrich and distinguish a work of fiction, and, at times, guide it as much as character and plot. This workshop will define the term, outline some uses, and provide tips and examples that can help you with conceit in your own fiction or in editing the work of others.
Christopher Murphy received his M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas and currently teaches creative writing at Northeastern State University. He also serves on the editorial board for Nimrod. His work has appeared in Gulf Coast, This Land, Jellyfish Review, Necessary Fiction, decomP, Spartan, Ghost Parachute, and The Tulsa Voice, among other publications. He has a collection of flash fiction, Burning All the Time, coming soon from Mongrel Empire Press.
Saturday, October 24th, 5:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time (6:00 p.m. Eastern / 4:00 p.m. Mountain / 3:00 p.m. Pacific)
The Sestina Challenge — Francine Ringold
Craft Talk/Workshop
Want to learn how to write a sestina or improve the sestinas you’ve already written? This workshop will show you the way! We’ll combine history, poetry, storytelling, counting, and stretches, involving the mind and the body to learn not only to incorporate sestinas into your poetry, but also to have fun and make discoveries while accomplishing this daring endeavor. In six stanzas of six lines each and a flourishing envoi of three lines, you can do it all!
Francine Ringold, Ph.D., served two terms as Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and 47 years as Nimrod’s Editor-in-Chief. She is now Nimrod’s Senior Advisory Editor. She has received The Oklahoma Book Award and the Women in Communications Award. Her publications include The Trouble with Voices, Still Dancing, and, most recently, The Way We See Now: A Collaboration of Photography and Poetry, a collaboration with Sam Joyner.
Sunday, October 25th, 1:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time (2:00 p.m. Eastern / 12:00 p.m. Mountain / 11:00 a.m. Pacific)
Compression & Collaboration: Haiku and Tanka — Britton Gildersleeve and Keely Record
Craft Talk/Workshop
[This craft talk/workshop is currently full. To be added to the waitlist in case of any cancellations, please email nimrod@utulsa.edu with your name and the title of this session, along with a brief note saying you would like to be added to the waitlist.]
Participants will read classic haiku and tanka, learn about these interrelated forms, and engage with other writers collaboratively to create haiku, a collaborative tanka, and an individual tanka. Plan on doing some writing, participating in a breakout session, and leaving with a bibliography of haiku and tanka sources, as well as at least two new poems!
Britton Gildersleeve is a nationally published poet in several forms and media, including haiku and tanka. A former Oklahoma Humanities board member, she is retired from Oklahoma State University, where for 12 years she directed a federal non-profit to teach writing. She holds a Ph.D. in creative writing with emphasis in poetry. She is a member of Nimrod’s editorial board.
Keely Record lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She received an M.F.A. from the Red Earth Creative Writing M.F.A. program at Oklahoma City University. She serves on the editorial board of Nimrod, and her poetry has appeared in Atlas Poetica and Bamboo Hut.
Wednesday, October 28th, 7:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time (8:00 p.m. Eastern / 6:00 p.m. Mountain / 5:00 p.m. Pacific)
What Did He Know, and How Did He Know It? — Grant Matthew Jenkins
Craft Talk/Workshop
[This craft talk/workshop is currently full. To be added to the waitlist in case of any cancellations, please email nimrod@utulsa.edu with your name and the title of this session, along with a brief note saying you would like to be added to the waitlist.]
Detective fiction and thrillers inevitably involve plots with protagonists who must learn things in order to solve a crime, avert a disaster, or save a life. But when do they learn, and how do they learn? Focusing mainly on detective fiction, this workshop will explore the various ways in which detectives learn about crimes and where to place those steps in your plot. Participants will leave this workshop with ideas about how to make their stories engaging, thrilling, and believable.
Grant Matthew Jenkins teaches literature and creative writing at The University of Tulsa. His latest book is Ivory Tower, a campus thriller about a film professor who takes down a corrupt university football program. He is also a member of the Nimrod editorial board.
Thursday, October 29th, 7:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time (8:00 p.m. Eastern / 6:00 p.m. Mountain / 5:00 p.m. Pacific)
Character IS Action — Blake Kimzey
Craft Talk/Workshop
Who are your favorite characters from literature, TV, and film? Why do you love them above all others? The characters that stick with us are ones we care deeply about; we want them to survive, to win the heart of their beloved, to conquer and vanquish their foes, real and imagined. To fully understand our favorite characters—and to fall in love with them as readers—we have to know what they want, what will happen if they don’t get it, and why it needs to happen now. Writers must give characters agency, move them to action, and let them drive the story. You’ll leave this workshop with a better understanding of who your characters are, what they want, and what will happen if they don’t get it.
Blake Kimzey founded and directs WritingWorkshops.com and is a co-founder of The Big Texas Read. His fiction has been broadcast on NPR, published by Tin House, McSweeney’s, VICE, The Los Angeles Review, and other publications, and was selected by Robert Olen Butler for inclusion inThe Best Small Fictions 2015. His collection of short stories, Families Among Us, was published by Black Lawrence Press. He has taught in the creative writing programs at Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas-Dallas, and the University of California, Irvine.
Monday, November 2nd, 3:00 p.m. Central Standard Time (4:00 p.m. Eastern / 2:00 p.m. Mountain / 1:00 p.m. Pacific)
13 Ways of Looking Again at Ekphrasis — Catharine Batsios, Steve Bellin-Oka (moderator), Veronica Golos, Courtney Harler, Wayne Johns
Panel Discussion
The ekphrastic tradition in Western poetry is at least as old as Homer’s description of the shield of Achilles in The Iliad. Indeed, some of the most iconic poems in the English language tradition mimetically describe paintings considered masterpieces. Recently, however, poets have begun to write ekphrastic poems that engage with other art forms—jazz and pop music, film, and photography, among others—in an effort to redefine poetry’s relationship to other works of art. Fiction writers have also adapted the ekphrastic tradition to their narratives. In this panel, four poets and a fiction writer will discuss how they are approaching new avenues of this longstanding tradition.
Catharine Batsiosis from Flint, Michigan, and currently lives in Detroit, where she is a poet and teaching artist serving local youth and the literary community. It took her eight years and one dropout to graduate from a state school. She studies with the Daedalus Poets at the Kitchen Table of Diane Wakoski. Her poetry has appeared in Glass Poetry, Flypaper, andLinden Ave Lit, and is forthcoming from Kissing Dynamite’s PUNK Anthology and FlowerSong Press’s Good Cop/Bad Cop: An Anthology.
Steve Bellin-Oka’s first book of poems, Instructions for Seeing a Ghost (University of North Texas Press, 2020) won the Vassar Miller Prize. He is also the author of three chapbooks, most recently Out of the Frame (Walls Divide Press, 2019). His next chapbook, Elegies for the Gasoline Age, is forthcoming in 2021. He is a member of the Nimrod editorial board and a Tulsa Artist Fellow. His other honors include fellowships from Yaddo, the National Parks Arts Foundation, and the Vermont Studio Center.
Veronica Golos is the author of four poetry books, including GIRL, awarded the Naji Naaman Honor Prize, 2019 (Beirut, Lebanon); Rootwork:Vocabulary of Silence, winner of the 2011 New Mexico Book Award and translated into Arabic and Persian; and A Bell Buried Deep, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. She lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her husband David Pérez.
Courtney Harler, a freelance writer, editor, and educator, holds both an M.A. and an M.F.A. She reads and writes literary fiction and currently lends her editorial eye to The Masters Review and Funicular Magazine. Courtney’s creative work has appeared worldwide, and a full list of her publications can be found at courtneyharler.wordpress.com.
Wayne Johns’s first book, Antipsalm, received the Editor’s Choice prize from Unicorn Press. He is also the author of The Exclusion Zone (Rane Arroyo chapbook series, Seven Kitchens Press). His poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, New England Review, Ploughshares, Image,Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. A former Lambda Literary Fellow, he is currently a poetry editor for The Adroit Journal.
Thursday, November 5th, 7:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (8:30 p.m. Eastern / 6:30 p.m. Mountain / 5:30 p.m. Pacific)
Stillness in Fiction — Katy Mullins, Anita Trimbur
Craft Talk/Workshop
[This craft talk/workshop is currently full. To be added to the waitlist in case of any cancellations, please email nimrod@utulsa.edu with your name and the title of this session, along with a brief note saying you would like to be added to the waitlist.]
Stillness is essential to storytelling. Think about a lingering note in a song or a lull in a film’s action. These moments allow us to breathe, to consider, and to experience relief. But in writing, where words must continue to carry a narrative forward, how can we simulate stillness? This workshop will examine ways to demonstrate stillness in fiction and guide you through a prompt series to incorporate quiet moments into your own writing.
Katy Mullins’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from such journals as The Baltimore Review, Brevity, and Hong Kong Review, among others. She serves on the Nimrod editorial board and currently lives in Washington, D.C.
Anita Trimbur holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pittsburgh. Her fiction has been longlisted for the SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction. Currently, she is working on late drafts of her novel.
Saturday, November 7th, 10:00 a.m. Central Standard Time (11:00 a.m. Eastern / 9:00 a.m. Mountain / 8:00 a.m. Pacific)
Awards 42 Book Launch: A Reading with Mohit Manohar and Gage Saylor
Reading and Author Chat
Join us as we celebrate the winners of Nimrod’s 42nd Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction: First Prize-winner Mohit Manohar and Second Prize-winner Gage Saylor. Mohit and Gage will read their winning stories, and we’ll chat with them about fiction, their tips for aspiring writers, what’s next for them, and more.
Mohit Manohar was raised in India and came to the U.S. for his higher education. His debut short story appeared last year in Michigan Quarterly Review and received a PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize. The First Prize-winner of Nimrod’s 2020 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, he is currently a graduate student in art history at Yale and is working on a dissertation set in medieval India and a novel set in contemporary India.
Gage Saylor is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in fiction at Oklahoma State University. He holds an M.A. and M.F.A. from McNeese State University, where he received the Robert Olen Butler Award for Fiction and the Paul-Avee Prize. The Second Prize-winner of Nimrod’s 2020 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, he has work published or forthcoming in Superstition Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Passages North, and elsewhere.
Saturday, November 7th, 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time (2:00 p.m. Eastern / 12:00 p.m. Mountain / 11:00 a.m. Pacific)
The World We Want: A Generative Workshop — Aurora Masum-Javed
Craft Talk/Workshop
Resistance requires imagination. It asks us to see beyond what is broken toward what could exist. Often, we create those spaces of change: at the bus stop, in our living rooms, on the dance floor. In this generative workshop, we’ll look to work that explores the power of joy, grief, and listening—the ode that emerges in spite of. We’ll write our gratitude for these everyday liberations. And we’ll mourn the devastation that is. We’ll consider pieces that demand the seemingly impossible—peace, universal outrage—and we’ll create our own poetic visions. Even in this moment of profound loss and isolation, there is community and the possibility of transformation. We will keep dreaming, fighting, reaching for each other. We will create work for what the world should be.
Aurora Masum-Javed is a poet, educator, and writing coach. A former public school teacher, she holds an M.F.A. from Cornell University, where she also lectured. Her work can be found in journals including Nimrod, Black Warrior Review, Aster(ix), and Winter Tangerine. She is a member of Nimrod’s editorial board and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, Caldera Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Kundiman, Callaloo, BOAAT, and elsewhere. A Philip Roth Resident and Hub City Writer in Residence, she is working on her first collection of poems.
Saturday, November 7th, 5:00 p.m. Central Standard Time (6:00 p.m. Eastern / 4:00 p.m. Mountain / 3:00 p.m. Pacific)
Women of Color: Writing with an Authentic Voice — Lisa Horiuchi, Sandra Hunter (moderator), Aurora Masum-Javed, Lynne Thompson, Sholeh Wolpé
Panel Discussion
In this panel we’ll discuss what writing with an authentic voice means. The panelists will discuss their own work and offer ideas for women of color aiming to present original and compelling writing. The audience is encouraged to submit questions via chat.
Lisa Horiuchi’s work appears in Nimrod and Conjunctions, and her novelette, Bones, is anthologized in the Ploughshares Solos series. A former business strategist, she received her M.F.A. in fiction from The University of California, Irvine, and is currently working on a novel. She is also a member of the Nimrod editorial board.
Sandra Hunter is the founder of the Writers Festival in Ventura County. She teaches creative writing at Moorpark College in California. Her fiction won the 2018 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, the 2017 Leapfrog Press Fiction Award, and the 2016 Gold Line Press Chapbook Prize. She is a 2018 Hawthornden Fellow and the 2017 Charlotte Sheedy Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. She is also member of Nimrod’s Editorial board,
Aurora Masum-Javed is a poet, educator, and writing coach. A former public school teacher, she holds an M.F.A. from Cornell University, where she also lectured. Her work can be found in journals including Nimrod, Black Warrior Review, Aster(ix), and Winter Tangerine. She is a member of Nimrod’s editorial board and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, Caldera Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Kundiman, Callaloo, BOAAT, and elsewhere. A Philip Roth Resident and Hub City Writer in Residence, she is working on her first collection of poems.
Lynne Thompson is the author of Start With a Small Guitar, Beg No Pardon, winner of the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award, and Fretwork, selected by Jane Hirshfield for the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize in 2019. Thompson’s recent work appears in or is forthcoming from Ploughshares, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, december, and Best American Poetry 2020.
Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-born poet and playwright. Her work includes more than twelve collections of poetry, books of translations, and anthologies, as well as several plays. She is the recipient of the 2014 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, the 2013 Midwest Book Award, and the 2010 Lois Roth Persian Translation prize, and her most recent books include Keeping Time With Blue Hyacinth and The Conference of the Birds (W.W. Norton). She is currently the Writer-in-Residence at the University of California, Irvine. Her website is www.sholehwolpe.com.
Sunday, November 8th, 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time (2:00 p.m. Eastern / 12:00 p.m. Mountain / 11:00 a.m. Pacific)
Poetry Is but a Dream: Using Dream Analysis for Poetry Revisions — Courtney Spohn
Craft Talk/Workshop
This hands-on workshop is for any writer with a poem that’s goodbut not quite superb. We’ll apply a simple dream analysis technique (see post on the Nimrod blog) to your poem to gain new insight into the work. You’ll be asked to access your intuition and to connect to your body using your non-dominant hand. This method is intended to be both playful and meaningful—with no pressure to go about the technique any certain way. Participants will be welcome but not required to share their revisions and comments on the technique as time permits. Please bring a poem you are interested in revising.
Courtney Spohn lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she has participated in various poetry readings. Her work has appeared, with Sheila E. Black, in Otoliths. She is a member of Nimrod’s editorial board, and she helps others learn to talk to themselves in a kind way through her life coaching at courtneyspohn.com.
Wednesday, November 11th, 7:00 p.m. Central Standard Time (8:00 p.m. Eastern / 6:00 p.m. Mountain / 5:00 p.m. Pacific)
Honoring the Journey: A Poetry Workshop on Creating through Loss and Pain — Kimberly Ann Priest
Craft Talk/Workshop
[This craft talk/workshop is currently full. To be added to the waitlist in case of any cancellations, please email nimrod@utulsa.edu with your name and the title of this session, along with a brief note saying you would like to be added to the waitlist.]
Emotions that arise from loss—such as grief, fear, and depression—can be difficult to process, especially when they’re stigmatized in public spaces or dismissed by those close to us. Psychology has long recognized the value of art in working through these emotions—because the act of creation,making things, is empowering. In this workshop, we’ll use personal objects to stimulate memory and create litany poems memorializing our experiences with loss. Attendees should have chosen an object beforethe workshop begins.
Kimberly Ann Priestis the author of Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications 2021) and the chapbooks Still Life (PANK 2020), Parrot Flower(Glass 2020), and White Goat Black Sheep (FLP 2018). She is currently an assistant professor of first-year writing at Michigan State University, a fiction editor for Nimrod,and an Embody reader for The Maine Review. You can find her work at kimberlyannpriest.com.
Friday, November 13th, 7:00 p.m. Central Standard Time (8:00 p.m. Eastern / 6:00 p.m. Mountain / 5:00 p.m. Pacific)
Re/Genesis: Reinventing Genesis for the 21st Century — Scott Chalupa
Craft Talk/Workshop
[This craft talk/workshop is currently full. To be added to the waitlist in case of any cancellations, please email nimrod@utulsa.edu with your name and the title of this session, along with a brief note saying you would like to be added to the waitlist.]
In Paradise Lost, Milton infused the sparse text of Genesis with cutting-edge biology and astronomy and gave us fleshy characters rounded out with human failures and desires. The writers of the television show Lucifer reinvented Eve as a woman without a self-determined identity (beyond her arranged marriage to Adam and her deep infatuation with Lucifer). In this workshop, we’ll explore how poets have revised and updated Genesis tales to fit contemporary times and trials. We’ll then turn our sights and pens to writing some poetic reinterpretations of our own.
Scott Chalupa is the author of Quarantine (PANK 2019). He lives and writes in South Carolina, where he teaches at Central Carolina Technical College. His current creative obsession is queering Biblical text and history in order to comment on the world today. His work has appeared in PANK, pacificREVIEW, Nimrod, Beloit Poetry Journal, The South Atlantic Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and other venues. He is also a member of Nimrod’s editorial board.
Saturday, November 14th, 5:00 p.m. Central Standard Time (6:00 p.m. Eastern / 4:00 p.m. Mountain / 3:00 p.m. Pacific)
Women of Color: Writing for BLM and Social Justice — Sandra Hunter (moderator), Pat Payne, Adrienne Perry, Yasamin Safarzadeh, Crystal AC Salas
Panel Discussion
Against the apocalyptic backdrop of the pandemic, fires, hurricanes–not to mention the imminent election—we’re witnessing nationwide protests and calls for defunding the police in response to police shootings. How do writers respond to all this? Our panel will discuss the importance of writing to truth and how to approach writing for social justice. The audience is encouraged to submit questions via chat.
Sandra Hunter is the founder of the Writers Festival in Ventura County, CA. She teaches creative writing at Moorpark College. Her fiction won the 2018 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, the 2017 Leapfrog Press Fiction Award, and the 2016 Gold Line Press Chapbook Prize. She is a 2018 Hawthornden Fellow and the 2017 Charlotte Sheedy Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. She is also a member of Nimrod’s Editorial board.
Pat Payne, aka The Velvet Hammer, is a multifaceted creative being, reluctant shaman, and self-avowed troublemaker. She is the reigning two-time Taos Poetry Circus Heavyweight Champion, a Los Angeles Moth StorySLAM champion, founding member of the NeoSpinsters poetry ensemble, and former member of the Taco Shop Poets. She is also a visual and performance artist and jewelry designer.
Adrienne Perry is a Kimbilio Fellow, Hedgebrook alumna, and a member of the Rabble Collective. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She writes and teaches outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and she is a member of the Nimrod editorial board.
Yasamin Safarzadeh is a recent M.F.A. recipient from the New Hampshire Institute of Art and a current M.B.A .candidate at Southern New Hampshire University. She has moved to New Hampshire from Los Angeles in order to pursue a more natural and diligent lifestyle. She has been published in a handful of periodicals and journals, and is currently fulfilling several commissions for paintings. She works for YWCA New Hampshire and the Currier Museum of Art, creating accessibility to the arts for often underserved populations. Her website is www.surethingyaz.com.
Crystal AC Salas is a Chicanx poet, essayist, educator, and community organizer. Her work has appeared in [PANK] Magazine, PCC Inscape, Chaparral Poetry, The Acentos Review, and other publications. She lives in Los Angeles where she writes about community landscapes of grief, remembrance, and memorialized and un-memorialized spaces. She is currently completing her M.F.A. at the University of California, Riverside and is working on two manuscripts.
Wednesday, November 18th, 7:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (8:30 p.m. Eastern / 6:30 p.m. Mountain / 5:30 p.m. Pacific)
Young Writers under 25: Performing Arts and Playwriting as a Vehicle for Social Change — Kevin Butt, Aliya Hunter, Sandra Hunter (moderator), Arden Siadek, Jillian Yong
Panel Discussion
Theatre for Social Change (TFSC) is a student-run organization at the University of California, Davis. TFSC works to give marginalized students and allies a platform to share their art, ideas, and voices, and the organization is devoted to exploring social issues through performance by producing their own events, including student-written works, and via collaborations with other organizations. In this panel, four board members will answer questions about using theatre and playwriting as a vehicle for exploring complex social issues experienced in our daily lives.
Kevin Butt is a graduate student in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. He is one of the original founding members of Theatre For Social Change. Kevin is very passionate about education and the intersectionality of social justice, performing arts, and the social sciences. He currently teaches at a charter school in Inglewood, California, and for S.M.A.S.H Academy.
Aliya Hunter is a fourth-year Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies major the University of California, Davis. She is one of the Event Directors of TFSC.
Sandra Hunter is the founder of the Writers Festival in Ventura County. She teaches creative writing at Moorpark College, California. Her fiction won the 2018 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, the 2017 Leapfrog Press Fiction Award, and the 2016 Gold Line Press Chapbook Prize. She is a 2018 Hawthornden Fellow and the 2017 Charlotte Sheedy Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. She is also member of Nimrod’s editorial board.
Nicole (Cole) Wagoner is a UC Davis freshman at UC Davis who has been involved in musical theatre for 11 years. She is a Hxstorian for Theatre for Social Change. She is passionate about writing plays, novels, poetry, and music.
Kaiden Zaldumbide is a a Latinx genderqueer artst, actor, and playwright. They are currently third-year Studio Art and Theater and Dance double major at the University of California, Davis. Kaiden’s work typically focuses on minority struggles, exploration into the human experience and human psychology. Their pronouns are he/they, and they are the Grant Coordinator for Theater for Social Change.