Gemini Ink

Three Poets Laureate Speak: An Evening Celebrating the Power of Poetry
2025-04-24 19:00 - 22:00 (America/Mexico_City) | The Little Carver Theater, 226 N Hackberry St, San Antonio, Texas, 78202
The Little Carver Civic Center
226 N Hackberry St, San Antonio, TX 78202
Please see parking information (link to map)
“This production is not a presentation of the Carver Community Cultural Center or the Carver Development Board.”
RSVP
Attendees who RSVP’d by April 15th will be guaranteed entry until 6:45 PM on April 24th. After that, entry will be available on a first-come, first-served basis until capacity is reached.
Don’t miss an unforgettable night showcasing three powerful women poets!
Celebrate National Poetry Month with a reading, discussion, and book signing with 2020-23 San Antonio Poet Laureate Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, 2024 Texas Poet Laureate Amanda Johnston, and 2012-2014 U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey.

These three distinguished Black women poets will discuss the contributions of African-American writers today and their roles as advocates who use poetry to uplift their communities. Each of these literary leaders will discuss their own poetic journeys and represent their respective roles as the 2020-2023 San Antonio Poet Laureate, the 2024 Texas Poet Laureate, and, in the case of Ms. Trethewey, the 2012-2014 U.S. Poet Laureate and the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner in Poetry. Slam champion and current Houston Poet Laureate, Aris Kian Brown, will bring her own magic to the night as our featured moderator. This event will highlight the unique role poetry can play in helping us ignite our creative voice.
Each of these poets breaks new ground and asks difficult questions through their work; questions that encourage empathy and resilience, while not shying away from the realities of being Black women writers in contemporary America. Join us for this intellectually engaging evening celebrating poetry and the transformative and joyful ways poetry impacts our communities.
Light refreshments will be served.

Panelists
Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson is a dynamic poet, singer, and spoken word artist from San Antonio, Texas. Known for her powerful performances and lyrical prowess, Sanderson has been a driving force in the local arts community, advocating for the power of words to inspire and heal. She served as the Poet Laureate of San Antonio (2020-2023), using her platform to uplift marginalized voices and foster creativity across the city. In 2021, she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her legacy project, The Echo Project, which was featured on KLRN. Vocab’s debut book, She Lives In Music, was published by Flower Song Press (2020), and her albums are available for streaming on all music platforms. Her second collection of poems, The Seasoned Woman, is forthcoming from Gnashing Teeth Press. Her work, which blends poetry with music and activism, resonates deeply with audiences, addressing themes of social justice, love, and resilience.
Amanda Johnston, 2024 Texas Poet Laureate, is an acclaimed poet, educator, and advocate for social justice. She is the author of Another Way to Say Enter (Argus House Press 2017), and her poetry has been widely recognized for its emotional depth and unflinching exploration of identity, race, and gender. Johnston is the founder of Torch Literary Arts, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the work of Black women and girls in literature. Named one of Blavity’s “13 Black Poets You Should Know,” Amanda’s work has been featured on Bill Moyers, the Poetry Society of America’s series “In Their Own Words,” The Moth Radio Hour, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series. Her work has also appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, Puerto del Sol, Muzzle, and the anthologies Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. With a passion for empowering others, she has taught creative writing in various settings and is a Cave Canem fellow. Johnston’s work continues to influence and inspire new and established voices in the literary world.
Natasha Trethewey is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate (2012-14), who is celebrated for her profound exploration of history, memory, and identity. Born in Gulfport, Mississippi, Trethewey’s work often delves into the complexities of the American South, weaving together personal and collective histories. She is the author of several acclaimed collections, including Native Guard, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2007. Having also served as the Poet Laureate of the State of Mississippi (2012-2016), she is the author of the New York Times bestseller Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (2020); and a book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010). Trethewey’s lyrical and evocative poetry has earned her numerous accolades and a reputation as one of the most important voices in contemporary American literature. Her writing offers a powerful meditation on the intersection of race, trauma, and resilience.
Moderator
Aris Kian Brown is a Houston enthusiast and student of abolition. She ranked #2 in the 2023 Womxn of the World Poetry Slam and #1 at the 2024 Southern Fried Poetry Slam with her team Smoke Slam. Her poems are published with Button Poetry, West Branch, Obsidian Lit and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the University of Houston and currently serves as the 2023-2025 Houston Poet Laureate.

Cultivate Creative Resilience and Write Unforgettable Works with Jen Knox
2025-04-22 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Tuesday(s), April 22 & 29, 2025 from 6:30-8:30pm, CST via Zoom.
Nonmember $145 Member $125 Student $85
*EARN CPEs

Creative resilience means facing setbacks and moving forward in your artistry anyway. It means harnessing the energy tocreate what you feel called to produce. It means owning your journey completely as you share your art. But how do you manage the ups and downs of the writing life, tell your truths without injuring yourself, and keep your creative engine burning through it all?
In this two-part workshop, we will explore the many versions of creative block, from writer’s block to rejection letters, from tough critiques to typos to self-doubt. We will then combine writing and resiliency techniques to support an enduring creative practice while generating bold new work that only you can write.
This course is open to writers of all genres, backgrounds, and skill levels, 18+.
What you can expect in this workshop:

A nurturing and fun space to explore your stories and poetry
Creative resilience techniques for writing through and about difficult times
Practice using these tools to generate authentic raw material
Feedback and an opportunity to share

Jen Knox is an award-winning author and lecturer at Ohio State University. Her fiction can be found in The Best Small Fictions, The Adirondack Review, Chicago Tribune, Istanbul Review, Literary Orphans, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Room Magazine, The Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, and The Saturday Evening Post, among over a hundred other publications. Jen’s books include We Arrive Uninvited (Steel Toe Books Award Winner in Prose) and The Glass City (Press Americana Prose Winner). She recently received grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council to work on a collection of essays about work, and her newest novel Chaos Magic, will be released by Kallisto Gaia Press in February 2025. www.jenknox.net
Links:
Instagram
Substack
Facebook

Veterans Writing Collective with Sarah Colby
2025-04-16 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-03-19 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-02-19 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-01-15 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.

San Antonio Book Festival 2025
2025-04-12 09:00 - 17:00
Join us at the San Antonio Book Festival on Saturday, April 12, 2025, from 9 AM to 5 PM. Find us on Exhibitor’s Row (Augusta St), alongside other community organizations focused on literature, education, and culture..
The festival includes author presentations, panel discussions, book signings, activities for children and teens, and food trucks. It will showcase award-winning and bestselling authors such as Naomi Shihab Nye, Laila Lalami, Martín Espada, Tim Z, Hernandez, Diana López, Stephen Graham Jones, Nita Prose, Cristina Rivera Garza, and more. You can find a more complete list of authors on the festival’s website: San Antonio Book Festival.
Date: Saturday, April 12, 2025.
Time: 9 AM to 5 PM
Location: Central Library and UTSA Southwest Campus in downtown San Antonio.
Authors: The 2025 festival will feature over 100 local, regional, and national authors.
Cost: Free

The Poetics of You: An Intro to Poetry Workshop with Melissa Studdard
2025-04-07 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Monday(s), April 7, 14, 21 & 28, 2025, 6:30-8:30pm CST, via Zoom
Nonmember $155 Member $130 Student $ 90
*EARN CPEs

Poetry has a way of shifting the way we view the world and ourselves, of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, of infusing the mundane with meaning. Ready to see life through a poetry lens?
In this four-session workshop, we’ll explore and review basic poetic concepts while working with prompts designed to unlock your own unique poetic gifts and subject matter. The Poetics of You will be a generative, supportive, and encouraging space to learn, experiment, and explore. In the weekly virtual meetings, we will study basic techniques, read sample poems, compose drafts, and share writings.
This course is open to writers of all genres, backgrounds, and skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this class with:

New drafts of poems
Understanding of basic poetic concepts
A sense of your own subject matter and unique abilities

Melissa Studdard writes poetry, fiction, song cycles, and libretti. Her most recent book is the poetry collection Dear Selection Committee (Jackleg Press). Her work has been featured by PBS, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, Ms. Magazine, the Best American Poetry blog, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series and has appeared in periodicals such as POETRY, Kenyon Review, and New England Review. Her Awards include the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, The Penn Review Poetry Prize, the Tom Howard Prize, the REELpoetry International Film Festival Audience Choice Award, and more. As a librettist/lyricist, she has had works commissioned by Aspen Music Festival, Wolf Trap, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and the University of Michigan School of Music. With Kelli Russell Agodon, she co-hosts the YouTube poetry series Poems You Need. You can find her at www.melissastuddard.com and www.youtube.com/@PoemsYouNeed
Social media links: @melissastuddard
Learn about Cancellation & Refund Policies

Everything but the Kitchen Sink: A Workshop on Writing Hybrid Essays with ire’ne lara silva
2025-04-01 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Tuesday(s), April 1, 8 & 15, 2025, 6:30-8:30pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink
(Rescheduled from May 1, 8 & 15)
Nonmember $150 Member $ 125 Student $90
*EARN CPEs

Are you a fan of essay writing who is bored to tears with the standard five-paragraph essays taught in school? Want to learn a new approach to essay writing that is fresh and fun? A hybrid essay crosses the boundaries of genre and can include elements of visual art, photography, found items and is pulled together by your voice.
In this three-week workshop, we will liberate our minds and recover from the trauma of the “school-essay” mentality by creating hybrid essays that engage the reader, reflect our realities, and push the limits of what an essay can be. Bring any projects or ideas you’re working on–memoirs, family histories, love letters, journals, or thoughts you want to share about life, art, history, spirit, geography, the world!
This course is open to writers of all genres, backgrounds, and skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this workshop with:

A fresh approach to gathering source material for essays
A first draft of one or more hybrid essays

ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas State Poet Laureate, is the author of five poetry collections, furia, Blood Sugar Canto, CUICACALLI/House of Song, FirstPoems, and the eaters of flowers; two chapbooks, Enduring Azucares and Hibiscus Tacos; a comic book, VENDAVAL; 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 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. Her second short story collection, the light of your body, will be published by Arte Publico Press in Spring 2025. http://www.irenelarasilva.wordpress.com
Social media links: Facebook: www.facebook.com/irenelarasilva, Instagram: @silvairenelara

Open Writer's Labs
2025-03-31 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-02-24 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-01-27 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.

Teen Writing Circle with Daniel Ramirez
2025-03-29 11:30 - 13:00, 2025-02-22 11:30 - 13:00, 2025-01-25 11:30 - 13:00 | Online via Zoom
Register
Last Saturday of Every Month 11:30am-1pm cst via Zoom
For ages 13-19 years old
Are you a teen who enjoys writing in their free time? Or are you someone who’s never had the chance to write on their own? If so, this Online Teen Writing Circle is for you!
In this once-a-month writing circle, teens will enjoy writing in a judgment free zone. We’ll break the ice with one another and perform various writing exercises. You are encouraged to share your work with your peers and get constructive feedback, but it is not required. Our only goal is to keep you writing!
This course is open to teen writers of any skill level.
Participants will leave the writing circle with:

New, unique written work
Listening and sharing experience
Constructive feedback to help improve their writing

Want to learn more about our Teen Writing Circle? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!

Daniel Ramirez has been an educator for over 15 years. After studying History in grad school, he tromped around the outdoors doing conservation with teenagers. Spending time as a Montessori educator revealed the power of incorporating creativity with learning. Encouraging youth to tap into their creative abilities convinced him to discover his own. Since then, in addition to his original love of storytelling, he’s found a penchant for calligraphy, puppetry, poetry, and block printing. A San Antonio native, he explores the crystalline waters of Central Texas in his free time.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Melissa Studdard
2025-03-19 19:00 - 20:00 | Online via Zoom
Join us on Wednesday, March 19th, 2025 via Zoom for a conversation with Melissa Studdard, to discuss her new book, Dear Selection Committee (Jackleg Press). Moderated by Elena Karina Byrne.

(Virtual Readings Monthly @ 7pm CST)

RSVP
Sign up for Melissa Studdard’s class, The Poetics of You: An Intro to Poetry Workshop on Monday, April 7th!
“I buried // everything they told me to bury. Then, I dug it up again,” Melissa Studdard writes in Dear Selection Committee, an apt description of the work these poems do to unearth the incorrigible self and bury conventionality and its offspring, shame. The speaker revels in her largesse, claiming, in one poem’s title, she’s “Huge Like King Kong, Like Godzilla, Like Gulliver,” and that the “world is my diorama of a world,” and in another, that her honeymoon pictures are “the cover / of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass.” All of this immensity, this grand unburying, is squeezed into the prosaic corseting structure of a job application, intensifying the split between tame and wild. Even her own birth is enacted with kinetic magnificence: “I broke the kingdom inside her, broke the gala / of horses straining to get out. I broke the dancehall // mirrors and even the gilded faucet handles. / I was a river that strong. Made for flooding.” Indeed, these poems are so desirous and animated that they spilled over the edges of the page and into my thirsty soul. “-Diane Seuss
“The poems in Dear Selection Committee say what I’ve always wanted to say in a job application (and what I’m thinking as I perform the role of Normal Job Person) but never had the guts. Melissa Studdard’s burn-it-down-radical honesty is elating af—exactly what I needed to read—but the poetic attentiveness, from the first page to the last, was the real thrill. At the heart of the cyclone, a dependable, deepening pulse of self preservation.” -Jennifer L. Knox
“In the universe of Melissa Studdard’s poems, both the speaker and the audience will always have their cake and eat it too. After all, “Life’s never dull when your name’s Melissa,” and oh my goddess, does Dear Selection Committee serve hard as a brilliant 21st-century take and critique of the epistolary, filled with infinite heart and infinite humor and infinite neon signs that point towards the larger-than-life nature of poetry. This is excess. This is extravagance. This is the definition of sensuality. Studdard has the tremendous gift of finding the center of every poem, giving us the whole damn thing.” -Dorothy Chan
Framed as a job application and bounding with associative leaps and surrealist underpinnings, Dear Selection Committee is a subversive, sexy love song to an endlessly messy self and the burning world it inhabits. Full of apostrophic power, these poems shift among registers of loss, desire, and joy as they wrestle with issues such as climate change, addiction, modern distractions, gender presentation, religious questioning, and the nature of pain. Dear Selection Committee attests that although life can feel like a bumpy cab ride to an interview for a job you feel uniquely unqualified for, if you lay aside the anxieties of self just long enough to peer out the window, you’ll see great beauty amidst the chaos.

Melissa Studdard is the author of five books, including the poetry collection I ATE THE COSMOS FOR BREAKFAST. Her work has been published or featured by places such as NPR, PBS, The New York Times, The Guardian, POETRY, Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, and New England Review. Her awards include The Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Memorial Award, The Penn Review Poetry Prize, the REEL Poetry Festival Audience Choice Award, the Tom Howard Prize, and more.

Moderator
A Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry recipient, Elena Karina Byrne served as a final judge for PEN’s “Best of the West” award, for the 2016-2018 Kate and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards, and for the international Laurel Prize in environmental poetry. Her five poetry collections include If This Makes You Nervous (Omnidawn, 2021). Poems, reviews, essays, and interviews can be found in POETRY, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, APR, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, LA Review of Books, Plume anthologies, Reel Verse: Poems About the Movies, BOMB, and elsewhere. Former 12-year Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America, Elena now works as a freelance editor, lecturer, reviewer, and Programming Consultant & Poetry Stage Manager for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

LitMinds Book Club
2025-03-12 18:30 - 20:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Join us for the LitMinds Book Club at Gemini Ink. We’re reading The Family Izquierdo, by Rubén Degollado.
Register
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’s work has appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Image, and the anthologies: Bearing the Mystery, Nepantla Familias, and Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America. His debut novel Throw won the Texas Institute of Letters Best YA Book for 2020 along with several accolades and his second book, The Family Izquierdo, a literary novel, is a New York Times Editor’s Choice and a PEN/Faulkner Award longlisted book.

Floricantos y Tumbaos: A Panel on Latinx Music in Poetry
2025-03-06 18:30 - 20:30 | San Antonio Public Library, 600 Soledad, San Antonio, Texas, 78205
Join us as we explore the fusion of Latinx music and poetry at this Library of America event. This panel will feature Latinx poets discussing how Latin American musical traditions have inspired, shaped, and informed their creative work.
Our featured authors include flutist Excy Guardado (Ceiba ili), renowned poet Urayoán Noel, and hip-hop artist Marco Cervantes (Mex Step) all of whom will engage in a rich discussion with moderator Amalia Ortiz. Experience the talents of these artists who will share intimate renditions of their work.
Light refreshments will be served.
Parking
Parking is located directly south of Central Library in a multilevel parking garage. It’s free for the first 3 hours.

Panelists
Marco Cervantes, Mexstep, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio where he researches Black and Brown solidarity and cultural overlap. He also performs as a solo hip-hop artist and is a member of the group Third Root.
Excy Guardado is a cultural educator and Musician from Honduras, dedicated to connecting migrant communities, supporting Indigenous rights, and advocating for environmental justice. On stage, she is known as Ceiba ili, after the statuesque tree, la Ceiba, the Mayan tree of life. She lives with her niece, Excy Veronica. They share a love for music, dancing, and best of all, reading.
Urayoán Noel is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Transversal (Arizona, 2021), named a Book of the Year by the New York Public Library and longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. Noel’s other publications include the critical study In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (Iowa, 2014), winner of the LASA Latino Studies Book Award, and, as translator, No Budu Please by Wingston González (Ugly Duckling, 2018), adjacent islands by Nicole Cecilia Delgado (Ugly Duckling/DoubleCross/La Impresora, 2022), and Architecture of Dispersed Life: Selected Poetry by Pablo de Rokha (Shearsman, 2018), a finalist for the National Translation Award. A Letras Boricuas fellow in poetry, Noel has been a fellow and faculty at CantoMundo and the Macondo Writers Workshop and is an editorial advisor for Latino Poetry (Library of America) and a board member of the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center. Originally from Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, Noel lives in the Bronx and serves as Director of Graduate Studies for NYU’s MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish and as editor-in-chief of Intervenxions (The Latinx Project).
Moderator
Amalia Ortiz is a Tejana spoken word performer, playwright, and author of 2 award-winning books of poetry. She was awarded the 2020 American Book Award for Oral Literature, and appeared on three seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry on HBO and the NAACP Image Awards on FOX. She was awarded a City of San Antonio Individual Artist Grant and most recently, her band, Las Hijas de la Madre, were awarded a Democratizing Racial Justice Artist Residency from the Mellon Foundation to complete their new project Diatribas Punk. Amalia received her MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Prepare Your Story Idea for the Pitch of a Lifetime with Marilyn Atlas
2025-03-05 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Wednesday, March 5, 2025 & April 2, 6:30-8:30pm CST, via Zoom
Nonmember $160 Member $135 *No student rate available for this class*

Do you have a story or an idea that would make a compelling movie or television series? Are you ready to package your idea and make the pitch to television executives, but don’t know how to take the next step? Let’s get our stories together and get ready for the big pitch!
In this two-day workshop, talent/literary manager and producer Marilyn Atlas will teach you the tricks and tips it takes to make that professional pitch. She will cover how to distill the essence of your story into short, sharp, easily digestible bite-size parts that strike the right balance between brevity, colorful detail, and cliffhanging suspense. The class will also review common mistakes writers make when pitching, strategies for adapting your pitch to your target audience, and advice on how to use comparable titles of similar works to prove there is an audience for your work.
Students will build pitch decks and have the opportunity to receive feedback from Marilyn on how to tighten and reveal the idiosyncratic narrative thrust of their stories.
This course is open to writers of all genres, backgrounds, and skill levels, 18+.
What you can expect in this workshop:

How to make a pitch deck
How to synthesize your story in an attention-grabbing way
An opportunity to pitch your idea to a Hollywood producer

Marilyn R Atlas is a Talent/Literary Manager and Producer. Among her credits as film producer are Real Women Have Curves for HBO, which won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, A Certain Desire, starring Sam Waterston, and Echoes, which won the Gold Award at the Texas International Film Festival. She produced a movie at Lifetime, based on a YA book, airing in summer 2014, titled The Choking Game.
In live theater, Marilyn co-produced the West Coast premiere of the musical God Bless You Mr. Rosewater by Ashman and Menken (the writers of both Enchanted and Tangled). She also co-produced the Ovation award-winning play To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday, which was made into a film starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Peter Gallagher. She is currently developing a musical based on her Sundance-winning film Real Women Have Curves (originally produced by Marilyn for HBO), amongst other projects. She was involved in several writers’ debut books for HarperCollins, Grand Central Publishing, and Source Books. She is in development on the movie Lola Goes to Roma, amongst other projects. She has long been committed to projects that celebrate diversity.
Marilyn is a member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers. Marilyn has spoken at various colleges, film festivals, and industry events on creating three-dimensional, non-stereotypical characters. She is the co-author of a relationship-based, screenwriting guide called Dating Your Character, about an organic approach to character creation for Stairway Press’s Summer 2015 catalog. She is also featured in the book Write Now! from Penguin/Tarcher.

Beyond the Blank Page: Introduction to Creative Writing with Christen Barrón
2025-02-24 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Mondays, February 24 & March 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, 2025 6:30-8:30pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink (6-week workshop)
Nonmember $155 Member $130 Student $90
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

Do you want to try creative writing but you don’t know where to begin? Or are you unsure if you want to try poetry, fiction, or anything else? Have you felt too intimidated to sign up for a Gemini Ink workshop? Then, this workshop is for you!
In this hands-on 6-week writing workshop, participants will receive a gentle and fun introduction into creative writing and opportunities to dabble in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction to see which one resonates most. This course is perfect for beginners or anyone looking to rediscover their creativity. At each interactive session, participants will generate new writing and will be encouraged to share their work with others.
This course is open to writers of all backgrounds and skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this workshop with:

an understanding of the three main creative writing genres
new writing in three genres (poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction)
strategies and techniques for accessing creativity and overcoming writer’s block
resources for continuing a creative writing practice in the genre of choice

Learn more about Christen at her Writer’s Desk!

Christen Barrón is a creative nonfiction writer, editor, and writing instructor. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, Christen holds an M.F.A. in Writing and a B.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). She currently teaches first-year writing and creative writing at Texas A&M-University San Antonio. For nearly a decade, Christen taught community creative writing classes for The Deep Center’s nationally-recognized Young Author Project and she has served as a Teaching Artist for Gemini Ink since 2017. Christen’s writing has appeared in YARN Literary Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Document, and The Journal of Writing Assessment. She is a faculty supervising editor for Mosaic, a student-led literary magazine at Texas A&M-University San Antonio.

Open House: New Year, New Writing Adventures
2025-02-20 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Please Join us on Thursday, February 20th at 6:30pm CST for our open house to rev up your creative engines for the new year! We are excited to introduce our dynamic roster of teaching artists who can help take your writing to the next level.
Come connect with talented writers from San Antonio and beyond as they share new work and discuss the classes they’ll be teaching.
It all happens at Gemini Ink’s downtown writing arts center at 1111 Navarro Street. Don’t leave without our spring calendar of classes and events!

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Octavio Quintanilla
2025-02-19 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Join us on Wednesday, Feb 19th, 2025 via Zoom for a conversation with Octavio Quintanilla, to discuss his new book, Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours (University of Arizona Press); moderated by Monique Quintana.

Brought to you by WritingWorkshops.com and Gemini Ink.
(Virtual Readings Monthly @ 7pm CST)
RSVP
“‘I want to think where I’m going will be free of borders,’ Quintanilla writes. These poems—informed by an artist’s eye, the art shifted by a poet’s vision—refuse to ignore thresholds, strange angles, and blockades. We lodge in tight corners and find prayers emerge from line and shadow.”
—Lauren Camp, New Mexico Poet Laureate and author of In Old Sky: Poems Inspired by the Grand Canyon
“Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours pushes against itself and ruptures the poetic grids inhabited by beasts, storms, scarecrows, black cows, neighbors digging graves at night, and poems that dismantle the physical and psychological structure of our realities. It invites us to confront our own mortality, and bears witness to the testimonies of rage and hope tattooed on our flesh/spirit.”
—Elizabeth Torres, winner of the 2022 Ambroggio Prize for Lotería: Nocturnal Sweepstakes
“With alacrity and wit, the poet pokes and jokes at life and the elements that make human existence a conundrum.”
—Norma E. Cantú, author of Chicana Portraits: Critical Biographies of Twelve Chicana Writers
In Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, Octavio Quintanilla takes us on a profound journey to witness what it means to erase those boundaries devised by genre and politics intent on stifling memory, imagination, and creativity.
Presented in Spanish with English translations, this poetry collection comprises lyric and concrete poems—or frontextos—that explore intimacy and different shades of violence as a means to reconcile the speaker’s sense of belonging in the world. From the opening poem to the last in the first section, Quintanilla captures the perilous journeys that migrants undertake crossing borders as well as the paths that lovers forge to meet their endless longing. These themes are skillfully woven by Quintanilla, guiding us back and forth across the Rio Grande to encounter the apparitions of the disappeared and to witness the willingness of many to risk life and limb for a better life. The second half of the collection is one long poem, a letter addressed to a lost lover who will never get to read the speaker’s secret thoughts. Haunted by loss—of parents, of children, of the self—the speaker reaches an inevitable epiphany: “[A]nd sometimes it’s hard to know / on which side of the river I stand.” Stylistically, these poems destabilize our notions and expectations of genre and lyricism.
Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours is more than just an exercise in poetic virtuosity; it is an excavation into the complexities of what it means to be a human being in our contemporary world.

Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collections If I Go Missing and The Book of Wounded Sparrows. He served as the 2018–2020 Poet Laureate of San Antonio, Texas. His visual work has been exhibited in numerous spaces, including the Mexican Cultural Institute in San Antonio, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Southwest School of Art, Presa House Gallery, the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art, and the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center / Black Box Theater in Austin, Texas. Octavio is the founder and director of the Literature and Arts Festival and VersoFrontera and the founder and publisher of Alabrava Press. Octavio holds a PhD from the University of North Texas and is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review. He is the recipient of the Nebrija Creadores Scholarship, which allowed him a month-long residency at the Instituto Franklin at Alcalá University in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. He teaches literature and creative writing in the MA/MFA program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.

Moderator
Monique Quintana is the author of Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019). Her work has been supported by Yaddo, The Community of Writers, Sundress Academy for the Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and Storyknife. You can find her at moniquequintana.com

Story Core with Rubén Degollado
2025-02-18 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Tuesday(s), February 18, 25 & March 4, 11, 18, 25, 2025, 6:30-8:30pm CST, via Zoom
Nonmember $155 Member $135 Student $95
*EARN CPE’S

Get down to the core of a fantastic story! Understanding how setting, plot, and character are inextricably linked is vital to creating immersive narratives that keep the reader invested through to the last page.
In this six-session generative virtual workshop, participants will begin by exploring examples of the core elements of setting, plot, and characters working well together to create a cohesive storyline. We will do pre-writing exercises focused on drafting complicated characters who connect to the reader’s emotions and make them want to keep reading. Then we will move through a series of setting exercises that build the details of place and transport the reader there. This generative work will prime writers for creating memorable stories with believable characters navigating the worlds they inhabit.
This course is open to fiction writers of all backgrounds and skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this workshop with:

A character empathy map
A full character profile
A developed setting for their story

Join us for the Lit Minds Book Club on March 12! We’re reading The Family Izquierdo, by Rubén Degollado.
Read Rubén’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

Rubén Degollado’s work has appeared or been featured in Texas Highways, Literary Hub, CRAFT, The Common, The Rumpus, Image Journal, and elsewhere. His first novel Throw won the Texas Institute of Letters Best Young Adult book for 2020. His debut literary novel The Family Izquierdo is a New York Times Book Review editor’s choice and a long list title for the PEN/Faulkner and Mark Twain American Voice in Literature awards. Rubén lives and writes along the southern border, in the Río Grande Valley of Texas.

From Story to Song: Crafting Memorable Lyrics with Nathan Brown
2025-02-11 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Tue-Thu, February 11-13, 2025, 6:30-8:30pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink
Nonmember $140 Member $120 Student $85

Every song is a story waiting to be sung. Join us for an immersive songwriting experience where we explore the art of storytelling through music!
In this three-day workshop, we’ll compare and contrast the worlds of story and songwriting, uncovering their similarities and differences while discussing what makes a song lyric unforgettable. Then, we’ll use real-world examples to highlight the rich narratives that live behind some well-known tunes that we love.
Using a hands-on approach we will guide you through the process of drafting your own story, identifying “leaping lines” that spark inspiration. We’ll examine how specific story details can elevate lyrics, focusing on practical techniques rather than theoretical concepts. And we’ll explore the significance of space, repetition, and emotional resonance with your lyrics.
Whether you aim to evoke emotion, tell a story, or create a connection with your audience, this workshop is the perfect place to start your journey. Come ready to write, share, and discover the song within your story!
This course is open to writers of all genres, backgrounds, and skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this workshop with:

An understanding of how to weave compelling stories into your song
Tools and techniques to make your lyrics shine
A first draft of a new song

Nathan Brown is an accomplished poet and songwriter who has performed readings and concerts from the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in Long Island, NY to the Sisters Folk Festival in Oregon, the Woody Guthrie Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma, and Sultan’s Pool just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem in Israel, to name a few. He’s taught writing workshops from the famous Blue Rock Artist Ranch and Studio near Austin to the Everwood Farmstead in Wisconsin, and the Descanso Writers Retreats in Tuscany and Ireland. His performances of poetry have been likened to musical concerts, and, in fact, he now makes a good part of his living from house concerts and live shows that combine songs and poems.

Uncovering the Whole Self: Create Poetic Self-Portraits with Ayokunle Falomo
2025-02-03 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Monday(s), February 3 & 10, 2025, 6:30-8:30pm, CST, via Zoom
Nonmember $135 Member $115 Student $80
*EARN CPE’S
ONE SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

Everything in the world that we touch, smell, see, taste, or hear is a mirror reflecting us, if we dare to look closely. Despite this truth, the world (sometimes violently) demands we hide who we are. How do we bring our whole selves to the page, especially when it feels dangerous to do so?
In this two-session workshop, we will use works of art by revered artists like Frida Kahlo plus poems by Safia Elhillo, Chen Chen, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Tarfia Faizullah to generate new work through the lens of self-reflection. Participants will also use writing prompts to reflect deeply on who they are. What new truths will be discovered, or uncovered, about the self? How will you use these exercises to shape poems that are honest and vulnerable?
This course is open to writers of all genres, backgrounds, and skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this workshop with:

At least two drafts of new written work and one revised draft
New close reading techniques and critical observation skills
Strategies to overcome fears when it comes to writing about the vulnerable

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.

Live Storytelling: Voices of San Anto Showcase
2025-02-01 14:00 - 16:00 | San Antonio Public Library, 600 Soledad, San Antonio, Texas, 78205
You’re invited to a live storytelling show featuring students from our Voices of San Anto Bilingual Storytelling workshop!
Students from our workshop, led by local actor, performer, and artist Marisela Barrera, will share deeply personal stories. Each participant will read a 5-7 minute piece about a significant moment in their life.
Come experience the power of live storytelling and hear these moving narratives firsthand.
We hope you can join us!

First Page Fiction Bootcamp with Chaitali Sen
2025-01-25 10:00 - 16:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Saturday, January 25, 2025, 10am-4pm CST (with 30-minute lunch), in person at Gemini Ink
Nonmember $140 Member $120 Student $80
*EARN CPE’S

A formidable first page of fiction grabs the reader, sets the tone for what’s to come, and captures the essence of the entire work. But how do we create an opening that keeps the reader turning the page?
In this one-day workshop, we will study and discuss various examples of compelling first pages to see what works; we will review craft elements such as character, setting, point-of-view, and narrative voice; and we will write and examine our own first pages in a safe, supportive environment.
This course is open to fiction writers of all skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this class with:

An understanding of what makes for a strong first page
Techniques for writing strong openings
A strong first page of fiction

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.

Voices of San Anto Workshop with Marisela Barrera
2025-01-18 13:00 - 17:00 | San Antonio Public Library, 600 Soledad, San Antonio, Texas, 78205
Please email Sarah.DeLaRosa@sanantonio.gov to request being added to the waitlist.

Poets & Coffee with Alexandra van de Kamp
2025-01-18 10:00 - 12:00 | Gemini Ink
Join Gemini Ink’s Executive Artistic Director, Alexandra van de Kamp, for an informal craft conversation about what’s happening right now in the world of poetry.
We’ll make the coffee. You bring a friend and enjoy a seat in the company of your peers.
Alexandra will share some of the poems she’s been reading and discuss a selection of contemporary poets she believes are lighting up the page and stage. Then, we’d love to hear from you about the poems you’ve been reading and why poetry matters.
You’ll benefit from a welcoming poetic community and leave with a bundle of new poems to explore and generative prompts to fuel future writing.

​​Alexandra van de Kamp is the Executive Director for Gemini Ink, San Antonio’s Writing Arts Center. Her third book of poems, Ricochet Script, was published by Next Page Press in 2022. ​​Her previous full-length collections include: Kiss/Hierarchy (Rain Mountain Press 2016) and The Park of Upside-Down Chairs (CW Books 2010). She has also published several chapbooks, including A Liquid Bird Inside the Night (Red Glass Books 2015) and Dear Jean Seberg (2011), which won the 2010 Burnside Review Chapbook Contest. Her poems have been published in journals nationwide, such as The Cincinnati Review, Connecticut Review, The Texas Observer, and Denver Quarterly.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Kimberly Garza
2025-01-15 19:00 - 20:30 | Online
Join us on Wednesday, Jan 15th, 2025 online for a conversation with Kimberly Garza, author of The Last Karankawas. Moderated by Elizabeth Gonzalez James.

(Zoom Readings Monthly @ 7pm CST)
RSVP for the Google Meet link
“Beautiful, complex, and subversive, The Last Karankawas is an important book about Texas from a powerful new voice in American fiction. I loved it. These characters and their stories will stay with me.”
— Elizabeth Wetmore, New York Times–bestselling author of Valentine
“Garza debuts with an accomplished account of the ties between members of a Filipino and Mexican community… This is a worthy love letter to Galveston.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Devastating in its own clarity and nuance. The Last Karankawas has the power to change the way we see where we’ve been and what we may have left behind. A stunning debut from a talented writer.”
— Oscar Cásares, author of Where We Come From
Welcome to Galveston, Texas, a popular tourist destination and major shipping port with a population of 50,241. While millions visit each year, few venture beyond the boulevards to Fish Village, home to generations of island residents. Carly Castillo has only known Fish Village, her grandmother claiming their family descended from the Karankawas, an indigenous Texas people. As she grows older, she dreams of a life undefined by her family’s history. Her boyfriend, Jess, a former all-star shortstop turned seaman, cherishes the salty, familiar air of Galveston and has turned down opportunities to leave. When news of Hurricane Ike spreads, residents face a tough choice: stay and protect their homes or flee inland. The Last Karankawas weaves together the lives of these characters, creating a powerful portrait of survival, familial ties, and the histories we create, reminding us that true bonds are forged, not by blood, but by fire.

Kimberly Garza (she/her) is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Puerto del Sol, Creative Nonfiction, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She holds degrees in English, Spanish, and creative writing from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Texas, where she earned a PhD in 2019. A native Texan—born in Galveston, raised in Uvalde—she is the daughter of a Filipina immigrant mother and a Mexican-American father from the Rio Grande Valley. She lives in San Antonio, where she is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. The Last Karankawas is her first novel.

Elizabeth Gonzalez James is a screenwriter and bestselling author of the novels, Mona at Sea and The Bullet Swallower, as well as the chapbook, Five Conversations About Peter Sellers. She has taught fiction writing at Grub Street, Pioneer Valley Writers Workshop, Story Studio, and elsewhere. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Massachusetts.
