Gemini Ink

Eddie Vega & Friends & Community Open Mic
2024-09-26 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Mexico_City) | Poetic Republic Coffee Co., 2330 S. Presa St, San Antonio, Texas, United States
Join Gemini Ink on Thursday, September 26th, for a night of poetry and performance as we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2024 and honor our new San Antonio Poet Laureate Eddie Vega!
Eddie is a poet, educator, open mic host, and voice for the people, who’s poetry focuses on the routine struggles and small beauties of life in South Texas. He will be accompanied by award- winning poet Violeta Garza and veteran educator and poet Jacinto Jesús Cardona.
Following the featured reading, we will host a community open mic. Bring your poems, stories, and thoughts to share (there will be a 3-minute limit for each reader). Open mic sign-up in person, starting at 6pm.

Violeta Garza is a non-binary Latinx poet and member of the Macondo Writers Workshop. Her work has been published in Acentos Review, Boundless, and riverSedge, among others.
Jacinto Jesús Cardona is a San Antonio poet whose two poetry books, PAN DULCE and AMAPOLASONG celebrate his growing up Tex Mex in Alice, the Hub of South Texas. In 2016 New York Symphony Space selected his poem “Bato Con Khakis” to be performed as part of their literacy program. Among Cardona’s awards are a Gemini Ink Voz de San Antonio Poetry Award and his poetry is documented in Voices From Texas by San Antonio filmmaker Ray Santiesteban. Cardona teaches English at Incarnate Word High School.
Eddie Vega (the Taco-Poet of Texas) is a poet, storyteller, and educator. The author of Chicharra Chorus (FlowerSong Press, 2019) and Somos Nopales (FlowerSong Press, 2024), his poetry also appears along the San Pedro Creek Cultural Park. He is the editor of Asina is How We Talk, a collection of Tejano poetry. A Macondo Workshop Fellow, Vega directs the Mouth Dakota Poetry Project, a biweekly open mic. He currently serves as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Antonio.

Our Word is Our Vote: A Poetry Pachanga
2024-09-28 17:00 - 21:00 | UTSA, 1 UTSA Circle, San Antonio, Texas, 78249
Don’t Miss Our Word is Our Vote:
A Poetry Pachanga this Saturday, Sep 28!
Join the dynamic San Antonio poetry community for this special election year event, encouraging voter registration and using our voice to create the change we want to see:
Saturday, Sep 28, 5-9pm
UTSA Main Campus
1 UTSA Circle, San Antonio, TX 78249
Richard Liu Auditorium, Business Bldg, 2.01.02
Register to Vote! Free Event! Free Food!
Live Music from Kitten Mitten, Mexstep, and Patsy Torres!
And all the poets—Andi Garcia-Linn, Alexandra Vandekamp, Alex Z. Salinas, Amalia Ortiz, Anthony the Poet, Carmen Calatayud, Carmen Tafolla, Chibbi Orduña, Chris Carmona, E.D. Watson, Eddie Vega, Eduardo C. Garza, Edward Vidaurre, Fernando E. Flores, Frances Santos, Gerard Robledo, Gume Laurel III, Jen Yanez-Alaniz, Jim LaVilla-Havelin, John Olivares Espinoza, John Phillip Santos, Jonathan Fletcher, Joshua Robbins, KB Brookins, Lace Garcia, Mandy Lynn Lara, Matthew Tavares, Myra Dumapais, Natalia Treviño, Nazli Siddiqui, Octavio Quintanilla, Rooster Martinez, Sajhar Roshan, Saúl Hernández, Tony Diaz, Violeta Garza, Zach Sokoloski!

Open Writer's Labs
2024-09-30 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-10-28 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-11-25 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-12-30 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
These peer-driven workshops, held the last Monday of each month, are free and open to writers of all levels and focus on poetry, flash fiction, and short creative non-fiction.

Online Via Zoom
For the online workshop, sign up the day before the class to ensure you receive the Zoom link.
This workshop is facilitated by Kevin Ramos. Originally from the northeast, Kevin studied theater arts at Rutgers University and The University of Washington. He’s lived all over the country before making his home in San Antonio, Texas. Kevin has written several novels and short stories. Most recently, publishing a short memoir called Enough about addiction, mothers, and missing graves. And a novel, Hayley’s Sense of Fire (DLG Publishing Partners), a modern re-telling of the classic fairy tale, The Little Matchgirl.

In-Person at Gemini Ink

Join our in-person Open Writer’s Lab with Robert Allen at Gemini Ink’s office, 1111 Navarro St., San Antonio, TX 78205.
Robert Allen has worked as a librarian and an electrical contractor for most of his life. Many moons ago, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied poetry under David Wevill. Allen has been active in local writer’s groups and open mics, including the Sun Poets Society. He’s been published in The Ocotillo Review, the Texas Poetry Calendar, Voices de la Luna, di-verse-city, the San Antonio Express-News, and Poetry on the Move. In 2006, he started attending Gemini Ink’s free Monday night writing classes and has attended regularly ever since. With more than a decade of attending writers’ groups, classes, and open mics, he now co-facilitates Gemini Ink’s Open Writer’s Lab.
Parking at Gemini Ink
Gemini Ink offers free parking along the back wall of our downtown offices. Please access this parking lot from Augusta St and first park in any of the 12 spots along the back wall. Only when these 12 spots are full do we ask that you park elsewhere in our lot. We now rent our offices from UTSA and are collaborating with them to create a secure and accessible parking lot for our community of writers and readers.

Funny Bones: Craft a Calavera Poem with San Antonio Legend Anthony Flores
2024-10-01 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Tuesdays, October 1 & 8, 2024, 6:30-8:30pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: Anthony Flores
Nonmember: $110; Member: $95; Student/Educator/Mil $75
Explore the comedic and poetic mischief of creating a calavera poem in honor of Día De Los Muertos. A calavera is a traditional form of poetry from Mexico that uses satire to create humorous and lighthearted rhyming poems about the living.
This form explores the living through the lens of death (Calavera is Spanish for “skull”), which can provide catharsis and deep reflection on impermanence. Calaveras can be written to address rich people in business, famous people, family, friends, and even government officials.
In this two-session workshop led by Anthony “The Poet” Flores, we will learn the history of the traditional Mexican calavera poem; compose our own Day Of The Dead creations; and apply literary devices, such as irony, rhyme, and repetition, to take our piece to the next level. We will leave the workshop with a list of places to read our new poems around town during the holiday celebration.
This course is open to writers of all skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this workshop with the following:

The first draft of a calavera poem
Exposure to literary devices and structures
Insight into a historical and culturally significant poetic form
A list of places to read and share your poetry

Anthony “The Poet” Flores is a three-time San Antonio Grand Slam Poetry Champion who has represented the city six times at the National Poetry Slam. His performances include HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and Lincoln Center. He currently judges the San Antonio Public Library’s Young Pegasus Poetry Contest. Anthony is the founder of The University of Spoken Word and authored CINCUENTA: 50 Poems Celebrating Half A Century Of Life.

Parking at Gemini Ink
Gemini Ink offers free parking along the back wall of our downtown offices. Please access this parking lot from Augusta St and first park in any of the 12 spots along the back wall. Only when these 12 spots are full do we ask that you park elsewhere in our lot. We now rent our offices from UTSA and are collaborating with them to create a secure and accessible parking lot for our community of writers and readers.

Delving into the Celtic Isles: Inspiration from International Poets with Veronica Golos
2024-10-02 18:30 - 21:00 | Online via Zoom
Wednesdays, Oct 2, 9, 16 & 23, 6:30-9pm CST, via Zoom
Instructor: Veronica Golos
Nonmember: $155; Member: $130; Student/Educator/Military $75
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

In a time of worldwide strife and disconnection, poetry reacquaints us with humanity in a way that transcends borders, time zones, and languages. Join master poetry teacher Veronica Golos on an international poetry tour. Next stop: Celtic Isles!
In this four-week generative poetry workshop we will explore rhythm, rhyme, humor, and the rich history of celtic ancestry with four Irish poets: Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Medbh McGuckian, Eavan Boland, and Seamus Heaney. We will read deeply each week, explore each poet’s craft tools, and apply these techniques to our work. Participants will receive a packet with poems and suggestions for developing their writing.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 18+.
By the end of the class, students will have the following:

Study and analyze the work of 4 contemporary poets
Write poems that follow the selected poet’s structure and theme
Receive on-the-spot feedback for written work

Veronica Golos is the author of four poetry books: GIRL, awarded the Naji Naaman Honor Prize in 2019; Rootwork, winner of the 2016 Southwest Book Design Award in Poetry; Vocabulary of Silence, a 2011 New Mexico Book Award winner that was translated into Arabic, Spanish and Persian; and A Bell Buried Deep, a Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize winner. She teaches poetry for Hugo House, Gemini Ink, and SOMOS. She reviews poetry books for Tupelo Press and works as a manuscript editor. She lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her husband, David Pérez.

Unearthing Your Inner Voice: A Creative Nonfiction Workshop with Award-Winning Columnist Cary Clack
2024-10-03 18:30 - 20:30 | Gemini Ink
Thursdays, October 3, 10 & 17, 2024, 6:30-8:30pm CST, Hybrid (in-person at Gemini Ink and online via Zoom)
Instructor: Cary Clack
Nonmember: $155; Member: $130; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

Each of us has a writing voice that is distinctly our own. Creative nonfiction is a great tool for discovering and unearthing that inner voice. As we tap into memories and the elements that make us who we are, we allow our refined stories to surface in a way that is uniquely our own.
In this 3-session workshop, students will use texts and writing exercises to dig and discover who they are, what they think, and how to capture their voice on the page. This course is open to writers of all skill levels, 18+.
Students will leave this workshop with:

Drafts of new work
Tools to find and develop their voice
Ideas on how to use old notebooks and journals to mine for stories

Cary Clack was born and raised in San Antonio and graduated from St. Mary’s University with a B.A. in Political Science. In 1995, he became the first Black metro columnist in San Antonio Express-News history and the paper’s first Black Editorial Board member. A collection of his columns, Clowns and Rats Scare Me was published in 2009 by Trinity University Press. He was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2017. A collection of his best short and long columns since his return to San Antonio Express News in 2019, More Finish Lines to Cross, was published by Trinity University Press in 2024. He’s won various journalism awards and is completing the first anthology of Black Texas Writers forthcoming from Texas A&M University Press as part of the Wittliff Collection.

Parking at Gemini Ink
Gemini Ink offers free parking along the back wall of our downtown offices. Please access this parking lot from Augusta St and first park in any of the 12 spots along the back wall. Only when these 12 spots are full do we ask that you park elsewhere in our lot. We now rent our offices from UTSA and are collaborating with them to create a secure and accessible parking lot for our community of writers and readers.

Veterans Writing Collective with Sarah Colby
2024-10-16 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-11-20 18:30 - 20:30, 2024-12-18 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.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Joshua Robbins
2024-10-16 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Join us for the Big Texas Author Talk on Wednesday, Oct 16th, 2024 via Zoom @ 7PM CST
Up Next: Joshua Robbins, author of Eschatology in Crayon Wax, moderated by George David Clark.
RSVP
Joshua Robbins’s highly anticipated and thought-provoking second book, Eschatology in Crayon Wax, evokes a sense of being torn between a fragile longing for transformation and a whirlwind of flawed divinity. Robbins firmly asserts, “Paradise doesn’t care how you get there. Only that you try,” and is met with divine contempt and a commandment to “shape ashes into ashes” because “besides, I can’t tell you what on earth I’m doing.” In the world of these poems, all one can do is survive the contradictions and cruel mysteries embedded in a contemporary life of empty homes, RFID, mall shooting bullet casings, drone targets, miscarriages, divorce, and suicide. These poems engage deeply with the theodicies of the Book of Job, evangelicalism, class theory, and even the manic crises of Berryman’s “Dream Songs.” At times elegiac, always fearlessly confessional, and even tragicomic, Robbins does not resist hope. With intelligence and style to spare, Robbins displays a fierce concern for this world of things, caught as we are between what is and what should be.

Joshua Robbins was born in Berkeley, California, and grew up in the East Bay. After earning an MFA in Poetry at the University of Oregon and a PhD in English from the University of Tennessee, he joined the English Department at the University of the Incarnate Word, where he is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing. His primary teaching areas are poetry writing, trauma writing, and creative nonfiction. His first book, Praise Nothing, was published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2013 as part of the prestigious Miller Williams Series in Poetry. Eschatology in Crayon Wax was published in 2024 by Texas Review Press. His recognitions include, the James Wright Poetry Award, the New South Prize, Best New Poets, and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in poetry from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, among others. He currently lives in San Antonio. Visit Joshua at http://www.joshuarobbins.net/

About the Moderator
George David Clark is the author of Reveille (Arkansas), winner of the Miller Williams Prize, and Newly Not Eternal (LSU, 2024). His work has received honors from the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (the Meringoff Prize in Poetry), Colgate University (the Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship), Narrative Magazine (the 30 Below Prize), the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (the Walter E. Dakin Fellowship), and Valparaiso University (the Lily Postdoctoral Fellowship), among others. David’s recent poems can be found in Agni, The Believer, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Since 2011, he has edited the journal, 32 Poems. He teaches creative writing at Washington & Jefferson College and lives in Canonsburg, PA.

Be the Writer You Are: Set Yourself Free with New Approaches to Creative Writing with C.L. “Rooster” Martinez
2024-10-19 10:00 - 13:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Saturday, October 19, 2024, 10am-1pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructor: C.L. “Rooster” Martinez
Nonmember: $135; Member: $115; Student/Educator/Military $75
*EARN CPE’S

Are you a writer who struggles to find joy in your current writing practice? Is self-doubt or lack of direction keeping you from being the powerful, truthful, creative writer you want to be? It’s time to set yourself free from the things that hold your writing practice back!
Be the Writer You Are is a one-day, four-hour generative workshop centered on throwing out everything we have learned about creative writing and, instead, tapping into our intrinsic desire to write and be heard. Students will explore the role of creative writing in society. We’ll question our personal influences and writing processes to define what motivates us, what inspires us, and what our writing goals are. Then, we will generate new work aimed at amplifying our unique perspectives and setting our voices free.
This course is open to writers of all skill levels, 18+. While the workshop will be somewhat poetry-centric, it is for writers of various writing experiences and disciplines.
Students will leave this workshop with:

Drafts of new written work
Editing and feedback suggestions
Holistic approach to a creative lifestyle

C.L. “Rooster” Martinez is an educator and spoken word poet from San Antonio, Texas. He earned a MA/MFA in Creative Writing, Literature & Social Justice at Our Lady of the Lake University. He is the author of three poetry books: A Saint for Lost Things (Alabrava Press, 2020); As it is in Heaven (Kissing Dynamite Poetry Press, 2020); and Mexican Dinosaur (WAN, 2023). For twelve years, Rooster competed and won slams across the country and co-founded the literary nonprofit Write Art Out Inc.

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 Mythology of Me: Applying Poetry and Narrative Therapy to Personal Stories with Aaron Deutsch and Dr. Heather Pitamber
2024-11-02 10:00 - 14:30 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Saturday, November 2, 2024, 10am-2:30pm CST (includes a 30-minute lunch), in-person at Gemini Ink
Instructors: Aaron Deutsch and Dr. Heather Pitamber
Nonmember: $145; Member: $125; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

From ancient myths to family gossip, humanity’s richness comes from its overflowing well of stories. Both personal narratives and imagined stories teach us about the world around us and influence how we live in it. What can we learn from rewriting our own personal stories into a life we have only imagined?
In this 1-day generative workshop, co-led by poet Aaron Deutsch and Licensed Professional Counselor Heather Joy Pitamber, participants will explore the practice of Narrative Therapy, a counseling technique that empowers participants to “rewrite” their story for a future that reflects who they really are, what they are capable of, and what their purpose is. Then, we will practice applying this therapeutic tool to our own writing to generate compelling stories that carve out new possibilities.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 18+.
By the end of the class students will have:

A foundational overview of Narrative Therapy
Close readings and discussions of delicious poems and narratives designed to provide both grounding and inspiration for new works
New, raw written materials to cultivate later

Heather Joy Pitamber is a licensed professional counselor passionate about service, learning, and growth. With degrees in Philosophy, Psychology, French Literature, and Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Heather has dedicated her eclectic career in Europe and the United States to education and human services. She is passionate about helping her clients and students find the awareness, insight, and empowerment they desire to create lives of meaning and purpose. As an educator with a heart for wellness, Heather has cherished serving students and their families in public and private school settings, from elementary school to the university level, and as an independent academic consultant. She is thrilled to continue serving her community’s diverse clientele through her private counseling practice in San Antonio, TX.
Aaron Deutsch received his MFA in poetry with distinction from Texas State University, intending to acquire a lexicon to answer the wild, mystical questions the world around him seemed to be asking. Somehow, that journey led him to become a senior program manager with the United States Department of Defense, where he works to build regional security across South America and the Middle East alongside international partners. Efforting to establish and maintain effective communication, he still looks to poetics and linguistics to build shared goals across cultures, finding more similarities than differences in people worldwide. In his free time, he loves teaching creative writing classes, working on that ever-elusive first book, and spoiling his Boston Terrier Hamlet.

Razzmatazz & All That Jazz: An Evening in Celebration of Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson
2024-11-08 18:30 - 21:30 | McNay Art Museum, 6000 N. New Braunfels Ave., San Antonio, TX, United States
Purchase Tickets and Sponsor Levels

Celebrating Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson at the McNay Art Museum Moroccan Courtyard and Leeper Auditorium, Friday, November 8th, 6:30-9:30 pm

2024 Award for Literary Excellence
Andrea Vocab Sanderson
Honorary Co-Chair
Dr. Eric Castillo
Associate Vice Chancellor of Arts, Culture, and Community Impact for the Alamo Colleges District
Moderator
Glo Miles
Emcee
Molly Cox
2024 Inkstravaganza Committee
Cary Clack, Aminah Dece, Barbara Felix, Winifred Hodge, Zach Jewell, Andrea Lopez, Gloria Miles, Chibbi Orduña, Aaronetta Pierce, Gerard Robledo, Andrea Rodriguez, Zsaire Shaheid (Shai), Aissatou Sidime-Blanton, Kirsten Thompson, Maria Williams, Bria Woods, Alexandra van de Kamp

Join Gemini Ink, San Antonio’s Writing Arts Center, at the beautiful McNay Art Museum on Friday, November 8th, for an unforgettable, festive evening celebrating the extraordinary achievements of Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, our 2024 Recipient of The Award for Literary Excellence. Enjoy our star-packed lineup (details coming soon!) and mingle with friends and fellow literary fans as we honor this brilliant poet, multifaceted artist, performer, and community leader who is at the heart of the writing arts in our city.
Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson is a multifaceted artist in the worlds of music, poetry, spoken word performance, and community artistic collaborations, and to say she is a powerhouse poet and creative performer only scratches the surface of her talent! We couldn’t be more honored to spotlight her as the featured writer of our annual gala in support of the power of the writing arts in our city. Vocab is San Antonio Poet Laureate Emeritus 2020-2023. She facilitates workshops throughout the U.S. and is the author of She Tastes Like Music (Flower Song Press, 2020). She is an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and was voted Best Local Poet in 2023 and 2021 by The SA Current. Vocab has had the distinct honor of opening up for Dr. Cornell West, Phylicia Rashad, and Nikki Giovanni. Her albums and collaborative works can be streamed on all major music platforms. Learn more about her at her website andreavocabsanderson.com.

To Praise the Ruined World with Sheila Black
2024-11-09 10:00 - 13:00 | Online via Zoom
Saturday, November 9, 2024, 10am-1pm CST, online via Zoom
Instructor: Sheila Black
Nonmember: $140; Member: $120; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S

We are living through hard times – and on a global scale. From political unrest to wars to climate change, it is hard not to see the sorrow and suffering around us. Yet in difficult times, the human impulse toward praise and celebration can provide unexpected ways of understanding, empathizing, and finding a way forward.
In this one-day workshop, we will read poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, Adam Zagajewski, Frank O’Hara, Roger Reeves, January Gil O’Neil, and others that demonstrate how praise can be a tool for understanding and transcending even the hardest truths. We will explore how these poets craft praise songs that acknowledge life’s sorrows and losses. We will then write our poems of recovery and resilience.
This course is open to writers of all skill levels, 18+.
In this workshop, students will:

Draft several new written works
Uncover the power of praise as a fundamental writing tool
Broaden their awareness of how contemporary poets address difficult topics

Read Sheila’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

Sheila Black is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Radium Dream from Salmon Poetry, Ireland. Poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Nation, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She is a co-editor of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Honors include a 2012 Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress for which she was selected by Philip Levine. She lives in San Antonio, TX and Tempe, AZ where she is assistant director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University (ASU).

LitMinds: A Book Club at Gemini Ink
2024-11-13 18:30 - 20:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Join us for the Lit Minds Book Club. We’re reading Half of a Yellow Sun, a novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Register
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • From the award-winning, bestselling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists—a haunting story of love and war. • Recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award.
With effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s. We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters: Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm; and Richard, a shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s willful twin sister Kainene.
Half of a Yellow Sun is a tremendously evocative novel of the promise, hope, and disappointment of the Biafran war.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born September 15, 1977, Enugu, Nigeria) is a Nigerian writer whose second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), gained international acclaim for its depiction of the devastation caused by the Nigerian Civil War. Her novels, short stories, and nonfiction explore the intersections of identity. Learn more at www.chimamanda.com.

What Happens Inside: A Body Horror Workshop with Leticia Urieta
2024-11-14 18:30 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Thursdays, November 14 & 21, 2024, 6:30-8:30pm CST, via Zoom
Instructor: Leticia Urieta
Nonmember: $150; Member: $130; Student/Educator/Mil $75
*EARN CPE’S
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

When it comes to our bodies, there is little we fear more than the inevitability that our bodies will change, can fall ill, and will die. Body horror helps us to write about the absurdity, beauty, and horror of being corporeal.
This two-session virtual workshop will focus on reading and discussing stories of body horror that affect us and engage with stories of illness, trauma, loss, power, monstrousness, and reclamation. We will also discuss how these stories can inspire our own. In this generative workshop, we will engage with multiple activities inviting us to write and share our own body horror stories.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 16+.
By the end of the class, students will have:

Draft 1-2 new pieces based on sample readings and class discussion
Gain new insights into various genres, from horror to speculative imaginings, to apply to their future writing.
Come away with an expanded knowledge of contemporary genres.

Leticia Urieta is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. Leticia is a graduate of Agnes Scott College with a BA in English/Creative Writing and holds an MFA in Fiction writing from Texas State University.
She works as a teaching artist in the Austin community. She is also the Program Director for Austin Bat Cave and the Director of Barrio Writers in Austin and Pflugerville, a free college-level youth writers workshop founded by author and activist Sarah Rafael Garcia in Santa Ana, CA.
Her creative work appears in PANK, Chicon Street Poets, Lumina, and many others. Her fiction explores the intersections of Latinx identity with folklore, traditional stories, and the supernatural or speculative. Her mixed-genre collection of poetry and prose, Las Criaturas, was published with FlowerSong Press in November 2021 and was a finalist for the Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction 2022 from the Texas Institute of Letters and a finalist for the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Short Story Collections.
Leticia loves living in Austin with her husband and aging chihuahua, who are terrible work distractions. Despite all this, she is fueled by sushi and breaks to watch pug videos on Instagram.

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Anel Flores
2024-11-20 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Join us on Wednesday, Nov 20th, 2024, via Zoom for a conversation with Anel Flores, author of Cortinas de lluvia/Curtains of Rain. Moderated by Dr. Jackie Cuevas.

(Zoom Readings Monthly @ 7pm CST)
RSVP for Zoom invite

Curtains of Rain/Cortinas de Lluvia, follows the story of Solitaria, who escapes her small border town, to arrive at the door of her gay tíos on a quest to queer traditions, turn trauma into triumph, and find home. Release date is May 2025 with Jaded Ibis Press.

Solitaria Gaviota-Alaniz is a girl on the margins, growing up in a border town while navigating the complexities of familial relationships, environmental racism, and a queer secret that threatens to cleave her from those she cherishes most. Eventually, towing the line becomes untenable, and after a traumatic exorcism, Sol is forced to flee from everything she has ever known.
Fifteen years later, Solitaria returns to confront the ghosts of homophobia haunting her past. Supported by a found familia of gay tios, her nonbinary best friend Toni, and a diverse community of panederas and drag queens in San Antonio, Sol embarks on a search and rescue mission for her lost self. Soaked in vibrant landscapes of identity and resilience, Curtains of Rain details one woman’s coming-of-age between cities, between cultures, and between budding loves.

Anel I. Flores is a trans-Latina/x writer, artist, and activist whose work explores LGBTQIA+ experiences, Latina/x literature, and social issues. Anel’s literary contributions have been featured in numerous publications, including Switchgrass Review and Sinister Wisdom. Their plays have been produced on stage, and their visual art has been exhibited in galleries worldwide. Anel’s upcoming novel.

Dr. Jackie Cuevas is the author of Post-Borderlandia: Chicana Literature and Gender Variant Critique (Rutgers University Press, 2018) and the poetry chapbook Otherhood, USA (Tanto Tinto Press, 2000). Cuevas teaches at UT Austin and is a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop,

Explorations of Home: A Panel on the Latinx Diaspora in Poetry
2024-12-03 18:00 - 20:00 | San Antonio Public Library, 600 Soledad, San Antonio, Texas, 78205
Tuesday, December 3rd 6-8pm, in-person
San Antonio Public Library
Latino Collection & Resource Center
600 Soledad St., San Antonio, TX
Free and open to the public
This event, in partnership with the Library of America, will feature a panel of diverse poets who represent the breadth of the Latinx diaspora. The panel will discuss the facets and multiplicities of home, from ancestry and linguistics to shifting borders and generational wounds.
Featured authors are Jasminne Mendez, ire’ne lara silva, and Rod Carlos Rodriguez. They will read from their personal works and engage in a rich discussion with moderator Dr. Carmen Tafolla. Light refreshments will be served.
Panelist Bios
Jasminne Mendez is a Dominican-American poet, translator, playwright, audiobook narrator, and award-winning author of several books, including the Pura Belpre Honor Award-winning middle-grade novel in verse, Aniana del Mar Jumps In (Dial). Her other books have received prizes from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Writer’s League of Texas and the International Latino Book Awards. She is an MFA graduate of the creative writing program at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and a University of Houston alumni. She is the Program Director for the literary arts non-profit Tintero Projects and she lives and works in Houston, TX.
Rod Carlos Rodriguez has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the UT–El Paso and is a Lecturer at UTSA’s Writing Program. He is an award-winning poet who has been writing for over 40 years. He has five books of poetry published including Cantos, Incandescent (Finishing Line Press, 2024), and A History of Echoes: Poems (Gival Press, 2024). He is the founder/chair of the Sun Poet’s Society, South Texas’s longest-running weekly open-mic poetry reading (1995-2022). He was nominated for the San Antonio Poet Laureate in April 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018. He was the poetry editor for Ocotillo Review, a literary journal/periodical, and he was the editor of the Texas Poetry Calendar 2023 (Kallisto Gaia Press).
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 was the Fiction Finalist for AROHO’s 2013 Gift of Freedom Award. Ire’ne received the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Shrake Award for Best Short Nonfiction. Her second collection, the light of your body, will be published by Arte Publico Press in Fall 2025.
Moderator
Dr. Carmen Tafolla is the author of over 40 books and the 2015 State Poet Laureate of Texas. Her award-winning books include The Holy Tortilla and a Pot of Beans, Rebozos, Curandera, and Sonnets to Human Beings. Her writing has been recognized by the National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies for work that “gives voice to the peoples and cultures of this land,” and her new novel-in-verse Warrior Girl was published by Penguin in 2023.
This program is presented as part of Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home, a major public humanities initiative taking place across the nation in 2024 and 2025, directed by Library of America and funded with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Emerson Collective.

Get Inside Your Character’s Head: Effective Storytelling Across Genres with Daniel Peña
2024-12-07 10:00 - 14:30 | Online via Zoom
Dec 7 & 8, via Zoom
Sat: 10am-2:30pm CST, (incl 30-minute lunch); Sun: 10am-1pm CST
Instructor: Daniel Peña
Nonmember: $155; Member: $135; Student/Educator/Mil $75

As the great Henry James once shared, a story should never be just a story, meaning it should rarely be just an anecdote. Rather, it should show some true essence of the story’s character and explore fundamental shifts in that character’s psyche from the beginning of the story to the end.
In this 2-day multi-genre generative workshop, we will explore how to uncover a character’s fundamental truth and use it to shape a strong protagonist who creates persona-driven fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. We will also look at how to create shifts in character that make for exciting epiphanies and conclusions that land like lightning bolts on the page. Participants will also practice blending genres to create singular forms that best fit the story they are trying to tell.
This is a great crash course for those just getting their sea legs in storytelling concepts and the fundamentals of poetry alike. This course is open to beginning writers of all skill levels, 18+.
In this workshop, students will:

Draft new written works
Strategies for creating character-driven writing
Experiment with blending genres to create a more powerful story

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

Gemini Ink Holiday Open House
2024-12-12 18:30 - 20:00 | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Come Celebrate!
Date: Thursday, December 12th Time: 6:30-8pm CST
Location: Gemini Ink (In-Person)
Join us as we eat, drink, and merrily toast the closing of 2024 with our literary community of writers and friends. Drop by when you can, leave when you need to.

Music by Excy. Excy Ceiba ili is a Cultural Educator and Musician-Activist from Honduras who employs indigenous instruments and languages in music creation. Instagram: @ceiba_ili
Open Mic: 7pm. Show up at 6:30 PM to sign up (12 slots available for 3-minute reads)

Stay long enough to have a little eggnog and comfort food. Wine, non-alcoholic beverages, and coffee will be served. We will provide the main fare, but you are also invited to bring a store-bought or prepackaged food item to share.
Keeping with our annual tradition, we’ll have a table of books to trade and give away. Feel free to bring a book to share!

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Carmen Calatayud
2024-12-18 19:00 - 20:30 | Online via Zoom
Join us on Wednesday, Dec. 18th, 2024 via Zoom for a conversation with Carmen Calatayud, author of This Tangled Body. Moderated by Francisco Aragón.
RSVP for Invite
This Tangled Body reads as surreal poetic memoir, navigating family history, war, migration, and the grit of relationships. Through lyrical language, the poet searches for ways to rescue a body that knows pain, addiction, and generational trauma. Elegies, love letters, and concussions cross paths here, along with planets and stars, demonstrating that the potential to heal is possible when raw truth and grace are present. Calatayud’s willingness to face the land of the dead and cross all borders is on full display. As she invites us to “leave this continent and/light the path behind us on fire,” her poetry insists we return to love and love hard.
Carmen Calatayud is the daughter of immigrants: A Spanish father and Irish mother. Her book This Tangled Body was published by FlowerSong Press, in conjunction with Letras Latinas, in 2024. Her first book In the Company of Spirits (Press 53) was a runner-up for the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Award and a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Calatayud is a Larry Neal Poetry Award winner and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop.

Francisco Aragón is the author of three books of poetry, including After Rubén (2020), Glow of Our Sweat (2010), and Puerta de Sol (2005). He’s also the editor of, The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007). His more than twenty anthology publications include Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (2024); Queer Nature: An Ecoqueer Poetry Anthology (2022) and Why To These Rocks: 50 Years of Poems from the Community of Writers (2021). His poems and translations have appeared in numerous literary journals, both print and online. A native of San Francisco, CA, he is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. He is on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where he teaches courses in Latinx poetry and creative writing, and directs Letras Latinas, their literary initiative. He has read his work widely, including at universities, bookstores, art galleries, and the Dodge Poetry Festival. For more information, visit: http://franciscoaragon.net

LitMinds Book Club
2025-01-08 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 Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, by Anne Fadiman.
Register

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest
A Salon Book Award Winner
Lia Lee was born in 1982 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, over-medication, and culture clash: “What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance.” The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, “There are no villains in Fadiman’s tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty—and their nobility.

Anne Fadiman was born in New York City in 1953. She graduated in 1975 from Harvard College, where she began her writing career as the undergraduate columnist at Harvard Magazine. For many years, she was a writer and columnist for Life, and later an Editor-at-Large at Civilization. She has won National Magazine Awards for both Reporting (1987) and Essays (2003), as well as a National Book Critics Circle Award for The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, a collection of first-person essays on books and reading, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1998. Fadiman was the editor of the intellectual and cultural quarterly The American Scholar from 1997 to 2004. She now holds the Francis chair in nonfiction writing at Yale. Fadiman lives in western Massachusetts with her husband, the writer George Howe Colt, and their two children.

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.

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.

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.

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.
