Gemini Ink

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Anel Flores
2024-11-20 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Mexico_City) | Online via Zoom
Join us on Wednesday, Nov 20th, 2024, via Zoom for a conversation with Anel Flores, author of Cortinas de lluvia/Curtains of Rain. Moderated by Dr. Jackie Cuevas.

(Zoom Readings Monthly @ 7pm CST)
RSVP for Zoom invite

Curtains of Rain/Cortinas de Lluvia, follows the story of Solitaria, who escapes her small border town, to arrive at the door of her gay tíos on a quest to queer traditions, turn trauma into triumph, and find home. Release date is May 2025 with Jaded Ibis Press.

Solitaria Gaviota-Alaniz is a girl on the margins, growing up in a border town while navigating the complexities of familial relationships, environmental racism, and a queer secret that threatens to cleave her from those she cherishes most. Eventually, towing the line becomes untenable, and after a traumatic exorcism, Sol is forced to flee from everything she has ever known.
Fifteen years later, Solitaria returns to confront the ghosts of homophobia haunting her past. Supported by a found familia of gay tios, her nonbinary best friend Toni, and a diverse community of panederas and drag queens in San Antonio, Sol embarks on a search and rescue mission for her lost self. Soaked in vibrant landscapes of identity and resilience, Curtains of Rain details one woman’s coming-of-age between cities, between cultures, and between budding loves.

Anel I. Flores is a trans-Latina/x writer, artist, and activist whose work explores LGBTQIA+ experiences, Latina/x literature, and social issues. Anel’s literary contributions have been featured in numerous publications, including Switchgrass Review and Sinister Wisdom. Their plays have been produced on stage, and their visual art has been exhibited in galleries worldwide. Anel’s upcoming novel.

Dr. Jackie Cuevas is the author of Post-Borderlandia: Chicana Literature and Gender Variant Critique (Rutgers University Press, 2018) and the poetry chapbook Otherhood, USA (Tanto Tinto Press, 2000). Cuevas teaches at UT Austin and is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop,

Veterans Writing Collective with Sarah Colby
2024-11-20 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-10-16 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-09-18 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-08-21 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
The Veteran’s Writing Collective (VWC) encourages the art of writing in a workshop environment where participants are offered honest, positive, and constructive peer-to-peer and mentor feedback. The workshop is open to all active-duty military, veterans, retirees, and their immediate family members. Writers of all levels working in all genres are welcome.
The VWC meets monthly online via Zoom.
If you would like an invitation to this class, send an email to veteranscollective@geminiink.org

Sarah Colby was born in northern New Mexico and raised in the Rocky Mountains. She is married to a retired Army Chaplain and is mother to a son in the Navy. Sarah has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada College and an exuberant interest in making the ordinary luminous. Her war-time experiences have motivated her to be a voice for the mostly untold stories of families and loved ones during these years of protracted conflict. She is currently working on a manuscript of poems about her experiences as a military family member.

What Happens Inside: A Body Horror Workshop with Leticia Urieta
2024-11-14 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Thursdays, November 14 & 21, 2024, 6:30-8:30pm CST, via Zoom
Instructor: Leticia Urieta
Nonmember: $150; Member: $130; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

When it comes to our bodies, there is little we fear more than the inevitability that our bodies will change, can fall ill, and will die. Body horror helps us to write about the absurdity, beauty, and horror of being corporeal.
This two-session virtual workshop will focus on reading and discussing stories of body horror that affect us and engage with stories of illness, trauma, loss, power, monstrousness, and reclamation. We will also discuss how these stories can inspire our own. In this generative workshop, we will engage with multiple activities inviting us to write and share our own body horror stories.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 16+.
By the end of the class, students will have:

Draft 1-2 new pieces based on sample readings and class discussion
Gain new insights into various genres, from horror to speculative imaginings, to apply to their future writing.
Come away with an expanded knowledge of contemporary genres.

Leticia Urieta is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. Leticia is a graduate of Agnes Scott College with a BA in English/Creative Writing and holds an MFA in Fiction writing from Texas State University.
She works as a teaching artist in the Austin community. She is also the Program Director for Austin Bat Cave and the Director of Barrio Writers in Austin and Pflugerville, a free college-level youth writers workshop founded by author and activist Sarah Rafael Garcia in Santa Ana, CA.
Her creative work appears in PANK, Chicon Street Poets, Lumina, and many others. Her fiction explores the intersections of Latinx identity with folklore, traditional stories, and the supernatural or speculative. Her mixed-genre collection of poetry and prose, Las Criaturas, was published with FlowerSong Press in November 2021 and was a finalist for the Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction 2022 from the Texas Institute of Letters and a finalist for the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Short Story Collections.
Leticia loves living in Austin with her husband and aging chihuahua, who are terrible work distractions. Despite all this, she is fueled by sushi and breaks to watch pug videos on Instagram.

LitMinds: A Book Club at Gemini Ink
2024-11-13 18:30 - 20:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Join us for the Lit Minds Book Club. We’re reading Half of a Yellow Sun, a novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Register
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the award-winning, bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—a haunting story of love and war. • Recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award.
With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene.
Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born September 15, 1977, Enugu, Nigeria) is a Nigerian writer whose second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), gained international acclaim for its depiction of the devastation caused by the Nigerian Civil War. Her novels, short stories, and nonfiction explore the intersections of identity. Learn more at www.chimamanda.com.

To Praise the Ruined World with Sheila Black
2024-11-09 10:00 - 13:00 | Online via Zoom
Saturday, November 9, 2024, 10am-1pm CST, online via Zoom
Instructor: Sheila Black
Nonmember: $140; Member: $120; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S

We are living through hard times – and on a global scale. From political unrest to wars to climate change, it is hard not to see the sorrow and suffering around us. Yet in difficult times, the human impulse toward praise and celebration can provide unexpected ways of understanding, empathizing, and finding a way forward.
In this one-day workshop, we will read poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, Adam Zagajewski, Frank O’Hara, Roger Reeves, January Gil O’Neil, and others that demonstrate how praise can be a tool for understanding and transcending even the hardest truths. We will explore how these poets craft praise songs that acknowledge life’s sorrows and losses. We will then write our poems of recovery and resilience.
This course is open to writers of all skill levels, 18+.
In this workshop, students will:

Draft several new written works
Uncover the power of praise as a fundamental writing tool
Broaden their awareness of how contemporary poets address difficult topics

Read Sheila’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

Sheila Black is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Radium Dream from Salmon Poetry, Ireland. Poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Nation, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She is a co-editor of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Honors include a 2012 Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress for which she was selected by Philip Levine. She lives in San Antonio, TX and Tempe, AZ where she is assistant director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University (ASU).

Razzmatazz & All That Jazz: An Evening in Celebration of Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson
2024-11-08 18:30 - 21:30 | McNay Art Museum, 6000 N. New Braunfels Ave., San Antonio, TX, United States
Purchase Tickets and Sponsor Levels

Celebrating Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson at the McNay Art Museum Moroccan Courtyard and Leeper Auditorium, Friday, November 8th, 6:30-9:30 pm

2024 Award for Literary Excellence
Andrea Vocab Sanderson
Honorary Co-Chair
Dr. Eric Castillo
Associate Vice Chancellor of Arts, Culture, and Community Impact for the Alamo Colleges District
Moderator
Glo Miles
Emcee
Molly Cox
2024 Inkstravaganza Committee
Cary Clack, Aminah Dece, Barbara Felix, Winifred Hodge, Zach Jewell, Andrea Lopez, Gloria Miles, Chibbi Orduña, Aaronetta Pierce, Gerard Robledo, Andrea Rodriguez, Zsaire Shaheid (Shai), Aissatou Sidime-Blanton, Kirsten Thompson, Maria Williams, Bria Woods, Alexandra van de Kamp

Join Gemini Ink, San Antonio’s Writing Arts Center, at the beautiful McNay Art Museum on Friday, November 8th, for an unforgettable, festive evening celebrating the extraordinary achievements of Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, our 2024 Recipient of The Award for Literary Excellence. Enjoy our star-packed lineup (details coming soon!) and mingle with friends and fellow literary fans as we honor this brilliant poet, multifaceted artist, performer, and community leader who is at the heart of the writing arts in our city.
Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson is a multifaceted artist in the worlds of music, poetry, spoken word performance, and community artistic collaborations, and to say she is a powerhouse poet and creative performer only scratches the surface of her talent! We couldn’t be more honored to spotlight her as the featured writer of our annual gala in support of the power of the writing arts in our city. Vocab is San Antonio Poet Laureate Emeritus 2020-2023. She facilitates workshops throughout the U.S. and is the author of She Tastes Like Music (Flower Song Press, 2020). She is an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and was voted Best Local Poet in 2023 and 2021 by The SA Current. Vocab has had the distinct honor of opening up for Dr. Cornell West, Phylicia Rashad, and Nikki Giovanni. Her albums and collaborative works can be streamed on all major music platforms. Learn more about her at her website andreavocabsanderson.com.

The Mythology of Me: Applying Poetry and Narrative Therapy to Personal Stories with Aaron Deutsch and Dr. Heather Pitamber
2024-11-02 10:00 - 14:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Saturday, November 2, 2024, 10am-2:30pm CST (includes a 30-minute lunch), in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructors: Aaron Deutsch and Dr. Heather Pitamber
Nonmember: $145; Member: $125; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

From ancient myths to family gossip, humanity’s richness comes from its overflowing well of stories. Both personal narratives and imagined stories teach us about the world around us and influence how we live in it. What can we learn from rewriting our own personal stories into a life we have only imagined?
In this 1-day generative workshop, co-led by poet Aaron Deutsch and Licensed Professional Counselor Heather Joy Pitamber, participants will explore the practice of Narrative Therapy, a counseling technique that empowers participants to “rewrite” their story for a future that reflects who they really are, what they are capable of, and what their purpose is. Then, we will practice applying this therapeutic tool to our own writing to generate compelling stories that carve out new possibilities.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 18+.
By the end of the class students will have:

A foundational overview of Narrative Therapy
Close readings and discussions of delicious poems and narratives designed to provide both grounding and inspiration for new works
New, raw written materials to cultivate later

Heather Joy Pitamber is a licensed professional counselor passionate about service, learning, and growth. With degrees in Philosophy, Psychology, French Literature, and Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Heather has dedicated her eclectic career in Europe and the United States to education and human services. She is passionate about helping her clients and students find the awareness, insight, and empowerment they desire to create lives of meaning and purpose. As an educator with a heart for wellness, Heather has cherished serving students and their families in public and private school settings, from elementary school to the university level, and as an independent academic consultant. She is thrilled to continue serving her community’s diverse clientele through her private counseling practice in San Antonio, TX.
Aaron Deutsch received his MFA in poetry with distinction from Texas State University, intending to acquire a lexicon to answer the wild, mystical questions the world around him seemed to be asking. Somehow, that journey led him to become a senior program manager with the United States Department of Defense, where he works to build regional security across South America and the Middle East alongside international partners. Efforting to establish and maintain effective communication, he still looks to poetics and linguistics to build shared goals across cultures, finding more similarities than differences in people worldwide. In his free time, he loves teaching creative writing classes, working on that ever-elusive first book, and spoiling his Boston Terrier Hamlet.

Open Writer's Labs
2024-10-28 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-09-30 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-08-26 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
These peer-driven workshops, held the last Monday of each month, are free and open to writers of all levels and focus on poetry, flash fiction, and short creative non-fiction.

Online Via Zoom
For the online workshop, sign up the day before the class to ensure you receive the Zoom link.
This workshop is facilitated by Kevin Ramos. Originally from the northeast, Kevin studied theater arts at Rutgers University and The University of Washington. He’s lived all over the country before making his home in San Antonio, Texas. Kevin has written several novels and short stories. Most recently, publishing a short memoir called Enough about addiction, mothers, and missing graves. And a novel, Hayley’s Sense of Fire (DLG Publishing Partners), a modern re-telling of the classic fairy tale, The Little Matchgirl.

In-Person at Gemini Ink

Join our in-person Open Writer’s Lab with Robert Allen at Gemini Ink’s office, 1111 Navarro St., San Antonio, TX 78205.
Robert Allen has worked as a librarian and an electrical contractor for most of his life. Many moons ago, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied poetry under David Wevill. Allen has been active in local writer’s groups and open mics, including the Sun Poets Society. He’s been published in The Ocotillo Review, the Texas Poetry Calendar, Voices de la Luna, di-verse-city, the San Antonio Express-News, and Poetry on the Move. In 2006, he started attending Gemini Ink’s free Monday night writing classes and has attended regularly ever since. With more than a decade of attending writers’ groups, classes, and open mics, he now co-facilitates Gemini Ink’s Open Writer’s Lab.
Parking at Gemini Ink
Gemini Ink offers free parking along the back wall of our downtown offices. Please access this parking lot from Augusta St and first park in any of the 12 spots along the back wall. Only when these 12 spots are full do we ask that you park elsewhere in our lot. We now rent our offices from UTSA and are collaborating with them to create a secure and accessible parking lot for our community of writers and readers.

Be the Writer You Are: Set Yourself Free with New Approaches to Creative Writing with C.L. “Rooster” Martinez
2024-10-19 10:00 - 13:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Saturday, October 19, 2024, 10am-1pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: C.L. “Rooster” Martinez
Nonmember: $135; Member: $115; Student/Educator/Military $75
*EARN CPE’S

Are you a writer who struggles to find joy in your current writing practice? Is self-doubt or lack of direction keeping you from being the powerful, truthful, creative writer you want to be? It’s time to set yourself free from the things that hold your writing practice back!
Be the Writer You Are is a one-day, four-hour generative workshop centered on throwing out everything we have learned about creative writing and, instead, tapping into our intrinsic desire to write and be heard. Students will explore the role of creative writing in society. We’ll question our personal influences and writing processes to define what motivates us, what inspires us, and what our writing goals are. Then, we will generate new work aimed at amplifying our unique perspectives and setting our voices free.
This course is open to writers of all skill levels, 18+. While the workshop will be somewhat poetry-centric, it is for writers of various writing experiences and disciplines.
Students will leave this workshop with:

Drafts of new written work
Editing and feedback suggestions
Holistic approach to a creative lifestyle

C.L. “Rooster” Martinez is an educator and spoken word poet from San Antonio, Texas. He earned a MA/MFA in Creative Writing, Literature & Social Justice at Our Lady of the Lake University. He is the author of three poetry books: A Saint for Lost Things (Alabrava Press, 2020); As it is in Heaven (Kissing Dynamite Poetry Press, 2020); and Mexican Dinosaur (WAN, 2023). For twelve years, Rooster competed and won slams across the country and co-founded the literary nonprofit Write Art Out Inc.

Parking at Gemini Ink
Gemini Ink offers free parking along the back wall of our downtown offices. Please access this parking lot from Augusta St and first park in any of the 12 spots along the back wall. Only when these 12 spots are full do we ask that you park elsewhere in our lot. We now rent our offices from UTSA and are collaborating with them to create a secure and accessible parking lot for our community of writers and readers.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Joshua Robbins
2024-10-16 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Join us for the Big Texas Author Talk on Wednesday, Oct 16th, 2024 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Joshua Robbins, author of Eschatology in Crayon Wax, moderated by George David Clark.
RSVP
Joshua Robbins’s highly anticipated and thought-provoking second book, Eschatology in Crayon Wax, evokes a sense of being torn between a fragile longing for transformation and a whirlwind of flawed divinity. Robbins firmly asserts, “Paradise doesn’t care how you get there. Only that you try,” and is met with divine contempt and a commandment to “shape ashes into ashes” because “besides, I can’t tell you what on earth I’m doing.” In the world of these poems, all one can do is survive the contradictions and cruel mysteries embedded in a contemporary life of empty homes, RFID, mall shooting bullet casings, drone targets, miscarriages, divorce, and suicide. These poems engage deeply with the theodicies of the Book of Job, evangelicalism, class theory, and even the manic crises of Berryman’s “Dream Songs.” At times elegiac, always fearlessly confessional, and even tragicomic, Robbins does not resist hope. With intelligence and style to spare, Robbins displays a fierce concern for this world of things, caught as we are between what is and what should be.

Joshua Robbins was born in Berkeley, California, and grew up in the East Bay. After earning an MFA in Poetry at the University of Oregon and a PhD in English from the University of Tennessee, he joined the English Department at the University of the Incarnate Word, where he is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing. His primary teaching areas are poetry writing, trauma writing, and creative nonfiction. His first book, Praise Nothing, was published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2013 as part of the prestigious Miller Williams Series in Poetry. Eschatology in Crayon Wax was published in 2024 by Texas Review Press. His recognitions include, the James Wright Poetry Award, the New South Prize, Best New Poets, and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in poetry from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, among others. He currently lives in San Antonio. Visit Joshua at http://www.joshuarobbins.net/

About the Moderator
George David Clark is the author of Reveille (Arkansas), winner of the Miller Williams Prize, and Newly Not Eternal (LSU, 2024). His work has received honors from the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (the Meringoff Prize in Poetry), Colgate University (the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship), Narrative Magazine (the 30 Below Prize), the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship), and Valparaiso University (the Lily Postdoctoral Fellowship), among others. David’s recent poems can be found in Agni, The Believer, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Since 2011, he has edited the journal, 32 Poems. He teaches creative writing at Washington & Jefferson College and lives in Canonsburg, PA.

Unearthing Your Inner Voice: A Creative Nonfiction Workshop with Award-Winning Columnist Cary Clack
2024-10-03 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink
Thursdays, October 3, 10 & 17, 2024, 6:30-8:30pm CST, Hybrid (in-person at Gemini Ink and online via Zoom)
Instructor: Cary Clack
Nonmember: $155; Member: $130; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

Each of us has a writing voice that is distinctly our own. Creative nonfiction is a great tool for discovering and unearthing that inner voice. As we tap into memories and the elements that make us who we are, we allow our refined stories to surface in a way that is uniquely our own.
In this 3-session workshop, students will use texts and writing exercises to dig and discover who they are, what they think, and how to capture their voice on the page. This course is open to writers of all skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this workshop with:

Drafts of new work
Tools to find and develop their voice
Ideas on how to use old notebooks and journals to mine for stories

Cary Clack was born and raised in San Antonio and graduated from St. Mary’s University with a B.A. in Political Science. In 1995, he became the first Black metro columnist in San Antonio Express-News history and the paper’s first Black Editorial Board member. A collection of his columns, Clowns and Rats Scare Me was published in 2009 by Trinity University Press. He was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2017. A collection of his best short and long columns since his return to San Antonio Express News in 2019, More Finish Lines to Cross, was published by Trinity University Press in 2024. He’s won various journalism awards and is completing the first anthology of Black Texas Writers forthcoming from Texas A&M University Press as part of the Wittliff Collection.

Parking at Gemini Ink
Gemini Ink offers free parking along the back wall of our downtown offices. Please access this parking lot from Augusta St and first park in any of the 12 spots along the back wall. Only when these 12 spots are full do we ask that you park elsewhere in our lot. We now rent our offices from UTSA and are collaborating with them to create a secure and accessible parking lot for our community of writers and readers.

Delving into the Celtic Isles: Inspiration from International Poets with Veronica Golos
2024-10-02 18:30 - 21:00 | Online via Zoom
Wednesdays, Oct 2, 9, 16 & 23, 6:30-9pm CST, via Zoom
Instructor: Veronica Golos
Nonmember: $155; Member: $130; Student/Educator/Military $75
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

In a time of worldwide strife and disconnection, poetry reacquaints us with humanity in a way that transcends borders, time zones, and languages. Join master poetry teacher Veronica Golos on an international poetry tour. Next stop: Celtic Isles!
In this four-week generative poetry workshop we will explore rhythm, rhyme, humor, and the rich history of celtic ancestry with four Irish poets: Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Medbh McGuckian, Eavan Boland, and Seamus Heaney. We will read deeply each week, explore each poet’s craft tools, and apply these techniques to our work. Participants will receive a packet with poems and suggestions for developing their writing.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 18+.
By the end of the class, students will have the following:

Study and analyze the work of 4 contemporary poets
Write poems that follow the selected poet’s structure and theme
Receive on-the-spot feedback for written work

Veronica Golos is the author of four poetry books: GIRL, awarded the Naji Naaman Honor Prize in 2019; Rootwork, winner of the 2016 Southwest Book Design Award in Poetry; Vocabulary of Silence, a 2011 New Mexico Book Award winner that was translated into Arabic, Spanish and Persian; and A Bell Buried Deep, a Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize winner. She teaches poetry for Hugo House, Gemini Ink, and SOMOS. She reviews poetry books for Tupelo Press and works as a manuscript editor. She lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her husband, David Pérez.

Funny Bones: Craft a Calavera Poem with San Antonio Legend Anthony Flores
2024-10-01 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Tuesdays, October 1 & 8, 2024, 6:30-8:30pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: Anthony Flores
Nonmember: $110; Member: $95; Student/Educator/Mil $75
Explore the comedic and poetic mischief of creating a calavera poem in honor of Día De Los Muertos. A calavera is a traditional form of poetry from Mexico that uses satire to create humorous and lighthearted rhyming poems about the living.
This form explores the living through the lens of death (Calavera is Spanish for “skull”), which can provide catharsis and deep reflection on impermanence. Calaveras can be written to address rich people in business, famous people, family, friends, and even government officials.
In this two-session workshop led by Anthony “The Poet” Flores, we will learn the history of the traditional Mexican calavera poem; compose our own Day Of The Dead creations; and apply literary devices, such as irony, rhyme, and repetition, to take our piece to the next level. We will leave the workshop with a list of places to read our new poems around town during the holiday celebration.
This course is open to writers of all skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this workshop with the following:

The first draft of a calavera poem
Exposure to literary devices and structures
Insight into a historical and culturally significant poetic form
A list of places to read and share your poetry

Anthony “The Poet” Flores is a three-time San Antonio Grand Slam Poetry Champion who has represented the city six times at the National Poetry Slam. His performances include HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and Lincoln Center. He currently judges the San Antonio Public Library’s Young Pegasus Poetry Contest. Anthony is the founder of The University of Spoken Word and authored CINCUENTA: 50 Poems Celebrating Half A Century Of Life.

Parking at Gemini Ink
Gemini Ink offers free parking along the back wall of our downtown offices. Please access this parking lot from Augusta St and first park in any of the 12 spots along the back wall. Only when these 12 spots are full do we ask that you park elsewhere in our lot. We now rent our offices from UTSA and are collaborating with them to create a secure and accessible parking lot for our community of writers and readers.

Our Word is Our Vote: A Poetry Pachanga
2024-09-28 17:00 - 21:00 | UTSA, 1 UTSA Circle, San Antonio, Texas, 78249
Don’t Miss Our Word is Our Vote:
A Poetry Pachanga this Saturday, Sep 28!
Join the dynamic San Antonio poetry community for this special election year event, encouraging voter registration and using our voice to create the change we want to see:
Saturday, Sep 28, 5-9pm
UTSA Main Campus
1 UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX 78249
Richard Liu Auditorium, Business Bldg, 2.01.02
Register to Vote! Free Event! Free Food!
Live Music from Kitten Mitten, Mexstep, and Patsy Torres!
And all the poets—Andi Garcia-Linn, Alexandra Vandekamp, Alex Z. Salinas, Amalia Ortiz, Anthony the Poet, Carmen Calatayud, Carmen Tafolla, Chibbi Orduña, Chris Carmona, E.D. Watson, Eddie Vega, Eduardo C. Garza, Edward Vidaurre, Fernando E. Flores, Frances Santos, Gerard Robledo, Gume Laurel III, Jen Yanez-Alaniz, Jim LaVilla-Havelin, John Olivares Espinoza, John Phillip Santos, Jonathan Fletcher, Joshua Robbins, KB Brookins, Lace Garcia, Mandy Lynn Lara, Matthew Tavares, Myra Dumapais, Natalia Treviño, Nazli Siddiqui, Octavio Quintanilla, Rooster Martinez, Sajhar Roshan, Saúl Hernández, Tony Diaz, Violeta Garza, Zach Sokoloski!

Eddie Vega & Friends & Community Open Mic
2024-09-26 18:30 - 20:00 | Poetic Republic Coffee Co., 2330 S. Presa St, San Antonio, Texas, United States
Join Gemini Ink on Thursday, September 26th, for a night of poetry and performance as we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2024 and honor our new San Antonio Poet Laureate Eddie Vega!
Eddie is a poet, educator, open mic host, and voice for the people, who’s poetry focuses on the routine struggles and small beauties of life in South Texas. He will be accompanied by award- winning poet Violeta Garza and veteran educator and poet Jacinto Jesús Cardona.
Following the featured reading, we will host a community open mic. Bring your poems, stories, and thoughts to share (there will be a 3-minute limit for each reader). Open mic sign-up in person, starting at 6pm.

Violeta Garza is a non-binary Latinx poet and member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. Her work has been published in Acentos Review, Boundless, and riverSedge, among others.
Jacinto Jesús Cardona is a San Antonio poet whose two poetry books, PAN DULCE and AMAPOLASONG celebrate his growing up Tex Mex in Alice, the Hub of South Texas. In 2016 New York Symphony Space selected his poem “Bato Con Khakis” to be performed as part of their literacy program. Among Cardona’s awards are a Gemini Ink Voz de San Antonio Poetry Award and his poetry is documented in Voices From Texas by San Antonio filmmaker Ray Santiesteban. Cardona teaches English at Incarnate Word High School.
Eddie Vega (the Taco-Poet of Texas) is a poet, storyteller, and educator. The author of Chicharra Chorus (FlowerSong Press, 2019) and Somos Nopales (FlowerSong Press, 2024), his poetry also appears along the San Pedro Creek Cultural Park. He is the editor of Asina is How We Talk, a collection of Tejano poetry. A Macondo Workshop Fellow, Vega directs the Mouth Dakota Poetry Project, a biweekly open mic. He currently serves as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Antonio.

Making AI Your Friend: Three Ways Writers Can Use Tech to Enhance Their Craft and Achieve Their Goals with Javier Ortega-Araiza
2024-09-21 10:00 - 14:30 | Online via Zoom
Saturday, September 21, 2024, 10am-2:30pm CST (including a 30-minute lunch), online via Zoom
Instructor: Javier Ortega-Araiza
Nonmember: $110; Member: $95; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

Are you interested in learning how to use AI (Artificial Intelligence) to support your writing without losing your humanity? Given the hype around this new technology, this workshop will offer participants a chance to sift through fears and find the real tools AI provides.
In this one-day workshop, author Javier Ortega-Araiza will help participants adapt to AI’s impact on the writing industry and learn to collaborate with technology. Students will explore AI tools, such as ChatGPT, and become familiar with how writers can use them to bolster their creative practice.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 18+.
In this workshop, students will learn how to use AI to:

Generate ideas and defeat the blank page
Fireproof their pieces to ensure they are well-crafted and understood by their target audience
Repurpose content to adapt to various social media platforms and increase their exposure.

Learn more about Javier at his Writer’s Desk!

Javier Ortega-Araiza is the author of Three Years Later: Poems of Loss, Love, and Renewal (2024) and a co-author of Stories from Montréal (2019), an anthology featuring over 20 Hispanic-Canadian writers. He is passionate about storytelling’s power to heal and unite us. He believes technology can be a fantastic ally in helping writers enhance their careers and have a bigger impact. Javier is a lifelong traveler, entrepreneur, and storyteller whose thoughts on the impact of AI in the writing profession can be found here.
Ortega-Araiza’s writings, spanning various genres, have been featured by leading outlets such as Business Insider, Forbes, the New York Post, FOX, the Toronto Star, and the Winnipeg Free Press. Through Mindset Consulting, a strategic communications firm, he has also worked with several tech startups and venture funds, gaining first-hand exposure to the impact of AI in several industries. He has also worked with leading brands such as MGM and Caesars.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Ayokunle Falomo
2024-09-18 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
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Wednesday, Sep 18th, 2024 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: AYOKUNLE FALOMO, author of Autobiomythography of .
Autobiomythography of sifts through Nigerian stories and mythologies, both inherited and invented, to explore the self, family, and nationhood.
AYOKUNLE FALOMO is Nigerian, American, and the author of Autobiomythography of (Alice James Books, 2024), AFRICANAMERICAN’T (FlowerSong Press, 2022—finalist for Texas Institute of Letters’ Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry), two self-published collections and African, American (New Delta Review, 2019; selected by Selah Saterstrom as the winner of New Delta Review’s 8th annual chapbook contest). A recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, MacDowell, and the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he obtained his MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry, his work has been anthologized and widely published.
Autobiomythography of
“Mythmaking serves to create a bridge between what the human mind can understand and what we yet have language for. Yet here in this visually lush and lyrically dexterous collection of poems, Falomo offers his readers work that bends and reimagines the limits of language, blends the Divine with the digital present, contemporary music with the voices of the past while the speaker traverses the friction between their American & Nigerian heritage.”
—I.S. Jones, author of Spells of My Name
September 2024
ISBN: 9781949944655

Telling Stories from the Teaching Trenches with Amie Charney
2024-09-14 09:00 - 15:30 | Online via Zoom
Dates: Saturday, September 14, 2024, 9am-3:30pm CST (with a 30 minute boxed lunch), in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: Amie Charney
Nonmember: $140; Member: $120; Student/Educator/Mil $75
Class Cancelled
Hilarious, cringe, nightmarish, heartwarming, inspiring–these are just some words teachers might use to describe their experiences in the classroom. Every educator has an interesting story to tell about teaching, and we want to help you tell it!
In this one-day storytelling workshop for educators of all backgrounds and experience, we will follow The Moth model of storytelling to script and tell our own creative nonfiction stories. We will then use podcasting technology to record our tales from the teaching trenches.
We will share practical ways to pair storytelling and podcasting as a fun and effective learning tool in the classroom and across the curriculum. This course is open to educators of all kinds and skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this workshop with:

A draft of creative nonfiction work
Hands on experience using podcasting equipment
Ideas for how to incorporate storytelling and podcasting into the classroom environment

Amie Charney is a screenwriter who lives in San Antonio, Texas. She has a BA in Literature from California State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside Palm Desert. She is the current Director of Creative Writing for the Northeast School of the Arts. Her work can be found in literary journals such as Southern Missouri Press Journal Proud to Be, As You Were, Oh! Cat!, High Country Magazine, and others. Amie is the inaugural recipient of the Harlequin Creator Fund for Television Writing and is currently developing a new television show with eOne and Harlequin. She’s the wife of a pilot, mother of two fantastic young adults (both Aggies), and a proud Marine Corps wife! She was recently featured in Script Magazine and the Harlequin Creator Space, as well as San Antonio Magazine.

LitMinds Book Club
2024-09-11 18:30 - 20:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Join us for the Lit Minds Book Club at Gemini Ink. We’re reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
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Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known

Ray Bradbury was an American fantasy and horror author who rejected being categorized as a science fiction author, claiming that his work was based on the fantastical and unreal. His best known novel is Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian study of future American society in which critical thought is outlawed. He is also remembered for several other popular works, including The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury won the Pulitzer in 2007, and is one of the most celebrated authors of the 21st century. — Biography.com

Writing for Change: How to Craft Effective Social Justice Articles with Sara Ramey
2024-09-09 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Mondays, September 9, 16, 23 & 30, 2024, from 6:30-8:30pm CST via Zoom
Instructor: Sara Ramey
Nonmember: $160; Member: $140; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

Is there a social justice issue you’d like to draw more attention to? Do you wish the media would provide a fresh perspective on a matter close to your heart? Do you have a new approach to a social problem? Join this intensive workshop to turn those ideas into publishable articles!
In this four-week course, experienced social justice advocate Sara Ramey will combine lecture and group discussion to help participants gain an overview of writing effective social justice articles. Participants will learn how to understand key content and structure considerations, achieve the right tone and pacing, select the best format based on the topic, consider their audiences to maximize impact, and use one’s goal to derive the highest impact from an article.
We will also explore a range of interviewing techniques, including preparing effective questions, tips for eliciting vivid details and descriptions, capturing authenticity in voice, making an interviewee comfortable, ethical considerations, and navigating challenges that arise. Participants will write and submit a 600-900-word article during the workshop. We’ll conclude with a discussion on how to pitch social justice articles.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels interested in developing their written advocacy abilities, 18+.
By the end of the class students will have:

A workshopped 600-900 word article on a social justice topic of their choice
A toolbox of skills for persuasive factual and opinion writing
An understanding of the market and the crafting process for short-form social justice journalism
Insight into effective pitching to begin contacting publishers

An experienced interviewer, Sara Ramey has worked for over twelve years on the U.S.-Mexico border, meeting with asylum seekers to learn their stories and help them craft compelling narratives for U.S. immigration judges. She has also interviewed immigrants on various issues of public policy for community education initiatives and has written op-eds and journal articles in major publications, including The Dallas Morning News, The San Antonio Express News, The Austin-American Statesman, The Hill, The International Lawyer, Peace Review, and The Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration. As a lawyer and advocate, Sara has extensive experience condensing complex topics down to powerful stories that resonate with diverse audiences. She has written public comments to the federal government on proposed regulations, has hosted a legal podcast on migration issues, and has interviewed with the press, including MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, the Associated Press, VICE, CNN, Telemundo, and more. She most recently worked as an attorney mentor at Immigration Equality. In her free time, Sara writes urban and YA fantasy.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Sasha West
2024-08-21 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
Join us on Wednesday, Aug 21st, 2024 via Zoom for a conversation with poet Sasha West, author of How to Abandon Ship, Winner of the 2023 Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction, Texas Institute of Letters. Moderated by Jill Meyers.
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About How to Abandon Ship

In How to Abandon Ship, Sasha West emerges like a modern Cassandra, one who doesn’t simply tell us of what is to come, but one who teaches us, “To bite. To keen. To howl.” West is an oracle whose words pop, hiss, and blaze. This terrific book has left me changed. –Tomás Q. Morín
The poems in Sasha West’s How to Abandon Ship describe the anguish and disorientation of existing on a planet put in jeopardy by our very existence. Here we encounter a poet who has “spent a life sharpening the blade of [her]/imagination” slicing through the layered voices of greed, complicity, and blind faith that have left us with a world in peril and the painful task of telling our children the truth about it. Embodying the voice of a modern-day Cassandra, West reveals a fundamental truth of our time: how a warning can be a blessing, but only if we’re willing to receive it.—Carrie Fountain
How to Abandon Ship is equal parts prophetic and apocalyptic, and Sasha West doesn’t shy away from the exigencies of the world: its floods and fires and earthquakes, its wars and disease and mass graves, its politics and tragedies and technology where “software reminded us / to have memories.” “I love: my country: it can break me,” writes West, and these powerful poems limn the urgency of our present moment, as well as the tenderness and terror of new motherhood when the speaker becomes “permeable to the world.” How to Abandon Ship is a haunting book of grief and warning, but also one of caregiving and survival. West’s poems ultimately offer a blueprint for meeting disaster head-on—with fierce love, acts of service, and the power of imagination. – Erika Meitner

ABOUT SASHA WEST

Sasha West was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her first book, Failure and I Bury the Body, won the National Poetry Series and the Texas Institute of Letters First Book of Poetry Award. It was also selected as one of ten debut books by Victoria Chang for Poets & Writers. Her second book, How to Abandon Ship, was published by Four Way Books in March 2024.
She collaborates on multi-media, eco-arts exhibitions with visual artist Hollis Hammonds as the collaborative Hammonds + West. Their collaborations have been featured at Texas A&M University’s Wright Gallery, the Austin Public Library Central Gallery space, the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, the College of the Mainland, ArtPrize2023 in Michigan, and the Columbus College of Art and Design. Upcoming shows include Houston’s Art League and The Grace Museum in Abilene, TX.
Her work has been collected in the anthologies The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood,Out of Time: Poetry from the Climate Emergency, Still Life with Poem: 100 Natures Mortes in Verse, Penned: Zoo Poems, and others. Individual poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Agni, American Poet, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere.
Her awards include a Fellowship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a Houston Arts Alliance grant, Pushcart nominations, and Inprint’s Verlaine Prize. She has served as lead editor for and, later, board president of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts.
She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at St. Edward’s University, where she received the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Hudspeth Innovative Teaching Award. She lives in Austin, TX, with her husband and kid.

ABOUT JILL MEYERS
Jill Meyers is the editorial director of A Strange Object, the Austin-based imprint of independent publisher Deep Vellum. Her acclaimed writers have received numerous awards and honors, including the Whiting Award, The Believer Book Award, and the Discovery Award from the Writers’ League of Texas. Titles from A Strange Object have appeared on NPR’s Best Books of the Year list and have been selected as best debuts from Poets and Writers. Formerly, Jill served as editor for the celebrated literary magazine American Short Fiction and worked on staff at Texas Monthly. Jill is the cofounder of Lit Crawl Austin, a freewheeling literary showcase, and she serves on the advisory board for the Texas Book Festival.

Gemini Ink Teaching Artists & Community Open Mic
2024-08-15 18:30 - 20:00 | Poetic Republic Coffee Co., 2330 S. Presa St, San Antonio, Texas, United States
Don’t miss our FREE Teaching Artists Reading & Community Open Mic on Thursday! Want to share your work or just listen to some amazing performances? Join Gemini Ink on Thursday, August 15th, for a night of poetry, prose, and performance as we celebrate the talent of our Gemini Ink Partner Class teaching artists. An open mic follows. Come early to sign up! ????
Enjoy a beverage and connect with fellow writers! Wine, coffee, and other refreshments will be available for purchase from Poetic Republic Cafe. We look forward to seeing you!

World on Fire: Writing About Crisis and Hope in the Natural World with Sasha West
2024-08-10 10:00 - 14:30 | Zoom
Saturday, August 10, 10am-2:30pm CST (includes a 30-minute lunch), in person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: Sasha West
Nonmember: $130; Member: $110; Student/Educator/Mil $75
Class Postponed
Burning forests. Drought. Melting ice caps. Islands of plastic waste. With mounting natural disasters, our anxiety about the environment is increasing. So how do we process these feelings and use writing to spark conversation about this very pressing topic?
In this one-day generative workshop, we will use poetry as a self-reflective tool to explore the multitude of feelings we have about the current state of nature. We can identify and voice how the climate crisis affects us while also exploring the idea that something better is possible.
In this eco-poetry workshop, we will practice paying attention, seeing connections, and embracing contradictions in nature. We will study poets writing about the environment in celebration, mourning, and resistance. These explorations will be used to fuel our imagination. Poems will be written in class and generative exercises will be provided so you can continue to reflect and write about your relationship to nature.
Open to writers of all skill levels.
By the end of the class students will have:

The first draft of a poem
Generative exercise to fuel your writing after class
Resources for sharing eco-poetry

Sasha West is the author of Failure and I Bury the Body, which was awarded the National Poetry Series, a Texas Institute of Letters First Book of Poetry Award, and a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship. Her second book, How to Abandon Ship, was published in 2024 by Four Way Books. Her multimedia eco-arts exhibits with visual artist Hollis Hammonds have been exhibited at the Columbus College of Art and Design, Texas A&M, ArtPrize 2023 Michigan, and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at St. Edward’s University, where she founded and runs the Environmental Humanities program.

Raising the Stakes: Fictionalizing Your Stories for the Stage with Amalia Ortiz
2024-08-06 18:30 - 20:30
Tuesdays, August 6, 13, 20 & 27, 6:30-8:30pm CST, Hybrid (in-person at Gemini Ink and online via Zoom)
Instructor: Amalia Ortiz
Nonmember: $145; Member: $125; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S

Every day all around us we encounter interesting characters, compelling scenarios, and memorable conversations. Whether it’s in line at the grocery store, on the city bus, or walking down the street, the real world is full of potential stories–you just need to stop and listen.
In this four-week class, we will observe the world around us and collect snippets of real-world dialogue. Students will review dramatic structure and use collected material to develop characters in fictionalized, high-stakes situations through monologues and scenes. The class will culminate in a dramatic reading of works-in-progress. We will follow the reading with an introduction to Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process, an affirming and interactive feedback strategy that will help a writer grow in their craft.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 18+.
By the end of the class students will have:

Two monologues and one scene drafted
An understanding of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process
Critical feedback to take your written work to the next level

Read Amalia’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

Amalia Ortiz appeared on three seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry on HBO. She was awarded the 2020 American Book Award for Oral Literature from the Before Columbus Foundation for The Canción Cannibal Cabaret (Aztlan Libre Press, 2019). NBC Latino listed her book, Rant. Chant. Chisme. among “10 Great Latino Books of 2015.” She won an Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Grant, a residency at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the 2015 Writers’ League of Texas Poetry Discovery Prize, and the 2018 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant to film videos for her latest book, The Canción Cannibal Cabaret. Amalia received a BA in Theatre from UIW and an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She is the Director of Theatre at SAY Sí, a year-round afterschool arts program where she facilitates the creation of original theatre productions written by middle and high school students.

Get Ready to Write Your Novel This November with Laura Castoro
2024-07-31 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Wednesdays, July 31 – September 4, 6:30-8:30pm CST, Hybrid
Instructor: Laura Castoro
Nonmember: $155; Member: $135; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S

Have you always dreamed of writing a novel, but didn’t know how to get started? Have you thought about participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but were too scared to actually do it?
National Novel Writing Month is this November! The goal of this annual writing challenge is to write a book of 50,000 words or more in 30 days. Although November seems like a ways away, there are things we can do to prepare for success now!
In this six-week novel writing prep course we will use National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) resources and more to do the pre-work to set ourselves up to draft a novel this (or any) November! We will explore tools and resources to help us create a dynamic storyline, build pivotal characters, bring the setting to life, and draft an outline. We will also set achievable goals for getting the book project completed.
If you are not ready to write a novel in 30 days, no worries! This course will help you generate new ideas and lay the groundwork for tackling that novel at your own pace.
We will open a discussion forum on WetInk, our online platform for creative writing classes, during National Novel Writing Month. Students will be able to post goals, updates, words of encouragement, and insights on their novel writing journey. Laura will check in with students 3 times via the Wet Ink Platform during National Novel Writing Month (November, 2024) to answer questions, respond to discussion, and cheer writers on.
Open to fiction writers of all skill levels who are ready to take on the challenge of writing a novel. Students are encouraged to bring laptops and their favorite writing tools.
Students will leave this course with:

The setting, characters, plot, and outline drafted
A calendar-driven plan of action for bringing your novel to life
Resources and support for completing a 50,000-word novel

Laura Castoro, a USA Today, Amazon top 100, and Apple Books bestseller, has published 47 novels with major publishing houses such as Dell Books, Berkley, Avon, Warner, MIRA, Harlequin, Kensington, Pocketbooks, St, Harper Collins, Martins Press, and William Morrow. She has also contributed to several fiction anthologies and has published non-fiction YA and short fiction in Good Housekeeping. Under the name Laura Parker, she writes historical and contemporary romance, westerns, and sagas. As Laura Castoro, she writes contemporary African American and contemporary women’s fiction. Writing as D. D. Ayres, she publishes a romantic suspense series called the K-9 Rescue Series. Her current release as Laura Castoro is Love On The Line (2021) through William Morrow.
Laura has won multiple national writing awards. In 2005, she was inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. She is a past president of Novelists, Inc. (2013), an international professional fiction writers’ organization. She is a past president and board member of the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, a writer residency program in the AR Ozarks. She is a speaker at numerous conferences and workshops in the U.S. and abroad. Laura currently lives in San Antonio, TX. Visit Laura at www.ddayres.com
