'Tell All the Truth, but Tell It Slant:' Writing About Trauma with Thomas McNeely
2023-06-03 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Mexico_City) | Online via Zoom
Saturdays, June 3, 10, 17 & 24, 10am-12pm CST via Zoom
Instructor: Thomas McNeely
Nonmember: $150; Member: $125; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

How do we tell the story of a traumatic event or its aftermath? What if, after the event, we were silenced by others or just by our own inability to put the experience into words?

In this generative course, we will experiment with different approaches to narrating real or fictional trauma while keeping in mind that each traumatic experience suggests a variety of different stories and may be narrated in a variety of different ways. We will explore writing different versions of the same story and decide which form–poem, short story, novel, memoir, or a hybrid of any of these narrative approaches–will best capture the traumatic experience and its after effects.
Our approaches will be based on short excerpts from work by Sylvia Plath, Brian Teare, Ocean Vuong, Mary Karr, Eimear McBride, and other creative writers, and will incorporate ideas from trauma narrative theorists and researchers, including Cathy Caruth and Bessel van der Kolk.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels.
Workshop participants will leave with the following:

An understanding of how to write about trauma and its impact
Ideas on which narrative form can best capture the traumatic experience
A starting place for their own piece of writing

An East Side Houston native, THOMAS H. McNEELY has received National Endowment for the Arts, Wallace Stegner, MacDowell Colony, and Dobie Paisano fellowships for his fiction. Pictures of the Shark: Stories (Texas Review Press) is his second book. His first book, Ghost Horse, won the Gival Press Novel Award and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize in Writing. He has published short stories and non-fiction in The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, Ploughshares, and many other magazines and anthologies, including The 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 currently teaches in the Stanford Online Writing Studio and at Emerson College, Boston, and has led writing workshops at the Grub Street Writers Workshops, the Lighthouse Writers Workshops, the Writers’ League of Texas, Writespace Houston, and Inprint Houston.

The Creative Writer’s Professional Toolkit with Lyzette Wanzer
2023-06-06 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Tuesdays, June 6, 13, 20, 27 & July 11, 18, 6:30-8:30pm CST via Zoom
Instructor: Lyzette Wanzer
Nonmember: $150; Member: $130; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Are you ready to take the leap from writing hobbyist to professional writer? If so, gain the tools every professional writer needs to make it in a competitive field.
This intensive hands-on workshop will provide you with the career savvy you need to stand out from the crowd of writers who, though they may be talented, lack the marketplace acumen they need to boost their opportunities from good to great. Learn a comprehensive set of professional practices that translate your talent into actionable, real-world skills for elevating your literary career. Learn how to increase your chances of earning grants, landing residencies, and getting published.
Over the course of this workshop, you will acquire the practices and strategies you need to take advantage of scores of opportunities for your work–skills you can put into immediate effect! After completing this course, many students have garnered their first literary grant, writing conference invitation, or publication credit.
Students will leave this class with:

A short & long bio
A current writer’s curriculum vitae/resume that will get you noticed
Ideas for keeping track of professional achievements and updating your CV

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

How Writers Read with Bestselling Author Laura Castoro
2023-06-07 18:30 - 20:30 | Texas
Wednesdays, June 7, 14, 21, 28 & July 12, 19, 6:30-8:30pm CST, Hybrid: Via Zoom or in person.
Instructor: Laura Castoro
Nonmember: $155; Member: $135; Student/Vet/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE.

Have you ever read a great book that grabs you from the first page and wondered, “How did the author do that?” Reading can be a writer’s greatest teacher when it comes to learning what works and doesn’t work on the page.

In this 6-week workshop, with bestselling author Laura Castoro as our guide, we will use close reading to examine how the writing pros achieve enviable work. We will explore how to read more deeply so we can deconstruct how the author sets the mood, adheres to or manipulates conventions, and plays with boundaries. In each session, we will use excerpts from popular fiction books and short writing prompts to stimulate our imagination and inspire new written work.
This course is open to adult writers of all skill levels.
In this course, students will:

Explore how to effectively set the mood of a story to draw the reader in
Identify how writers manipulate conventions and play with boundaries
Learn what is and is not important to the reader
Immediately apply concepts using short, generative writing prompts

Read Laura’s Writer’s Desk interview HERE.

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

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 Richard Z. Santos
2023-06-21 19:00 - 20:30 | Texas
Wednesday, June 21, 2023 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Richard Z. Santos, author of the novel, Trust Me.
Moderated by Daniel Peña.

RSVP

Praise for ​Trust Me
One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year for The Millions and Crime Reads.
Crime Reads (One of March’s Best): “… the author’s knowledge of Santa Fe and its quirky denizens shines throughout the book. Highly recommended!”
Kirkus Reviews: “A compulsively readable debut by a Texas writer who knows his New Mexico.“
The Texas Observer: “[Trust Me] has enough speed and twists to make you feel like you’re flying on the edges of the Sandia mountains… “
Charles O’Connell is riding an epic losing streak. Having worked in politics since college, he is used to losing races, but he never imagined that his most recent candidate would end up in jail and that he would also need an attorney. His euphoria at not joining his boss in prison is short-lived—no one will hire him now, his credit cards are maxed out and his marriage is on the rocks.
An unexpected offer to work in Santa Fe, New Mexico, doing public relations for a firm building the city’s new airport feels like an opportunity to start fresh and make connections with powerful people out west. But when the construction crew unearths a skeleton, Charles’ fresh start turns into another disaster. Soon, a group of Apache claims the site holds Geronimo’s secret grave.
Charles quickly realizes everyone has an agenda—and numerous dark secrets threaten to erupt. Gabriel Luna, one of the laborers present when the skeleton is unearthed, is willing to do just about anything to reconnect with his teenage son. Cody Branch, an ambitious, powerful millionaire, plans to leverage the deal to enrich himself. And there’s his wife, Olivia Branch, who has a surprising connection to Charles’ past and desperately needs his help.
Surrounded by deception on all fronts, including his own lies to himself and his wife, Charles falls into a whirlwind of fraud, betrayal and double crosses. This riveting novel barrels through the New Mexican landscape in an exploration of innocence and guilt, power and wealth, and the search for love and happiness.
Excerpts featured in Criminal Element and Lone Star Literary.

Richard Z. Santos is a writer and high school teacher living in Austin. His debut novel, Trust Me, was released by Arte Público Press in 2020. He is a Board Member of the National Book Critics Circle and served as a non-fiction judge for the 2019 Kirkus Prize. ​He is also an Associate Editor for American Short Fiction. Click on the “My Work” page for links to many essays, stories, poems, reviews, and profiles. Before becoming a writer and teacher, Richard lived in Washington, DC and worked for some of the nation’s top campaigns, political consulting firms, and labor unions. Richard has an MFA from Texas State University and has taught at Texas State, Georgetown University, and The University of the District of Columbia. He is currently seeking representation for his second novel: Every Family Is A Conspiracy Theory.

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

UPCOMING 2023 AUTHORS AND TITLES
July Jehanne Dubrow–Taste: A Book of Small Bites
August Ruben Degollado–The Family Izquierdo
September Thomas McNeely–Pictures of the Shark
October Katie Guttierrez–TBA
November Carmen Tafolla–Girl Warrior (Sept 2023 – Penguin)
December TBA

Writing the Queer in Hostile Times: A Pride Month Literary Panel
2023-06-29 18:30 - 20:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Join Gemini Ink on Thursday, June 29th, to wrap up Pride Month 2023 with a timely and intimate literary discussion about current events and their relationship to the written and spoken word.
This event, including featured authors Chibbi Orduña, Kit Curá, and Anel I. Flores, will offer a safe space to discuss how these divisive times affect LGBTQ+ writers and how these writers wield the literary arts to push back against current hostilities, celebrate who they are, and question societal expectations. Moderated by Mary Reading.

Kit Curá (they/them) is a nonbinary butch lesbian currently living in Houston, Texas. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, they moved to the United States at the age of six, yet they diligently cultivate a connection to their Latine heritage and identity. A graduate of Trinity University (with a B.A. in English) and Texas State University (with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing), Curá ultimately aims to use their passions for creating, community outreach, and LGBTQ storytelling to uplift queer and trans youth (particularly those from underrepresented communities) through the stories that they create, telling them: “we are worth fighting for, protecting, and loving; and, if no one else is willing to do these things for us, then we will do them for each other.”
Anel I. Flores is a trans-, queer Latina/x writer, artist, activist and life-coach. They are a visionary creative whose extensive body of work captures the essence of LGBTQIA+ experiences. Her contributions to art, education, literature, advocacy, and community-building have left an indelible mark. Anel’s areas of expertise encompass various themes such as Latina/x literature, sexuality, gender, race/border/diaspora, spirituality, body, and blood memory. With an MFA in Creative Writing, Anel I. Flores is a highly accomplished author, having penned notable works like chapbook titled “La Fea” and the Lambda literary award-nominated book, “Empanada: A Lesbiana Story en Probaditas.” Additionally, her upcoming novel, “Cortinas de Lluvia,” is set to be released in 2024 along with the 2nd edition of Empanada, doubled with a 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, Sinister Wisdom, Raspa Magazine, iungo Arts Magazine, the Lodestar Quarterly, The Pitkin Literary Review, and La Voz.
M.R. “Chibbi” Orduña is a Mexican-born, Texas-raised queer poet, performer, publisher, producer and community organizer, Editor in Chief & Director of Virtual Programming at Write About Now Publishing and The Mixtape Literary Journal, and director and co-host of the Words and Sh*t and After 2 Tequila Shots podcasts. They are a 2022 Tin House fellow, and have self-published 2 books, been a finalist for the 2021 Wax Nine Chapbook Competition and 2022 Robert Phillips Chapbook Competition, and the co-editor of the anthology Contra: Texas Poets Speak Out (Flowersong Press, 2020). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Texas Review, Wax Wing, Los Angeles Poet Society, Acentos Review, The Latino Book Review Magazine, Buzzfeed, We are Mitu, and Button Poetry. Their videos have over 1 million views across social media platforms. You can find them on IG @gemineyes and on Twitter @gemineyespoetry.
Mary Reading teaches English and Literature classes at Northwest Vista Colleges. A Pennsylvania native, Mary is currently working on her PhD in Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The title of their dissertation is “Transformation: From Drag to Transgender Representation in Film and Television.” Their prospective graduation date is December 2023. They enjoy spending time with their cats and dog, Brie, Feta, and Gouda, and traveling in their free time.
