Gemini Ink

Thanksgiving Holiday – Office Closed
2023-11-23 - 2023-11-24 | TX

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Carmen Tafolla
2023-11-15 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Mexico_City) | Online via Zoom
Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Carmen Tafolla’s children’s book, Warrior Girl. Moderated by Dr. Rita Urquijo-Ruiz.

RSVP

ABOUT WARRIOR GIRL
An insightful novel in verse about the joys and struggles of a Chicana girl who is a warrior for her name, her history, and her right to choose what she celebrates in life.
Celina and her family are bilingual and follow both Mexican and American traditions. Celina revels in her Mexican heritage, but once she starts school, it feels like the world wants her to erase that part of her identity. Fortunately, she’s got an army of family and three fabulous new friends behind her to fight the ignorance. But it’s her Gramma who’s her biggest inspiration, encouraging Celina to build a shield of joy around herself. Because when you’re celebrating, when you find a reason to sing or dance or paint or play or laugh or write, they haven’t taken everything away from you. Of course, it’s not possible to stay in celebration mode when things get dire–like when her dad’s deported and a pandemic hits–but if there is anything Celina’s sure of, it’s that she’ll always live up to her last name: Guerrera–woman warrior–and that she will use her voice and writing talents to make the world a more beautiful place where all cultures are celebrated.
ABOUT CARMEN TAFOLLA
Carmen Tafolla is an internationally acclaimed Chicana writer from San Antonio, Texas, and a professor emerita of bicultural bilingual studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Tafolla served as the poet laureate of San Antonio from 2012 to 2014, and was named the Poet Laureate of Texas for 2015–16. Tafolla has written more than 40 books and won multiple literary awards. She is one of the most highly anthologized Chicana authors in the United States, with her work appearing in more than 300 anthologies. https://www.carmentafolla.net/

ABOUT DR. RITA URQUIJO-RUIZ

Dr. Rita E. Urquijo-Ruiz is a Mexicana/Chicana queer educator, author, and translator who teaches Spanish as well as Queer, Chicana/o, and Latinx Studies at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She is the translator of Xelena González and Adriana Garcia’s award-winning books: Where Wonders Grow (Donde las maravillas crecen) and Remembering (Te recuerdo). She was absolutely thrilled when Dr. Carmen Tafolla invited her to translate her novel in verse Warrior Girl (Guerrera). Rita’s story about being previously undocumented, entitled “First Visit,” was published in the award-winning anthology Somewhere We are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings, coedited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca.

The Big Texas Author Talk is a *free* lecture series devoted to showcasing Texas authors from across our big state. Each month we feature one Texas author in conversation with another—from New York Times bestsellers living in Dallas, Houston, and Austin to our rich Texas Latinx border authors living in Laredo and McAllen, not to mention from other deep pockets and corners of our culturally diverse state. Our lecture series is as entertaining as it is informative—and like Texas itself, we offer a vast array of storytellers who represent the spirit of our extremely distinct Lone Star State and continue to keep us on the literary map. In the past, we’ve featured novelists such as Kathleen Kent, Marisol Cortez, Joe Lansdale, and Antonio Ruiz-Camacho and Texas poet laureates such as Carmen Tafolla, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Jenny Brown, and Emmy Pérez.

Inkstravaganza 2023 honoring Jenny Browne
2023-11-10 18:30 - 21:30 | McNay Art Museum, 6000 N. New Braunfels Ave., San Antonio, TX, United States
SOLD OUT
“Fellow Travelers: Celebrating the Poetic Journeys of Jenny Browne”

Celebrating Jenny Browne at the McNay Art Museum Moroccan Courtyard and Leeper Auditorium, Friday, November 10th, 6:30-9:30 pm

Award for Literary Excellence
Jenny Browne
Honorary Co-Chairs
Dr. Vanessa B. Beasley, Trinity University’s 20th President
& Naomi Shihab Nye
Moderator
Dr. Rachel Pearson
Emcee
Molly Cox
2023 Inkstravaganza Committee
Wendy Atwell, Amie Charney, Eileen Curtright, Joey Fauerso, Meaghan Ritchey, Claudia Stokes, Burgin Streetman, Alexandra van de Kamp, and Laura Van Prooyen

Don’t miss Gemini Ink’s 23rd Inkstravaganza in celebration of the writing arts by joining us on November 10th in honoring Jenny Browne, as we celebrate her remarkable accomplishments as a groundbreaking poet, gifted educator, and community voice for the transformative impact of literature in our lives.

Jenny Browne is the author of four collections: Fellow Travelers: New and Selected Poems (2019), Dear Stranger (2014), The Second Reason (2007), and At Once (2003). A prolific poet and dynamic literary citizen at home and abroad, she served concurrent terms as City of San Antonio Poet Laureate (2016-18) and Poet Laureate of the State of Texas (2017) and, in 2020, was Distinguished Fulbright Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and the Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has been an integral part of the Trinity University faculty for 15 years, having joined the Department of English in 2007, where she currently teaches courses in creative writing and environmental studies, as well as co-directs Women and Gender Studies. In 2004, she received a prestigious three-year James Michener Fellowship from the University of Texas in Austin, where she received her MFA in Poetry.
Jenny Browne learned to walk on the grounds of Fort Sam Houston. After moving with her family to Maine and the Midwest, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1993. She continued her travels and lived in Alaska, West Africa, El Salvador and the South of France. These formative experiences with other cultures and landscapes shaped her commitment to literature as a means of opening minds, cultivating imagination, and creating empathy for people and places beyond one’s own skyline.
For most of her adult life, Browne has brought communities together to strengthen literacy and celebrate literary arts. From 1998-2004 she worked in local schools, libraries, and community centers with support from the Texas Commission on the Arts, the City’s UrbanSmarts Program, ARTSSanAntonio, and Gemini Ink. She created and designed a K-12 curriculum integrating writing, environmental education, and the poetics of place that was piloted in Gulf Coast schools. From 2000-2003, she founded and directed the Good Samaritan Center’s Literary Arts Program on San Antonio’s Westside.
Over the years, Browne’s work has created platforms and opportunities for people to engage in writing and to explore ideas and identities across cultures, economic backgrounds, and ages. She continues to build local, regional, and global partnerships and worked with Borderland Collective to create Narratives of Resettlement, a two-year-long creative collaboration with refugee families.
In 2012, Browne traveled with the U.S. Department of State and the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program on two cultural diplomacy tours, teaching poetry in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya and the U.S. Embassy in Sierra Leone. She also completed a semester-long sabbatical in the Atacama Desert of Chile, and Oaxaca, Mexico, and continues to return to Belfast, Northern Ireland.
When she is not teaching or traveling, Browne writes in a hundred-year-old house in the historic La Vaca neighborhood where she lives with her husband, photographer Scott Martin, and their daughters Lyda and Harriet.

About our Teaching Artist of the Year, Joyous Windrider Jimenez!
Joyous Windrider Jiménez, a Gemini Ink teaching artist since 2016, is a poet, teatrista, mixed-media visual artist, and video creator. She melds performance and visual elements to articulate her healing journey and emotional literacy. Since 2009, she’s showcased her work both in San Antonio and online, with a recent publication in Puro Chicanx: Writers of the 21st Century by Cutthroat, A Journal Of The Arts and The Black Earth Institute.
As a teaching artist since 2012, she has worked with notable organizations such as SAY Sí, Gemini Ink, the Magik Theatre, San Antonio Wolf Trap, the McNay Art Museum, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and Blue Star Contemporary’s MOSAIC program for youth. Her teaching experience spans diverse demographics, from preschoolers to retired adults, and includes cancer survivors, incarcerated youth, mental health warriors, title I students, and foster care children. Her students have achieved recognition through public exhibitions, performances, publication, and awards, including Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards.

Introduction to Playwriting with Mikaela Simon
2023-11-09 18:00 - 21:00 | Online via Zoom
Thursdays, Nov 9 & 16, 6-9pm CST, via Zoom
Instructor: Mikaela Simon
Nonmember: $140; Member: $120; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Excellent theatre has a way of getting a great story up on its feet. But how do you tell a story on the page so that it comes to life on the stage?
Join New Jersey-based playwright Mikaela Simon in this two-session course which will cover the fundamentals of writing a play.
Workshop participants will learn how playwriting differs from other genres, what “show don’t tell” means when writing for the stage, and how to use it to create dynamic storytelling on stage. This course will cover structure, format, dialogue, monologues, characters, dramatic action, and theatricality. Participants will explore these elements and use them to create their own short plays and/or scenes.
This course is open to writers of all genres and skill level, 18+.
Students will leave this course with:

Knowledge of how to structure and format a play
An understanding of playwriting elements and how to use them
The ability to apply the concepts to long-form works, such as one acts, full-lengths, etc.
The first draft of a 10-minute play or the first few scenes of a larger work

Read Mikaela’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

Mikaela Simon (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Jersey City, NJ. She graduated in 2019 from Drew University with a BA in Theatre Arts. While in college, Mikaela’s work was performed a number of times in the Plays in Process series, and she was also a recipient of the Robert Fisher Oxnam Award for Playwriting in 2018, resulting in a staged reading produced by the Ensemble Studio Theatre. Since graduating, she has taken on the role of teaching artist for the theatre program at Yavneh Academy in Paramus, NJ. Mikaela is also a multimedia visual artist, and is very involved in the Jersey City arts community with her small business (@doodlealldayy). Writing has always held a special place for her, and she looks forward to getting the chance to share the beautiful craft of playwriting with people who have a story to tell.

A Walk on the Dark Side: Gothic Erasure with Kristine Esser Slentz
2023-10-30 18:30 - 20:30 | TX
Mondays, Oct 30 & Nov 6, 6:30-8:30pm CST, via Zoom
Instructor: Kristine Esser Slentz
Nonmember: $135; Member: $115; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Want to take a walk on the dark side? Let Gothic classics and erasure take you there! From The Phantom of the Opera, to The Picture of Dorian Gray, to Frankenstein, Gothic fiction has captured our deepest fears and twisted our imaginations with the strange and unusual.
In this two-session class, we will explore erasure techniques and apply them to popular Gothic tales to create our own stories or poems. We will delve into erasure masterpieces from Chase Berggrun, Jennifer Tamayo, Francisco Levato, and Nicole Sealey to better understand this increasingly popular technique. We will then apply what we learned to the works of Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde, Gaston Leroux, or any other Gothic texts students would like to work with. This workshop will include close reading, a generative component, and a feedback session.
This course is open to writers of all genres and skill level, 18+.
You will leave this workshop with:

A deeper understanding of erasure
A new perspective on Gothic writing
Your own Gothic story or poem

KRISTINE ESSER SLENTZ is the author of woman, depose (FlowerSong Press, 2021) and the forthcoming artist book, The Archives (Kintsugi Books). She is originally from northwest Indiana and the Chicagoland area. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing (poetry) from City College of New York (CCNY) where she is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor. Kristine is a Pushcart Prize nominee, finalist in the Glass Poetry Chapbook and F(r)iction’s Flash Fiction Contests, recipient of a CCNY English Department Teacher-Writer Award, and former Rifkind Fellow and Poets Afloat resident. Currently, she is the co-founder and organizer/host of the monthly artist series, Adverse Abstraction, in NYC’s East Village.

Unban the Book with Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson
2023-10-24 18:30 - 20:00 | TX
Tuesday, October 24th, 6:30-8pm
HYBRID: in-person at Gemini Ink or online via Zoom
Free and open to the public
Register to Join us for Unban the Book
Join Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, San Antonio Poet Laureate Emeritus, as we recognize Banned Books Week (October 1 – 7, 2023) by gathering and writing open letters to local and state lawmakers about the political attack on books and its impact on our community.
We will come together in shared support of the freedom to seek and express ideas without fear of book bans. When lawmakers ban books, such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which tells a Holocaust survivor story, or Toni Morrison’s Beloved, which is about a former slave who survived abuse, we lose access to pivotal stories that speak to our history, bring to life the realities of marginalized communities, and challenge us to think critically.
Participants will be provided stationary, stamped envelopes, and writing guidance. We will then seal our letters and send them off. Light refreshments will be served. In-person seating is limited, please register here:
Register to Join us for Unban the Book

Andrea Sanderson, San Antonio, TX. Poet Laureate 2020-2023, performs as “Vocab” in her hometown of San Antonio, Texas. “Watching her perform, the word “hero” comes to mind. And not “hero” for the sake of just skill, but for her work in her community: Sanderson teaches poetry workshops, mentors, builds up and encourages artists to pursue their art, and gives them platforms to showcase their talent.
Sanderson’s interest in other people’s art and artistic development became a passion of hers, and she started curating her own shows and creating platforms for other artists to hone their craft by hosting open mics.” (From The San Antonio Current, Jan. 16, 2018.)
Her poetry is published in, The Texas Observer, January 2016 Issue, Pariah Anthology SFA Press, March 2016, and Sycorax’s Daughters, Cedar Grove Publishing, January 2017, Soundbite Vol. 3, Anti-Languorous Project, Spring 2019. Her debut book entitled: She Lives In Music, published on Flower Song Press, was released on Valentine’s Day 2020. Her album She Tastes Like Music, is available on all music streaming platforms.
She received awards, Performer of the Year, Influencer of the Year, from Project Forward, and Dream Voice, from the Dream Week Commission. Sanderson is the winner of the 2019 People’s Choice Award, awarded by Luminaria Artist Foundation (formerly known as: Artist Foundation of San Antonio).In May of 2020 she was awarded Best Live Entertainment/Band Musician of the Year by the SEA Awards.

Evoking Place Through Sensory Writing: An Open Genre Workshop with Award-winning Eco-Writer Camille T. Dungy
2023-10-20 10:00 - 13:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Friday, October 20, 10am-1pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: Camille T. Dungy
Nonmember: $135; Member: $115; Student: $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Place can be a tool for connection, history, freedom, discovery, and even tension. But how do we capture a setting with nuance so that a reader gains understanding and clarity of the world the story/poem lives in?
In this three-hour generative workshop, participants will examine passages that use strong sensory details to bring the texture, mood, geographic and/or aesthetic quirks of a place to life. We will then practice various approaches for generating descriptive language and apply it to our own work.
Don’t miss this chance to spend a morning with one of the most intriguing literary voices of our time, who is a ground-breaking author in the world of eco-writing! Walk away with several starts to new pieces of work evoking a sense of place in thought-provoking, nuanced ways.
This course is open to writers of all genres and skill level, 18+. Students are encouraged to bring their favorite writing materials.
Students will leave this class with:

An understanding of how setting can be used in creative writing
Approaches to generating different kinds of sensory language
The ability to use sensory details to evoke place
Beginnings of several new pieces of work

Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy’s poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.

The Place of Poetry: An Evening on Eco-Writing with Jenny Browne and Camille T. Dungy
2023-10-19 19:00 - 21:30 | Trinity University, 1 Trinity Pl, San Antonio, Texas, 78212
Join us for a FREE reading at Trinity University!
October 19, 2023, 7-8:30pm
Trinity University, Margarite B. Parker Chapel, Free and Open to the Public
Directions to the Margarite B. Parker Chapel at Trinity
Join us on Thursday, October 19th, for an evening with Gemini Ink 2023 Recipient of the Award for Literary Excellence Jenny Browne, and award-winning poet, essayist, and editor Camille T. Dungy. These two contemporary poets at the top of their craft will discuss how their place-based writing addresses the increasingly complicated relationships humans have to the environment, whether manmade or wild.
This discussion will examine the role of the literary arts in addressing an ever-changing environment. How do we use writing to bring attention to our planet’s ecological crisis while exploring the intricate connection between humans and nature? How do we deepen our relationship to the earth and celebrate the wonder of the natural world? Don’t miss an opportunity to spend time with two thought-provoking literary voices!
The evening will include an audience Q&A and a book signing and reception following the author talk. The event takes place in the Margarite B. Parker Chapel at Trinity University.
This event is co-sponsored by Trinity University’s Humanities Collective.

Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy’s poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.
Jenny Browne is the author of four collections: Fellow Travelers: New and Selected Poems (2019), Dear Stranger (2014), The Second Reason (2007), and At Once (2003). She earned her MFA from the James Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas in Austin. She served concurrent terms as City of San Antonio Poet Laureate (2016-18) and Poet Laureate of the State of Texas (2018) and in 2020 was Distinguished Fulbright Scholar in Creative Writing at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens University, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and the Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America. In the introduction to Browne’s New and Selected Poems, Naomi Shihab Nye praised Browne’s vivid depictions of place and the strangeness of both life and language, “Her exuberant poems, rich with definite cadences, deep curiosities, and multi-layered textures, voices, and personalities, feel like wake-up calls. As if they say, Here is this life I find myself in, which fascinates and confounds me. Have we paid enough attention lately?” Browne teaches at Trinity University in San Antonio.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Katie Gutierrez
2023-10-18 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Wednesday, October 18th, 2023 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Katie Gutierrez’s novel, More Than You’ll Ever Know, moderated by May Cobb.
Katie Gutierrez is the author of the national bestselling, Edgar Award-nominated debut novel More Than You’ll Ever Know, which was also a Good Morning America Book Club selection. She is a National Magazine Award finalist whose essays and features have appeared in TIME, Texas Highways, Harper’s Bazaar, and more, and acknowledged in Best American Magazine Writing and Best American Essays. She has an MFA from Texas State University and lives with her husband and two kids in San Antonio, Texas.
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About More Than You’ll Ever Know:
“Masterful . . . Elegance, darkness, even fear are deftly intertwined . . . A wonderful read.” — LUIS ALBERTO URREA, Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The House of Broken Angels
Recommended by New York Times Book Review • Los Angeles Times• Washington Post• Parade • Good Housekeeping • NBC News • Today.com • Goodreads • Audible • The Millions • Popsugar • Tribeza • CrimeReads • Library Reads • She Reads • and more!
The dance becomes an affair, which becomes a marriage, which becomes a murder…
In 1985, Lore Rivera marries Andres Russo in Mexico City, even though she is already married to Fabian Rivera in Laredo, Texas, and they share twin sons. Through her career as an international banker, Lore splits her time between two countries and two families—until the truth is revealed and one husband is arrested for murdering the other.
In 2017, while trawling the internet for the latest, most sensational news reports, struggling true-crime writer Cassie Bowman encounters an article detailing that tragic final act. Cassie is immediately enticed by what is not explored: Why would a woman—a mother—risk everything for a secret double marriage? Cassie sees an opportunity—she’ll track Lore down and capture the full picture, the choices, the deceptions that led to disaster. But the more time she spends with Lore, the more Cassie questions the facts surrounding the murder itself. Soon, her determination to uncover the truth could threaten to derail Lore’s now quiet life—and expose the many secrets both women are hiding.
Told through alternating timelines, More Than You’ll Ever Know is both a gripping mystery and a wrenching family drama. Presenting a window into the hearts of two very different women, it explores the many conflicting demands of marriage and motherhood, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone—especially those we love.

Voices of San Anto with Eddie Vega
2023-10-07 13:00 - 17:00 | San Antonio Public Library, 600 Soledad, San Antonio, Texas, 78205

Illness as Story: Healing through Writing and Community with Suzanne Ohlmann
2023-10-07 10:00 - 12:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Sat, Oct 7, 14, 21, 28 & Nov 4, 11, 10am-12pm CST, Hybrid (online via Zoom and in-person)
Instructor: Suzanne Ohlmann
Nonmember: $155; Member: $135; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Do you carry the story of illness in your body?
No matter the diagnosis or disease, illness leaves a mark on the mind, body, and soul. Even caregivers or clinicians carry the story of how they’ve helped others navigate disease. Sometimes the first step toward health and healing can be sitting with the truth of how illness affects you.
In this six-week course, participants will study the therapeutic storytelling model of the Six-Part Story (6PSM), explore writing about their experiences with disease from different points of view, and practice combining facts and fiction to create a new version of their healing journey.
By creating a safe space for reflection, this workshop hopes to provide a path toward repair, healing, and empowerment. All students will write and polish a final essay for potential publishing. On the last day of class, students will share their stories with each other.
This course is open to writers of all genres and skill level, 18+.
Students will leave this course with:

A polished essay in both first and third person
An understanding of how the Six-Part Story Method (6PSM) can be used to write about illness
Greater confidence in sharing personal stories

Suzanne Ohlmann is a writer, nurse, and musician. Her first book, Shadow Migration: Mapping A Life (University of Nebraska Press), was released in March 2022. She teaches storytelling as a means to navigate illness and the human condition. Her essays have been published by Texas Monthly, Intima: The Journal of Narrative Medicine, and Longreads. She lives in San Antonio with her husband, son, and a chorus of adopted pets.

Breaking Through: A Conversation on Pathways to Publication for Latinx Writers
2023-10-06 18:30 - 20:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Free and open to the public
Join Gemini Ink on Friday, October 6th, to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2023 with a timely and intimate literary discussion about current publishing trends and Latinx representation in books.
This event features Latinx authors and publishers and provides a space to discuss how to break barriers and create pathways toward publication in a literary landscape where Latinx writers account for only 7% of published authors. Our guests will talk about how they navigated the publishing industry and illuminate how Latinx writers can forge a path toward sharing their own stories.

Moderator:
Norma Elia Cantú recently served as the President of the American Folklore Society (2020-2022) and holds the Murchison Professorship of the Humanities at Trinity University. Her research and creative writing have earned her an international reputation. Her most recent publications include the co-edited anthologies: Teaching Gloria Anzaldúa: Pedagogies and Practices for our Classrooms and Communities and meXicana Fashions: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction; the novel, Cabañuelas, and a poetry collection: Meditacion Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life, and Labor. She has two forthcoming publications, Fiestas in Laredo: Matachines, Quinceañeras, and George Washington’s Birthday Celebration &; The Folklorico Dance Tradition in US Latinx Communities. She is at work on a collection of poems tentatively titled Remedios.
Panelists:
Cloud Delfina Cardona is a poet and visual artist from San Anto, Tejas. Cardona is the author of What Remains, winner of the 2020 Host Publications Chapbook Prize. She is the co-founder of Infrarrealista Review, a literary nonprofit dedicated to publishing Texan writers. Cardona’s poems can be found in Prairie Schooner, Los Angeles Review, The Boiler, Tinderbox, and more.
Eddie Vega (the Taco-Poet of Texas) is a poet, storyteller, educator, and Macondista. He is the author of Chicharra Chorus (FlowerSong Press, 2019) and recipient of the literary arts grant from the Luminaria Artist Foundation (2021). Last summer, he was named best local poet by the San Antonio Current and won two major head-to-head haiku contests. Most recently, he’s published a collection of poems written by South Texans entitled, Asina is How We Talk. Vega hosts The Mouth Dakota Poetry Project, a biweekly open mic in San Antonio, TX.
Katie Gutierrez is the author of the national bestselling, Edgar Award-nominated debut novel MORE THAN YOU’LL EVER KNOW, which was also a Good Morning America Book Club selection. She is a National Magazine Award finalist whose essays and features have appeared in TIME, Texas Highways, Harper’s Bazaar, and more, and acknowledged in Best American Magazine Writing and Best American Essays. She has an MFA from Texas State University and lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband and their two kids.

Memory & Image: A Micro Memoir Workshop with Poet Joni Wallace
2023-10-02 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Mondays Oct 2, 9, 16 & 23, 6:30-8:30pm CST, via Zoom
Instructor: Joni Wallace
Nonmember: $150; Member: $125; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Small, disconnected, and incomplete–this is how personal memories often come to us. But how do we take these moments and turn them into something meaningful? In micro memoir, a nonfiction piece is told in 200 words or less and is a perfect way to capture these tiny stories.
In this generative four-week class, we’ll explore micro memoir and how adding a visual component can add depth to personal stories. Beth Ann Fennelly, Bianca Stone, Karen Brennan, and Octavio Quintanilla are just some writers whose work we will study. After discussing these works, we will delve into our own memories, learn to identify powerful moments and explore them through micro memoir and simple visual art exercises.
The final class project will be a short, linked series of personal stories with visual elements. Students are encouraged to bring and use any art supplies they have around the house.
This course is open to writers of all genres and skill level, 18+.
Students will leave this class with:

A short series of micro-memoir accompanied by visual elements
New critical reading techniques
Resources for submitting written work

Joni Wallace is the author of three books of poetry and a chapbook: LANDSCAPE WITH MISSING RIVER, Barrow Street Press, 2023; Kingdom Come Radio Show, Barrow Street Press, 2016; To the Lighthouse Award; Blinking Ephemeral Valentine, Four Way Books, 2011, winner of the Levis Prize (selected by Mary Jo Bang); Redshift (chapbook)(Kore Press, 2001). Her work has been featured by the Poetry Society of America and appears in journals such as Boston Review, Conduit, Connotations Press, Gulf Coast, and more. She explores micro memoir through her poetry, and her sound and video work appears on textsound.org and in The Drunken Boat.

Cosmic Memory Map with Anel I. Flores
2023-09-30 10:00 - 14:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Saturday, Sep 30, from 10am-2pm CST (with 1-hour lunch), in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: Anel I. Flores
Nonmember: $125; Member: $105; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Welcome to the Cosmic Memory Map Workshop, a transformative journey into the depths of your “autohisteorías,” Led by Xicane, Queer, Trans author and artist Anel I. Flores. We invite you to embark on a day of self-discovery, empowerment, and creative expression collectively.
In this immersive workshop, we will explore the intersection of memory and the cosmos, delving into the cosmic tapestry that shapes our individual narratives. Drawing inspiration from real-life experiences, we will learn techniques to extract the essence of our stories, weaving them into vibrant tapestries of imagination and emotion.
Through guided writing exercises, group discussions, and reflective meditations, we will navigate the cosmic landscape of our memories, unearthing hidden gems and untold tales. Together, we will celebrate the power of diverse voices, honoring the richness of our cultural heritage and the complexities of our identities.
No matter your writing background or level of experience, this workshop is a safe and inclusive space for all two-spirit, trans, queer, LGBTQIA+ individuals.
In this workshop, participants will:

Leave with a fresh perspective on memory
Generate at least 20 new story ideas
Draft the beginnings of 1 to 2 new stories
Connect with like-minded writers

Anel I. Flores is a trans-, queer Latina/x writer, artist, activist, entrepreneur, and coach, whose extensive body of work captures the essence of LGBTQIA+ experiences across professional and community spaces. Their areas of expertise encompass various themes such as Latina/x literature, sexuality, gender, race/border/diaspora, spirituality, self-discovery, and radical love.
They hold an MFA in Creative Writing, having penned notable works like the chapbook La Fea and Lambda literary award-nominated book, Empanada: A Lesbiana Story en Probaditas. Their upcoming novel, Cortinas de Lluvia, set to be released in 2024, along with Empanada’s 2nd Ed., doubled with its Spanish translation. Anel’s literary contributions can be found in esteemed publications such as Switchgrass Review, Camino Real, the Fifth Wednesday Journal, RiverSEdge, Entre Guadalupe y Malinche, Rooted: Queer Women of Color Anthology, and others. Furthermore, Flores is the founder of LezRideSA, Queer Voices Speak Out, and La Otra Taller Nepantla Residency.

In the Age of Social Media: A Literary Video Lab with Joyous Windrider Jimenez
2023-09-21 18:30 - 20:30 | TX
Thursdays, Sep 21, 28 & Oct 5, 12, 19, 26, 6:30-8:30pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: Joyous Windrider Jimenez
Nonmember: $140; Member: $120; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

In the age of TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts, how can you present your writing in a way that’s on trend and easily consumable? Would you like to use your digital platform to showcase your work in a new way and expand your audience?
In this 6-week course, we will use simple, open-genre writing prompts to generate short poems and/or impactful prose. We will polish our short pieces and explore gathering images that will visually accentuate our words. We will then create short literary videos that include an audio recording of the work, captions, and either moving or still images. Our entire project will be built and edited using a FREE video editing app available for phones and laptops!
This course is open to writers of all genres and skill levels, 18+. Students are welcome to bring in previously written work or images they want to transform.
In this course, students will leave with:

At least one drafted 1-minute poetry/prose video.
Several short written pieces that can be used for future videos.
Tools and knowledge to continue the Literary Video process independently.
An additional way to connect audiences to your writing that isn’t publication or a public reading.

Joyous Windrider Jiménez is an improv & performance poet, teatrista, mixed-media visual artist and video creator who blends performance and visual elements. During the pandemic, she directed and edited a video adaptation of an original operetta for the Jump-Start Performance Co’s INKubator series, and had her time-lapse video poem Quarantine is a Dragon screened at the Roxie Theater’s 2020 virtual summer film festival, Mixtape-In-Place. She also moved into video lessons for children in quarantine for the San Antonio Museum of Art, Gemini Ink, and SAISD. In 2022 and 2023 her video poetry was streamed for Urban 15’s annual global poetry streaming event, MegaCorazon.

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.

Luminescence and Grit: An Evening with Gemini Ink Teaching Artists, followed by a Community Open Mic
2023-09-21 18:30 - 20:00 | Poetic Republic Coffee Co., 2330 S. Presa St, San Antonio, Texas, United States
Join Gemini Ink on Thursday, September 21st, for a night of poetry, prose, and performance as we celebrate the personal artistry of our Gemini Ink Partner Class teaching artists. Every day these instructors bring their passion for the writing arts to community spaces and inspire students of all ages. Tonight we hear their stories!
Our featured writers will include theater artist and playwright Marisela Barrera, accomplished poet and educator Jim LaVilla-Havelin, award-winning fiction writer Desiree Kannel, and local poet and member of the Wyrdd Writers collective Annie Snider.
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.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Thomas H. McNeely
2023-09-20 19:00 - 20:30 | TX
RSVP
RSVP to join us for our Free Monthly Online Lecture Series from WritingWorkshops.com & Gemini Ink
Wednesday, September 20th, 2023 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Thomas H. McNeely’s story collection, Pictures of the Shark. Stephanie Reents is the moderator.

2023 Foreword Reviews INDIES Awards Finalist in Literary Fiction
2023 Houston Chronicle Notable Book
2023 Massachusetts Book Award Must-Read

“An emotionally taut and often haunting collection.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[An] always compelling novel in short stories.”
—Foreword Reviews
“[A] powerful family portrait … heartbreaking authenticity.”
—Booklist
“A tightly written and often emotionally gripping collection.”
—Lone Star Literary Life

A sudden snowfall in Houston reveals family secrets. A trip to Universal Studios to snap a picture of the shark from Jaws becomes a battle of wills between father and son. A midnight séance and the ghost of Janis Joplin conjure the mysteries of sex. A young boy’s pilgrimage to see Elvis Presley becomes a moment of transformation. A young woman discovers the responsibilities of talent and freedom.

Pictures of the Shark, by award-winning Houston writer Thomas H. McNeely, moves from its protagonist Buddy Turner’s surreal world of childhood into the wider arenas of sex, addiction, art, and ambition. Appearing in the country’s finest literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Epoch, and Crazyhorse, shortlisted for the O. Henry Award, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize collections, the stories in Pictures of the Shark are gems that refract their characters’ complex relationships.

An East Side Houston native, THOMAS H. McNEELY has published short stories and non-fiction in The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, Ploughshares, and many other magazines and anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories and Algonquin Books’ Best of the South. His stories have been short-listed for the Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Award anthologies. He has received National Endowment for the Arts, Wallace Stegner, and MacDowell Colony fellowships for his fiction. His first book, Ghost Horse, won the Gival Press Novel Award and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize in Writing. He currently teaches in the Stanford Online Writing Studio and at Emerson College, Boston.

Stephanie Reents received a BA from Amherst College, a second BA from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and an MFA from University of Arizona. She is the author of The Kissing List, a collection of connected stories that was an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review, and I Meant to Kill Ye, a bibliomemoir that is an account of her journey into the strange voice at the heart of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. She has twice been awarded an O. Henry prize for her short fiction. Her novel I Loved to Run is under contract at Penguin Random House.

The Big Give 2023
2023-09-20 - 2023-09-21 | TX
Big Give 2023 will return for our 10th anniversary of fundraising success on Wednesday, September 20 at 6 PM thru Thursday, September 21, at 6 PM.
Donate

This year, all donations from The Big Give are in support of the Cary Clack Scholarship Fund! Gemini Ink established the Cary Clack Scholarship Fund for emerging writers in honor of esteemed journalist Cary Clack, a beloved member of the Gemini Ink board. Cary Clack was born and raised in San Antonio. Cary Clack is a journalist and editorial board member with the San Antonio Express-News where he was the first Black metro desk journalist. He has covered local and national news, events, and social issues for three decades. He is the author of Clowns and Rats Scare Me and More Finish Lines to Cross. In 2017, he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
$5,000 in scholarships will help 40 San Antonians bring their stories to life by allowing them to take our Public Writing Classes for free, and with your support, we can make this happen! Plus, incredible news: This year, we have a $2,500 match from Nancy T. Shivers, doubling the impact of your donations. Help us reach our $5,000 goal and support the Gemini Ink Cary Clack Scholarship Fund, enabling emerging writers in our city to bring their stories to life.
Gemini Ink’s mission is to teach the craft of writing to people of all skill levels so they can bring their stories to life. As San Antonio’s Writing Arts Center, we provide a supportive home for readers and writers of all levels through our online and in-person workshops and literary community. We believe everyone has a story and writing that story is powerful. Our strategic vision is to teach 12,000 people how to bring their stories to life by 2024.
Anyone can apply to the Cary Clack Scholarship Fund. Learn more about our scholarships at https://geminiink.org/scholarships.

Matches

Nancy T. Shivers

This year, Gemini Ink has the opportunity to make our Big Give donations go twice as far with $2,500 match from Nancy T. Shivers in support of the Cary Clack Scholarship Fund.

Weaving Across Languages: A Poetry Workshop with Octavio Quintanilla
2023-09-12 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink
Tuesdays, Sept 12, 19 & 26, 2023 6:30pm-8:30pm CST, Hybrid (in-person at Gemini Ink and online via Zoom)
Instructor: Octavio Quintanilla
Nonmember: $145; Member: $125; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Slang, dialects, common expressions, codeswitching, and every variation of language from across the world. Translanguage captures the rich variety of how people express themselves. It taps into culture, family, all the places we’ve lived, and our own linguistic quirks.
In this three-session workshop, participants will study the poetry of writers who use translanguaging to infuse their work with a unique voice. Participants will identify and explore all of the languages that are part of who they are, and use prompts to write poems that weave in their linguistic identity. This workshop will also include techniques for effective revision and editing.
This course is open to writers of all genres and skill levels, 18+. This course does not require fluency in more than one language, but multilingual students are highly encouraged to register.
In this course, students will:

Explore variations of language
Learn techniques for applying translanguaging to your own work
Generate new poems and receive feedback for revision

Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing, the founder and director of the literature & arts festival, VersoFrontera, publisher of Alabrava Press, and former Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX. His Frontextos (visual poems) have been published and exhibited widely. His new poetry collection, The Book of Wounded Sparrows, is forthcoming from Texas Review Press in fall 2024. He teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Our Lady of the Lake University.

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.

Start and Run Your Own Publishing Business with Maria Maloney
2023-09-05 18:30 - 20:30 | TX
Tuesdays, Sept 5, 12, 19 & 26, 6:30-8:30pm CST, via Zoom
Instructor: Maria Miranda Maloney
Nonmember: $125; Member: $105; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Do you want to leave your imprint on your literary community?
Do you want to run your own press or independent publishing house, but don’t know where to begin? Or are you currently in the publishing business but looking for ways to bolster your publication process, marketing, and distribution?
In this course, we will study various successful small-to-mid-size publishers and walk through the steps of starting or growing a small press. This process will include developing a mission statement, exploring resources, producing an operating budget, creating a customer profile, and discussing distribution options. We will use these elements to build a business plan that will help you execute your vision.
This course is for anyone who has dreamed of starting their own press or is curious to explore different ways to impact their literary communities. This class is also for established publishers looking for new business ideas.
Course Learning Objectives

Assess your interest and strengths to launch a publishing business.
Develop a mission serving a unique, underserved, or underdeveloped niche.
Understand your customer and target market.
Integrate financial facets into your development plan.
Draft a business plan.

Maria Miranda Maloney is an entrepreneur, writer, editor, and publisher. She founded Mouthfeel Press, a small for-profit, mission-driven publishing house, in 2009 in El Paso, Texas. Before launching her press, Maria worked as a consultant and project manager in public relations, sales, and small business development sectors. She has over sixteen years of experience in publishing, has coordinated publishing and writing workshops for the Wise Latina International organization, and was the Ofstad Writing Scholar at Truman State University in 2019. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and is finishing her M.A. in Publishing from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

"A Night of Celebration" with ire'ne lara silva as 2023 Texas Poet Laureate
2023-08-24 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Join Gemini Ink on Thursday, August 24th, for a festive evening celebrating ire’ne lara silva as our new 2023 Texas Poet Laureate.

ire’ne will be reading from her works, and she will be joined by South Texas writers Octavio Quintanilla, former San Antonio Poet Laureate and publisher of Alabrava press; Jen Yanez-Alaniz with her debut book of poems Surrogate Eater (Alabrava Press, 2023); and Gume Laurel, a Rio Grande Valley poet and YA author.
Come to Gemini Ink to meet and congratulate our new state Poet Laureate. Hear power-packed poetry and enjoy the literary company of other readers and writers while sipping cool summer refreshments. Stay for the informal Q&A with ire’ne.

BIO’s:
ire’ne lara silva, the 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of four poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, and FirstPoems; two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos; and a short story collection, flesh to bone, which won the Premio Aztlán. ire’ne is the recipient of a 2021 Tasajillo Writers Grant, a 2017 NALAC Fund for the Arts Grant, the final Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Award, and was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Most recently, ire’ne was awarded the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. ire’ne is currently a Writer at Large for Texas Highways Magazine and is working on a second collection of short stories titled, the light of your body. A new poetry collection, the eaters of flowers, is forthcoming from Saddle Road Press in January 2024.
Jen Yáñez-Alaniz is a Chicana Mestiza activist, educator, poet, and PhD Fellow in Culture, Literacy, and Language at the University of Texas, San Antonio. Her poetry can be read in various journals and anthologies. She is the author of an extensive critical biography of Carmen Tafolla published in the forthcoming anthology Chicana Portraits. Her debut poetry chapbook, Surrogate Eater, was published by Alabrava Press in 2023.
Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing, the founder and director of the literature & arts festival, VersoFrontera, publisher of Alabrava Press, and former 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX. His Frontextos (visual poems) have been published and exhibited widely. His new poetry collection, The Book of Wounded Sparrows, is forthcoming from Texas Review Press in fall 2024. He teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Our Lady of the Lake University.
Gume Laurel is a Texan, native to the Rio Grande Valley on the southernmost border. For the past decade, he has dedicated himself to crafting literary works that promote inclusion and showcase diverse characters with intersectional identities. The bulk of Gume’s writings are focused on underrepresented groups, especially those from the communities he is a part of: Latine and queer. His writings include poetry and young adult fiction of various genres. When he isn’t writing, Gume can be found getting lost on a hiking trail with his dogs Blu and Mouse.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Rubén Degollado
2023-08-16 19:00 - 20:30 | Online
RSVP for the Zoom link.

Wednesday, August 16th, 2023 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Novelist Rubén Degollado’s The Family Izquierdo (W.W. Norton, 2022). Moderated by Marcela Fuentes.

About The Family Izquierdo
A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2022
Longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award
A masterful debut that weaves together the lives of three generations of a Mexican American family bound by love, and a curse.

The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. Their beloved patriarch has suffered from an emotional collapse and is dying; eldest son Gonzalo’s marriage is falling apart; daughter Dina, beleaguered by the fear that her nightmares are real, is a shut-in. When Gonzalo digs up a strange object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbor has cursed them—could this be the reason for all their troubles? As the Izquierdos face a distressing present and an uncertain future, they are sustained by the blood that binds them, a divine presence, and an abiding love for one another. Told in a series of soulful voices brimming with warmth and humor, The Family Izquierdo is a tender narrative of a family at a turning point.
Rubén Degollado is an educator from Texas and the author of The Family Izquierdo: A Novel and the young adult novel Throw. His fiction has appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Image.
Visit www.rubendegollado.com
Marcela Fuentes is a Pushcart Prize-winning fiction writer and essayist. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was the 2016-2017 James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in the Indiana Review, The Rumpus, Texas Highways Magazine, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Texas Christian University. She was born and raised in Del Rio, Texas.
Her debut novel MALAS (June 2024) and linked story collection MY HEART HAS MORE ROOMS THAN A WHOREHOUSE (Summer, 2025) are forthcoming from Viking Books.

Veteran’s Writing Collective with Sarah Colby
2023-08-16 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.

Poetry of Food Final Celebration Reading
2023-08-06 17:00 - 19:00 | Dakota Ice House, 433 S Hackberry St, San Antonio, Texas, 78203
Don’t miss out on the final celebration of the students from Eddie Vega’s workshop, “The Poetry of Food.” They will share their amazing work at Dakota Ice House. The event will be hosted by Eddie Vega himself, and there will be an open mic session following the students’ performances. It’s a great opportunity to hear some talented poets! This event takes place at the Dakota East Side Ice House.

Strange Family Stories: An Adult Picture Book Writing Class with Xavier Garza
2023-08-02 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Wednesdays, Aug 2, 9 & 16, 6:30-8:30pm CST, Hybrid (via Zoom and in-person at Gemini Ink)
Instructor: Xavier Garza
Nonmember: $140; Member: $120; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

La Llorona, the Chupacabra, the Haunted Train Tracks of San Antonio, the power of the all healing Huevo, or that crazy story about a relative who had a close encounter of the mysterious kind. We all have strange stories that have been passed down, and this workshop is a chance to memorialize one story for future generations. What better way to bring this story to life than a picture book for adults?
In this three-week class, students will draw from their family stories, popular folklore, superstitions, and creepy creature legends to create their own picture book for adults. Participants will take these entertaining stories, divide them into sections, align the story with drawings and other media, and create a memento to pass down. The class will also touch on bookbinding and publishing.
This course is open to adult writers of all skill levels. Workshop materials will be provided for those who take the class in person. For those joining online, a suggested materials list will be provided.
Students will leave this workshop with:

A new type of storytelling that balances images and words
An understanding of picture book formats and rules
A picture book in progress that can be completed at home
Ideas on bookbinding and publishing

Xavier Garza was born in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. He is an enthusiastic author, artist, teacher and storyteller whose work is a lively documentation of life, dreams, superstitions, and heroes in the bigger-than-life world of South Texas. Garza has exhibited his art and performed his stories in venues throughout Texas, Arizona, and the state of Washington. He has received such recognitions as the Pura Belpre Honor book and the Libro de las Americas Honor book awards. He lives with his wife and son in San Antonio, Texas, and is the author of numerous books.

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.

Generative Flash Fiction with Andrew Porter
2023-08-01 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Tuesdays, Aug 1 & 8, 6:30-8:30pm CST, Hybrid (via Zoom and in-person at Gemini Ink)
Instructor: Andrew Porter
Nonmember: $145; Member: $125; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.
Class closed. To add your name to the waiting list, please contact joshua@geminiink.org.
Quick consumption–that is how today’s audiences engage with all forms of media and entertainment. This makes flash fiction an ideal form for readers who want to go on a short but thrilling ride in less than 1,500 words. But how does a writer tell a potent and satisfactory story in such a short form?
In this introductory workshop, participants will study different types of flash fiction, discuss effective strategies for working within the constraints of this form, and complete in-class writing prompts with the goal of developing these exercises into more polished flash pieces. Finally, for those interested in sharing, time will be set aside during the second class for students to share their flash-in-progress with the group.
Students will leave this workshop with the following:

An understanding of the fundamentals of flash fiction
Strategies for generating successful flash fiction
A first-draft flash fiction piece

Read Andrew’s Writer’s Desk here!

ANDREW PORTER is the acclaimed, award-winning author of the story collections The Disappeared (Knopf 2023) and The Theory of Light and Matter (Vintage), and the novel In Between Days (Knopf). An Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate, he has received a Pushcart Prize, a James Michener/Copernicus Fellowship, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His work has appeared in One Story, The Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, Narrative, The Southern Review, and on Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. Currently, he teaches fiction writing and directs the creative writing program at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

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 Jehanne Dubrow
2023-07-19 19:00 - 20:30 | TX
RSVP
Wednesday, July 19, 2023 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Jehanne Dubrow’s Taste: A Book of Small Bites (Columbia University Press, 2022).

About Taste:
Taste is a lyric meditation on one of our five senses, which we often take for granted. Structured as a series of “small bites,” the book considers the ways that we ingest the world, how we come to know ourselves and others through the daily act of tasting.
Through flavorful explorations of the sweet, the sour, the salty, the bitter, and umami, Jehanne Dubrow reflects on the nature of taste. In a series of short, interdisciplinary essays, she blends personal experience with analysis of poetry, fiction, music, and the visual arts, as well as religious and philosophical texts. Dubrow considers the science of taste and how taste transforms from a physical sensation into a metaphor for discernment.
Taste is organized not so much as a linear dinner served in courses but as a meal consisting of meze, small plates of intensely flavored discourse.

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of nine books of poems, including most recently, Wild Kingdom (LSU Press, 2021), and two books of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (New Rivers Press, 2019), and Taste: A Book of Small Bites (Columbia University Press, 2022). Her third book of nonfiction, Exhibitions: Essays on Art & Atrocity, is forthcoming from University of New Mexico Press in 2023. Her previous poetry collections are Simple Machines, American Samizdat, Dots & Dashes, The Arranged Marriage, Red Army Red, Stateside, From the Fever-World, and The Hardship Post. She has co-edited two anthologies, The Book of Scented Things: 100 Contemporary Poems about Perfume and Still Life with Poem: Contemporary Natures Mortes in Verse.
Jehanne’s poems have appeared in POETRY, Poetry Northwest, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review, American Life in Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, The Academy of American Poets, as well as on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and in numerous other venues. Recent essays have appeared in The New England Review, Colorado Review, The Common, The Seneca Review, Image, and West Branch. She is the founding editor of the national literary journal, Cherry Tree.
Jehanne earned a B.A. in the “Great Books” from St. John’s College, an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland, an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Jehanne’s writing moves between traditional forms, free verse, prose poetry, lyric essay, autotheory, and personal essay. In Stateside and Dots & Dashes (and in her current manuscript-in-progress, Civilians), she examines her experiences as a military spouse and explores the tradition of war literature. In books like The Arranged Marriage, From the Fever-World, and The Hardship Post, she writes about the Holocaust, American Jewish identity, intergenerational trauma, and the challenges of representing violence on the page. Her collections, Wild Kingdom, Simple Machines, American Samizdat, and Red Army Red, consider the intersection of power, cruelty, and authoritarianism. Jehanne is also passionate about the five senses; she has written about the art and science of perfume in throughsmoke: an essay in notes and about our sense of taste in Taste: A Book of Small Bites. And, in her forthcoming Exhibitions: Essays on Art & Atrocity, she looks at the act of looking itself.
Jehanne has been a recipient of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry from Beloit Poetry Journal, the Crab Orchard Series Open Competition Book Award, the Diode Editions Book Contest, the Editors’ Prize in Prose from Bat City Review, the Firecracker Award in Prose from CLMP, an Individual Artist’s Award from the Maryland State Arts Council, the Mississippi Review Prize in Poetry, the Poetry by the Sea Book Award, the Towson University Prize for Literature, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship and a Howard Nemerov Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and a Sosland Foundation Fellowship from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The daughter of American diplomats, Jehanne was born in Italy and grew up in Yugoslavia, Zaire, Poland, Belgium, Austria, and the United States. She lives with her two Bedlington Terriers and with her husband who recently retired from a 20-year career in the U.S. Navy. Jehanne is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas.

The Poetry of Food with Eddie Vega
2023-07-10 18:30 - 20:30 | TX
Mondays, July 10, 17, 24 & 31, 2023, 6:30-8:30pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: Eddie Vega
Nonmember: $125; Member: $105; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Food is much more than sustenance–it’s family recipes, friend-filled reunions, and debates over who makes it best, who made it right, and why ketchup can’t be spread on tamales! Most importantly, food is culture. This workshop will explore all of this and more as participants write about the dishes, meals, and snacks that have impacted their palate and their lives.
In this 4-session workshop, we will dig up memories we associate with food, and use these recollections to explore writing about the delectable in different poetic forms, including haiku, odes, sonnets, lists, etc. Each session will include mentor texts and generative work. This course is open to adult writers of all skill levels.
Students will leave this course with:

Suggestions on how to capture the essence and meaning of food
Knowledge of and experience with writing in different poetic forms
Understanding of how personal history and culture influence how we perceive food

Read Eddie’s Writer’s Desk here!

Eddie Vega is a poet, spoken word artist, storyteller, and educator. His poetry has been displayed on VIA Buses and downtown San Antonio buildings. His first full-length collection of poetry, Chicharra Chorus (FlowerSong Press) was published in 2019 and he is the 2021 recipient of the Literary Arts Grant from the Luminaria Artist Foundation. In 2022, Vega won the Haiku Death Match at both the Southern Fried Poetry Slam and the NSFPS BlackBerry Peach Slam. His latest project is a collection of poems written by South Texas poets entitled, Asina is How We Talk. Vega writes about food, Tejano culture, social justice, and the intersections thereof. Known as the Taco-Poet of Texas, he can be found nightly at an open-mic, slam, or taqueria anywhere throughout South Texas.

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.

TELLING A STORY OF YOUR LIFE: A Personal Essay Workshop with Kendra Allen
2023-07-06 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Thursdays, July 6, 13, 20, 27 & Aug 3, 10, 6:30-8:30pm CST, Hybrid: Via Zoom or in person.
Instructor: Kendra Allen
Nonmember: $150; Member: $130; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.
Class Full
To add your name to the waiting list, email joshua@geminiink.org.

In the span of every life are countless moments, stories, and revelations. When writing a personal narrative, how do writers select what will most speak their truth and resonate with readers?

In this 6-week course, we’ll focus on demystifying the personal narrative process by figuring out what’s a snapshot and what’s a story. Writing is hard, and writing about yourself is sometimes even harder. Most times, we typically assume we have to state our entire lives in one piece, so even the thought of putting pen to page becomes intimidating. This workshop will explore how to pinpoint storylines within ourselves by simply leaning into who you naturally are, how you naturally sound, and what you naturally gravitate to, as a writer. Through games, prompts, and other exercises, we’ll focus on generating work every week, searching for our many truths, and coming out on the other side with sentences that start with words like “I” and “My.” This course is open to adult writers of all skill levels.
Workshop participants will leave with the following:

A starting point for a personal essay
An understanding of how to differentiate between a situation and a story
Techniques for nurturing your voice on the page
Ideas on how to create prompts for yourself to generate material

Read Kendra’s Writer’s Desk here!

An award-winning essayist and poet, Kendra Allen was born and raised in Dallas, TX. She loves laughing, leaving, and writing Make Love in My Car, a music column for Southwest Review. Some of her other work can be found in The Paris Review, High Times, The Rumpus, and more. She’s the author of the New York Times lauded poetry collection The Collection Plate (Harper Collins 2022) and essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet, which won the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction. Fruit Punch (Ecco 2022), her memoir, is out now and receiving praise from all corners. Jaquira Díaz, author of Ordinary Girls, states: “A stunning and original memoir about Black girlhood and coming of age. Allen is both a storyteller and poet, observing the world with curiosity and humor. Fruit Punch is simultaneously brilliant cultural commentary and an intimate portrayal of family and community, and it will stay with me for a long, long time.”

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.

How to Use Lists to Generate Endless Writing Ideas with Nathan Brown
2023-07-01 10:00 - 13:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Saturdays, July 1 & 8, 10am-1pm CST, Hybrid (in-person and online)
Instructor: Nathan Brown
Nonmember: $140; Member: $120; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Master the art of the list and never get caught without something to write about!

Many writers, from Dickens to Twain, and Hemingway on up to Stephen King, had (or have) a daily writing practice, and many say this discipline was their ‘great teacher’ when it comes to the craft of writing. In this open genre workshop, we will demystify the idea of “writer’s block,” explore techniques to maintain a sustainable daily writing practice, and discuss what works and doesn’t work for busy writers. This will be a generative workshop, so you will leave this workshop with plenty of ideas.
This course is open to adult writers of all genres and all skill levels.
Students will leave this workshop with the following:

Ideas on how to use lists to generate material and organize it into “themes”
Guidance on how to establish and maintain a daily writing practice
Time management tips on scheduling “bite-sized” writing time and getting the work done
Writing topics to explore and develop after the class

Nathan Brown is an author, songwriter, and award-winning poet living in Wimberley, Texas. He holds a PhD in English and Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, where he’s taught for over 20 years. He served as Poet Laureate for the State of Oklahoma in 2013-14, and now travels full-time performing readings, concerts, workshops, and speaking on creativity, poetry, and songwriting.
Nathan has published over 20 books. Most recent are his new collection of poems, In the Days for Our Resilience, the fourth in a series now known as the Pandemic Poems Project, and a new travel memoir, Just Another Honeymoon in France: A Vagabond at Large. A previous collection, Karma Crisis: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Oklahoma Book Award.
He’s written at least one poem a day for the last twenty-five years and says nothing has taught him more about writing.

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.
