Sifting and Sorting: Developing Fiction from Family Anecdotes with Diane Gonzales Bertrand

Online via Zoom

In this class, you’ll explore a family anecdote of your own with a fiction writer’s imagination. You’ll learn how to pursue essential details; add character, setting, sequence and thematic elements; and amplify color, action, and motive as the characters move through the world you build.  Come to class with 1-2 anecdotes you want to reinvent as your next fiction project.

$125

The Big Texas Read featuring Cliff Hudder

Online via Zoom

We're reading and discussing Cliff Hudder's novel from Texas Review Press, Pretty Enough for You. This program will be moderated by Tony Diaz.

Free

Deep Revision, A Prose Workshop with Award-winning Author Katey Schultz

Online via Zoom

This workshop is designed to empower writers with revision techniques to apply to memoir, essays, flash, short stories, or novels. Whether trying to revise a stand-alone chapter or considering the broader arc of your full manuscript, these techniques are graspable, effective, and empowering.

$150

The Big Texas Read Featuring Nan Cuba

Online via Zoom

A Free Monthly Online Reading Series from Writing Workshops Dallas & Gemini Ink.
UP NEXT: We're reading and discussing Nan Cuba's novel, Body and Bread. This program will be moderated by Helen Fremont.

Free

Best Summer Poetry Reads for the “Beach”: An August Poetry Boost & Discussion

Online via Zoom

Whether you're headed to the beach with its sand and sun or want to learn about new poetic voices from the shores of your couch, join Gemini Ink’s Executive Director Alexandra van de Kamp on an exploration of new or newly-discovered titles and her recommendations on recent “Best Reads!” lists. We'll discuss sample poems from a wide range of poetry collections including Natalie Diaz, Morgan Parker, Urayoán Noel, Barbara Ras, Donika Kelly, Reginald Gibbons, and more. Poets of all levels welcome!

$50

The Big Texas Read featuring Octavio Quintanilla

Online via Zoom

We’re chatting with Octavio Quintanilla discussing his novel, If I Go Missing, with guest moderator Natalia Treviño.
THE BOOK An astonishing debut, If I Go Missing is timely, fearless, and necessary. In these poems, Octavio Quintanilla measures displacement with language and grapples with the longing to begin anew, to return to what was left unsaid, undone. Redemption is not always possible in the geography of these poems, but there is always a sense of hope. And by this pulse we are guided, the poet’s unmistakable voice that, finally, clears the way so we may find our bearing.

Free

Film Structure and Fiction: A New Approach to Plotting Narrative 

Gemini Ink 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, United States

In this generative class, we’ll explore how the structure of films can enhance our fiction, whether novels or short stories. We’ll analyze how to use plot points (“doorways of no return”), midpoints, inciting incidents, and pinches to build solid narratives that bolster our characters and themes. Bring either a project you’ve been struggling with or a new idea whose plot remains a mystery.

$140

“The Business of Writing”: The Path to Traditional Publishing for Fiction with Johnnie Bernhard

Online via Zoom

Want to demystify the path to traditional publishing but don’t have the time and money to attend a full-scale writing conference? Learn about traditional publishing through sequential steps beginning with vetting a literary agent and a publisher, writing the query letter, mastering the synopsis, and formatting a manuscript to industry standards. This hands-on approach to traditional publishing, including the university press system, will guide you through industry standards, ensuring better opportunities for your manuscript or future writing projects. Bring your questions and projects to class and take that next step in your writing journey!

$125

Small but Mighty: The Art of Microfiction with Tina Barry

In this month-long workshop, we’ll study the masters of short-form writing, as well as prose poems and narrative poets, who bring us to the action quickly and hold us there with carefully honed, emotive language and images that resonate. Students will leave with four drafts of stories and plenty of ideas for generating new pieces.

$165

Rebel with a Cause: A Celebration of the Literary Life of Gregg Barrios

Every year Gemini Ink honors a great San Antonio writer with the Award of Literary Excellence at our annual gala, Inkstravaganza. This year our honoree is the beloved playwright, poet and journalist Gregg Barrios. The San Antonio Current has called him “A Texas Treasure.” We invite you to join us on Friday, October 15th, for an unforgettable gala celebration of his life and work.

Zoom Out & Dig It All! Finding Poetry in Our On- and Offline Lives with Award-winning Poet Urayoán Noel

Online via Zoom

This four-week generative workshop aims to encourage all us “Zoom’ed out” poets to zoom out in another sense: to embrace a broader view of what poetry can be on the page, the screen, and beyond. The workshop assumes that we don’t have to choose between print and digital (we can dig it all!), and that we can grow, innovate, and heal by bringing our writing closer to our everyday lives. For inspiration, we will examine work by a range of poets (artists’ books, smartphone poetry, hybrid forms of storytelling and collaboration), with special attention to diasporic and border-crossing poets whose work stresses the complex intersections of embodied space, writing, and technologies. We will work with 1-2 prompts per week, with the option to keep generating new pieces or to experiment with and reimagine existing ones. Our focus will be on solo work, but we will also try to daydream collaborative projects beyond market expectations of an atomized productivity.

$140