From Madness to Heaven: An Evening with Gemini Wahhaj and Chaitali Sen, followed by a Community Open Mic
2024-05-10 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Mexico_City) | Poetic Republic Coffee Co., 2330 S. Presa St, San Antonio, Texas, United States
Gemini Wahhaj and Chaitali Sen
Join Gemini Ink on Friday, May 10th, for a night of prose and literary celebration as we partner with our friends at Poetic Republic Cafe to create an inviting space for the writing community to share words, wine, and wisdom, with a little latte or espresso on the side.
Let’s honor Asian-American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month with the compelling fiction of Gemini Wahhaj and Chaitali Sen, who capture the human experience through the lens of immigration and political unrest and do so with power and elegance. 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.

Gemini Wahhaj is the author of the novel The Children of this Madness (7.13 Books, Fall 2023) and the short-story collection Katy Family (Jackleg Press, Spring 2025).
Chaitali Sen is the author of the novel The Pathless Sky (Europa Editions 2015) and the story collection A New Race of Men from Heaven (Sarabande Books 2023), chosen by Danielle Evans as the winner of the 2021 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Her stories and essays have been published by American Short Fiction, Boulevard, Catapult, Colorado Review, Ecotone, Electric Literature, LitHub, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, Shenandoah, and many other publications. Born in India and raised in New York and Pennsylvania, she currently lives in Austin, Texas.

Wellness for Writers with Jen Knox
2024-05-11 10:00 - 12:00 | Online via Zoom
Saturday, May 11 & 18, 10am-12pm; via Zoom
Instructor: Jen Knox
Nonmember: $145; Member: $125; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.
Class cancelled (will be rescheduled)
Between writer’s block, rejection letters, and tough critiques, the writing process can be an emotionally taxing experience. It’s easy for a writer to get discouraged. Many even abandon their practice completely. How do we support ourselves so we keep our creative engines burning, tell the truth without injuring ourselves, and manage the ups and downs of the writing life?
In this two-session workshop, we will combine writing and wellness practices to help writers develop a more mindful approach to their work. We’ll use meditation to tap creativity, explore the connection between self-compassion and craft, and look at how to mine raw personal material in a safe but effective way. By the end of this workshop, we’ll put these techniques into practice in order to write with momentum and heart, then revise with craft and focus.
This course is open to writers of all genres, backgrounds, and skill level, 18+ who write on a regular basis.
What you can expect in this workshop:

A nurturing and fun space to explore your deepest stories.
Wellness techniques for managing the ups and downs of the writing life and writing through and about difficult times.
Practice using these tools to generate authentic raw material to create a piece of work after the workshop.
Piece of authentic work.

Jen Knox teaches at Ohio State University and is the founder of Unleash Creatives. She combines her love of creativity with personal development and leadership in workshops she hosts around the world. Jen’s debut novel, We Arrive Uninvited, won the Steel Toe Books Award, and her collection, The Glass City, won the Press Americana Prize. Jen’s short writing appears in over a hundred journals and magazines, including McSweeney’s Internet Quarterly and The Saturday Evening Post.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Glenn Blake
2024-05-15 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
A Free Monthly Online Lecture Series from WritingWorkshops.com & Gemini Ink
Wednesday, May 15th, 2024 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Glenn Blake, with moderator Cliff Hudder, discussing The Old and the Lost: Collected Stories
RSVP
About The Old and the Lost: Collected Stories

The most complete collection of Glenn Blake’s luminous short fiction published to date. “I was born in a land of bayous, raised between rivers,” Glenn Blake writes. “There is a place in Southeast Texas where two rivers meet and become one. There is a long bridge over these waters, and as you drive across, you can look to the south and see where the Old River and the Lost River become the Old and the Lost. You can look out as far as you can see and watch this wide water become the bay.” These fourteen stories are set in the swamps, bayous, and sloughs of Southeast Texas, a region that is subsiding—sinking inches every year. The characters who inhabit Blake’s haunting landscape—awash in their own worlds, adrift in their own lives—struggle to salvage what they can of their hopes and dreams from the encroaching tides.
ABOUT GLENN BLAKE
Glenn Blake has taught in the English Department at Rice University, the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston, and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. He is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Tyler. He is the author of Drowned Moon, Return Fire, and The Old and the Lost. His novel, Degüello, is due in December. He has edited Gulf Coast, The Hopkins Review, and Boulevard. He is now serving as the Director of the University of Texas Press at Tyler. In 2000, he was elected Chair of PEN Houston. In 2020, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
ABOUT CLIFF HUDDER
Cliff Hudder received an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Houston in 1995, and a PhD in American Literature from Texas A&M University in 2018. He has been an archaeological laborer, a film and video editor, a photographer, an air compressor mechanic, an electrical lineman, and an educator. In addition to articles on regional and American literature, his short stories have appeared in several journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Missouri Review. His work has received the Barthelme and Michener Awards, the Peden Prize, the Short Story Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Ruth Vande Kieft Prize from the Eudora Welty Society. His novella, Splinterville, won the 2007 Texas Review Fiction Award, and his novel, Pretty Enough for You, was named a top-10 Texas favorite for 2015 by the Lone Star Literary Life website. His third book, Sallowsfield, will be released in November by Texas Review Press. He serves as the chair of Psychology and Sociology at Lone Star College-Montgomery in Conroe, Texas. In 2017, Cliff was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.

No More Excuses: Submission Bootcamp with Lyzette Wanzer
2024-06-04 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Tuesdays, June 4, 11, 18, 25 & July 2, 9, 2024 from 6:30-8:30pm cst via Zoom
Instructor: Lyzette Wanzer
Nonmember: $155; Member: $135; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.
Class Full
Are you on the verge of submitting your writing for publication, but are you too nervous or afraid to follow through? Have you submitted your work, just for it to end up in the rejection pile? Or does submitting your work keep falling to the bottom of your to-do list?
In this workshop, you’ll learn how to plan a submission strategy, research publishing markets, and identify the publications most aligned with your work. We will also review proper submission etiquette and protocols plus suggestions for avoiding pitfalls that mark you as an amateur before editors even read your submission.
Students will be strongly encouraged to actively submit short stories, articles, poems, essays, novel excerpts, and/or creative nonfiction pieces for publication while enrolled in the workshop.
This course is for writers of all levels—from those who are ready to learn about the submission process to those who are in the submission trenches.
Students will leave this class with:

An understanding of how the submission and publication process works
Best practices for organizing and tracking submissions
Strategies for getting your work accepted

Read Lyzette’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

Lyzette Wanzer is a San Francisco writer, editor, and writing workshop instructor. She received her MFA in Fiction from Mills College. A flash fiction connoisseur and essay aficionado, her work has appeared in Natural Bridge, The Los Angeles Review, Callaloo, Tampa Review, The MacGuffin, Ampersand Review, Journal of Advanced Development, Fourteen Hills, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Pleiades, Flashquake, Glossalia Flash Fiction, Potomac Review, International Journal on Literature and Theory, Fringe Magazine, and many others. She is a contributor to Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth From the Margins (Wayne State University Press 2022), The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays (Wyatt-MacKenzie 2012), Civil Liberties United: Diverse Voices from the San Francisco Bay Area (Pease Press 2019), and 642 Tiny Things to Write About (Chronicle Books 2015). Her articles have appeared in Essay Daily, The Naked Truth, and the San Francisco University High School Journal. Lyzette is the current judge of the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition’s Intercultural Essay category and of the Women’s National Book Association’s Effie Lee Morris Writing Contest’s nonfiction category.
Lyzette has been invited to present her work and/or panels at conferences across the country, including the American and Popular Culture Association, Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), College English Association (CEA), Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture Since 1900, Litquake Festival, San Francisco Writers Conference, and others.

Delving into Latin America: Inspiration from International Poets with Veronica Golos
2024-06-05 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Wednesdays, June 5, 12, 19 & 26, 2024, from 6:30-8:30pm cst via Zoom
Instructor: Veronica Golos
Nonmember: $145; Member: $125; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.
Class Full
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. First stop: Latin America!
In this four-week generative poetry workshop we will explore four international poets: Conceiҫão Evaristo (Brazil), Coral Bracho (Mexico), Pablo Neruda (Chile) and Juan Gelman (Argentina). Each week we will read deeply, explore each poet’s craft tools, and apply these techniques to our own work. A packet with poems will be sent to participants, along with suggestions for developing your own work.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 18+.
By the end of the class students will have:

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.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Alex Temblador
2024-06-19 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Wednesday, June 19th, 2024 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Alex Temblador, moderated Daniel Peña
RSVP
About Writing an Identity Not Your Own: A Guide for Creative Writers
A practical guide to help authors authentically write and edit a character whose identity is different than their own.

Do you have the tools to authentically write and edit a character whose identity is different than your own? It’s not a subject that’s generally taught in creative writing programs, and there are so few craft books and online resources on the subject. Even if you can take a seminar, class, or workshop, there’s nothing like having an easy-to-understand book on hand to provide guidance and insight every time you craft characters with historically marginalized identities.

In Writing an Identity Not Your Own, award-winning author Alex Temblador discusses one of the most contentious topics in creative writing: crafting a character whose identity is historically marginalized. What is “identity,” and how do unconscious biases and bias blocks impact and influence what we write? What is intersectionality? You’ll learn about identity terms, stereotypes, and tropes, and receive genre-specific advice related to various identities to consider when writing different races and ethnicities, sexual and romantic orientations, gender identities, disabilities, nationalities, and more. Through writing strategies, exercises, and literary excerpts, writers will gain a clearer understanding on how misrepresentations and harmful portrayals can appear in storylines, dialogue, and characterization. Alex will guide writers from the brainstorming phase through the editing process so they can gain a full understanding of the complexities of writing other identities and why it’s important to get them right.

Alex Temblador is the Mixed Latine award-winning author of Writing An Identity Not Your Own: A Guide for Creative Writers, Secrets of the Casa Rosada and Half Outlaw. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Central Oklahoma and is a contributor to Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America and Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology. Her work has appeared in PALABRITAS, D Magazine, and Colorado Review, among others. Alex is the creator and moderator of LitTalk at Whose Books and the Executive Director of Write Here DFW, the Dallas-Fort Worth literary calendar. In addition to teaching creative writing classes, she is an award-winning travel, arts, and culture journalist whose work has appeared in Outside, National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveler, Texas Monthly, among others.

Daniel Peña is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer and Associate Professor at the University of North Texas where he teaches in the PhD Program in Creative Writing. Formerly, he was based out of the UNAM in Mexico City where he worked as a Fulbright-Garcia Robles Scholar. A graduate of Cornell University and a former Picador Guest Professor in Leipzig, Germany, his writing has appeared in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, the Kenyon Review, Texas Monthly, NBC News, and The New York Times Magazine among other venues. He’s currently a regular contributor to The Guardian and the Ploughshares blog. His novel, Bang, is out now from Arte Publico Press. He lives in the beautiful Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The Poet Speaks with Amanda Eke
2024-06-22 10:00 - 13:00 | Online via Zoom
Saturday, June 22, 2024 10am-1pm CST, via Zoom
Instructor: Amanda Eke
Nonmember: $100; Member: $85; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S

Rhythm, dynamic words, dramatic flow–these are some of the core elements of spoken word poems. But what if you infuse this type of poetry with aspects of storytelling and other oral traditions? This cross-genre approach to writing and performance can open us up to a whole new art form.
The goal of this one-day workshop is to engage in a unique combination of personal story and poetry. We will start by learning about Nigerian and Igbo oral storytelling traditions of rhyme and verse. Then we’ll fuse this storytelling with the contemporary art of spoken word to create our own poems. Theater and choral reading techniques will also be covered to help students prepare poems for stage performance.
This course is open to writers of all skill levels, 18+.
By the end of the class students will have:

New strategies for incorporating storytelling and other oral traditions into crafting spoken word pieces
Experimentation with beats and rhymes
1 drafted spoken word poem

Read Amanda’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

Amanda Eke is an award-winning Nigerian American Artist, Poet, Filmmaker, Educator and Scholar. A Fulbright and UN Award winner and author, she uses both her love for writing and music to address socio-political issues, and contemporary culture prevalent in society today. Amanda has lived and worked with young adults in Malta, Nepal, United States and Nigeria.

Letters to James Baldwin: A Pride Month Reading & Celebration
2024-06-27 18:30 - 20:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Join Gemini Ink on Thursday, June 27th, to wrap up Pride Month 2024 with a timely and intimate literary discussion around the life and work of James Baldwin.
We will celebrate the genius of Baldwin, a black, queer writer and civil rights activist, and create a space for other writers to draw inspiration from and interact with his work. This event will feature authors Georgie Lee, Aminah Decé, and Aaron Deutsch, who will each share a piece of work written in response to Baldwin’s concepts and ideas. Come join the community conversation. Following the program, we will have a community open mic. Light refreshments will be served.
Please visit our social media pages during the month of June. We’re sharing writing prompts and quotes from James Baldwin that mayinspire you to write something new for the open mic!

Instagram: @sa_geminiink
Facebook: @GeminiInk
Twitter: @GeminiInk

Aminah Decé is a Teaching Artist from Mississippi. She was trained at the World Combat Academy, Institute of Martial Science, and maintains degrees in The Humanities, Fine Arts & Art History/Criticism from UTSA. She began her artistic journey as a slam poet in Killeen, Texas. Aminah discredits concepts of race and supremacy through her art and empowers the public to do the same through art education.

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. 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. To establish and maintain effective communication, he uses poetics and linguistics to build shared goals across cultures. He loves teaching creative writing classes, working on that ever-elusive first book, and spoiling his Boston Terrier, Hamlet.
Georgie Lee (he/they) is an award-winning and internationally published poet from South Texas. By day, Georgie is the healthcare form designer for all Baptist Health System hospitals in the San Antonio area. By night, Georgie is heavily involved in the local performing arts scene. From acting in community theater productions to playing the clarinet in symphonic bands, Georgie hopes to inspire others to explore the power of recovery through creative activity. Their work is centered around self-love, grief, overcoming addiction, and queerness as a celebration.

MOSAIC Summer Workshop with Poet Mandy Lynn
2024-07-03 11:00 - 14:00 | Contemporary at Blue Star, 116 Blue Star, San Antonio, Texas

Make Your YA Novel a Reality with David Bowles
2024-07-08 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Mondays, July 8, 15, & 22, 6:30-8:30pm CST, in person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: David Bowles
Nonmember: $150; Member: $130; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
Do you aspire to become the next Jacqueline Woodson, Suzanne Collins, or Benjamin Saenz? From dystopian adventures to explorations of young romance to coming-of-age stories, the demand for fiction for young adult readers is as strong as ever. But how do you take a YA novel from concept to reality?
In this three-part course, award-winning author David Bowles will guide participants through the process of developing their ideas for a YA novel from a concept to a synopsis and first chapter. We will discuss stylistic elements when writing longform fiction for teens—prose novels, novels-in-verse, graphic novels. We will also learn how to prepare to pitch YA (young adult) projects to agents and/or editors.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels who are interested or in the throes of writing YA.
By the end of the class students will have:

Initial chapters and synopsis for a longform work of YA fiction
A plan for completing and revising the manuscript
A cover letter and pitch to begin shopping for an agent / publisher

Read David’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

David Bowles is a Mexican American author and translator from south Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas Río Grande Valley. He has written over three dozen award-winning titles, most notably They Call Me Güero and My Two Border Towns. His work has also been published in multiple anthologies, plus venues such as The New York Times, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, School Library Journal, Rattle, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children’s Literature. Additionally, David has worked on several TV/film projects, including Victor and Valentino (Cartoon Network), the Moctezuma & Cortés miniseries (Amazon/Amblin) and Monsters and Mysteries in America (Discovery). In 2017, David was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. He now serves as its vice president. In 2019, he co-founded the hashtag and activist movement #DignidadLiteraria, which has negotiated greater Latinx representation in publishing. In 2021, he helped launch Chispa, the Latinx imprint of Scout Comics, for which he serves as co-publisher. David’s literary representation is Taylor Martindale Kean and Stefanie Von Borstel of Full Circle Literary. His Hollywood representation is Sandra Ávila of Inclusion Management. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @DavidOBowles

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.

Gemini Ink Volunteer Summer Social
2024-07-11 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Are you interested in getting a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the writing life? Interested in helping our community craft their stories?
Thursday, July 11, 2024 6:30-8:30pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink
Free and Open to Existing and Prospective Volunteers
Join us for a fun and informal Volunteer Summer Social. We’ll share light summer refreshments, fun literary games, and learn about volunteer opportunities, including general office duties, event support, social and assisting teaching artists in the classroom.
Help us teach the craft of writing to people of all skill levels so they can bring their stories to life!

https://geminiink.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/2024-Volunteer-Social-Video.mp4
Complete this short volunteer survey for full details.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Ramona Reeves
2024-07-17 19:00 - 20:30 | Online
Wednesday, July 17th, 2024 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Ramona Reeves, moderated Cassandra Lane
RSVP
About It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories
Winner of the 2023 Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction, Texas Institute of Letters

Happiness and connection prove fickle in this debut collection of eleven linked stories introducing Babbie and Donnie. She is a thrice-divorced former call girl, and he is a sobriety-challenged trucker turned yogi. Along with their community of exes, in-laws, and coworkers, Babbie and Donnie share a longing to reforge their lives, a task easier said than done in Mobile, Alabama, which bears its own share of tainted history. Despite overwhelming challenges and the ever-looming specters of status, race, and class, the characters in It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories strive for versions of the American dream through modern and often unconventional means. Told with humor and honesty, these stories remind us not only about the fallibility of being human and the resistance of some to change but also about finding redemption in unlikely places.
In linked short stories taking place across time, Reeves offers up two characters finding their own form of redemption. . . . Both humorous and deeply emotional, this collection shines for its beautifully written characters.
–Booklist
These surprising, wonderfully funny stories glow with comic energy. The eleven pieces in It Falls Gently All Around serve as chapters in a deeply satisfying portrayal of characters facing the expiration dates on their old beliefs and their newly acquired convictions. Ramona Reeves has fully brought to life a cast of flawed, breaking people with bravery and resilience to spare. The book is a triumph of wise and compassionate storytelling.
–Kevin McIlvoy, author of One Kind Favor
It Falls Gently All Around when a character believes ‘He could make out ghosts swimming in the darkness, like another life he might have lived. . . .’ It is one of several instances in the book when a story suddenly coalesces, and the reader is both surprised and moved, and this particular example speaks to a clear ambition of the author—to capture the elusive human moments that we all experience but for which we need an artist to genuinely see. This is a splendid book by an important new writer.
–Robert Boswell, author of Mystery Ride, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, and Tumbledown

Ramona Reeves won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and the Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2022 for her collection,It Falls Gently All Around and Other Stories. She was a recent fellow at the San Ysidro Writers Residency and a 2024 judge for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in Post Road, The Southampton Review, Pembroke, New South, Bayou Magazine, Texas Highways and others. She teaches a course for writers working on their first manuscripts and will be teaching at the Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference later this year. She and her wife currently call Austin home.

Cassandra Lane is winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and author of We Are Bridges (Feminist Press), which NPR called “a stunning contribution to what must become our collective memory.” Lane received her MFA from Antioch University LA. She formerly worked as a newspaper reporter, high school English and journalism teacher, college admissions advisor, senior writer, and community relations manager for the Dodgers. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times’s “Conception” series, the L.A. Times, the Times-Picayune, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and multiple anthologies. She is the Editor-in-Chief of L.A. Parent magazine.

Discover New Entry Points into Your Writing: An Open Genre Workshop with National Book Award Finalist Reginald Gibbons
2024-07-18 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Thursdays, July 18, 25, & Aug 1, 6:30-8:30pm CST, on Zoom (This class was rescheduled from Thur, July 11, 18 & 25)
Instructor: Reginald Gibbons
Nonmember: $140; Member: $120; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.
Class Full. To add your name to the waitlist, please email Josh Cantú at joshua@geminiink.org.
Are you struggling to begin a creative piece or has the revision process left you lost on how to move forward? Paying attention to our inner and outer worlds and connecting the two using our intuition as a guide can help us work through creative blocks. Using techniques based on the work of author and psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas, we will tune into objects in the outside world to help us dig into deeper parts of ourselves, so we can get unstuck and add depth to our writing.
In this three-part, open-genre workshop, we will learn how to use not only writerly craft from a variety of genres, including poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction but also our landscape of feeling and thought, memory and experience to create a more deliberate artistic practice. We will examine the works of writers such as Amy Hempel, Basil Bunting, Patricia Smith, Marga Minko, Kimiko Hahn, and others. Students will pick which writers resonate most for them and study how intuition and craft informs their work.
In the workshop, everyone will draft new work as well as revise existing pieces, using a process that brings together intuition and craft in unique ways. Participants will be able to carry this innovative practice into all their work.
This class is open to writers of all genres and skill levels.
Students will leave this class with:

An understanding of the connection between intuition and craft
Techniques for working through creative blocks
A draft of new or revised creative work

Reginald Gibbons, Frances Hooper Professor of Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University, is a poet, fiction writer, translator, literary critic. His books of poems include Last Lake (University of Chicago Press), Creatures of a Day (LSU Press; Finalist for the National Book Award in poetry; see https://www.ronslate.com/on-creatures-of-a-day-poems-by-reginald-gibbons-lsu-press/), and Slow Trains Overhead: Chicago Poems and Stories (University of Chicago Press). Three bilingual selections of his poems have been published: in Spanish and English, Desde una barca de papel (translated by Manuel Ulacia, Victor Manuel Mendiola, Jennifer Clement, and Jordi Doce, and edited by Jorde Doce, 2010, Littera Libros [Spain]); in Italian and English, L’Abitino Blu (translated by Piera Mattei, 2012, gattomerlino/superstripes); and in French and English, Je Pas Je (translated by Nathanael, 2014, e-book, recoursaupoeme.com).

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

Raising the Stakes: Fictionalizing Your Stories for the Stage with Amalia Ortiz
2024-08-06 18:30 - 20:30 | TX
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.

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.

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!

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.
RSVP
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.

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.

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.
Register
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

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.

Veterans' Writing Collective with Sarah Colby
2024-09-18 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
The Veterans’ 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.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Ayokunle Falomo
2024-09-18 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
RSVP

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

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.

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.

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!

Open Writer's Labs
2024-09-30 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.

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.

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.

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.
