Gemini Ink

Short and to the Point: Writing Microfiction with Lyzette Wanzer
2025-09-24 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | Online via Zoom
Wednesday(s), September 24 & October 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 2025 6:30-8:30pm CT online via Zoom
Nonmember $300; Member $255; Student/Educator/Military $210
*Please note: our printed schedule lists September 17 in error. The class begins September 24.
*EARN CPEs
Learn the art of microfiction! This genre challenges and sharpens your skills by teaching you how to write an attention-demanding story in only a few words.
In this six-session workshop, writers will discover the key to successful microfiction: a well-defined character and plot, all compressed into an impactful short story. We’ll foster creativity and expand writing skills, refining the ability to convey complex ideas concisely without sacrificing the story’s punch. Throughout the duration of the workshop, students will write and revise a story of 300 words or less.
This is an intermediate-level workshop. Prior prose or poetry writing experience is required and assumed.
During this class you will:

Read and parse multiple microfiction examples
Workshop your story with your peers
Receive instructor feedback on your drafts
Explore places to publish your piece

Read Lyzette’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

Lyzette Wanzer is a San Francisco writer, editor, and writing workshop instructor. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Mills College. A flash fiction connoisseur and essay aficionado, her work has appeared in Callaloo, The Los Angeles Review, Pleiades, The MacGuffin, Flashquake, and others. She is a contributor to Lyric Essay as Resistance, The Chalk Circle, Civil Liberties United, and 642 Tiny Things to Write About. Lyzette presents at conferences including AWP, CEA, Litquake, and the San Francisco Writers Conference. She judges literary contests in nonfiction and intercultural essay categories.

Teen Writing Circle with Daniel Ramirez
2025-09-27 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-10-25 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-11-29 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-12-27 12:00 - 13:30, 2026-01-31 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Mexico_City) | Online via Zoom
Register
Last Saturday of Every Month 12-1:30pm 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.

Open Writer's Labs
2025-09-29 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-10-27 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-11-24 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-12-29 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-01-26 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Mexico_City) | 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.

Twists, Turns, and Call-backs: How to Shape Your Story with Marcela Fuentes
2025-10-04 10:00 - 11:30 (America/Chicago) | Online via Zoom
Literary Masters Lecture Series
Shape your story into something unforgettable

Learn how from award-winning author Marcela Fuentes

Saturday(s), October 4 & 11, 10-11:30am CT, online via Zoom
Nonmember $90; Member $75; Student $63 *EARN CPEs
Seats are limited—register today

What You’ll Learn

Knowledge of specific story shapes
Effective use of images
Understanding of how to weave in detail without losing momentum

“[F]ind your writer friends. You’ll keep each other writing no matter what life throws at you.”—Marcela Fuentes
Want to learn how to strategically use story shapes to create dynamic arcs and a satisfying plot that your reader can’t stop reading? Join us for this Literary Masters Lecture! Each session features an engaging craft talk, actionable writing strategies, and a live Q&A with the author.
In this two-part intensive lecture, award-winning fiction writer Marcela Fuentes will share how to pick an excellent shape for your story, create a strong opening, and evoke striking images. She’ll also provide craft tools and ideas you can practice on your own following the lecture.

About Marcela Fuentes
Marcela is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist. Her debut novel Malas won the Texas Institute of Letters First Fiction Prize and the National Cowboy Museum & Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Western Novel. The book was longlisted for the Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, People, Elle Magazine, and Texas Monthly. Malas was Good Morning America Book Club’s pick for June 2024. She is an associate professor at TCU in Fort Worth. She was born and raised in Del Rio, Texas.

Deep Revision with Katey Schultz
2025-10-07 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Online via Zoom
Turn your messy draft into a story that sings.
*STARTS TOMORROW, OCT 7!
Tuesday(s) October 7, 14 & 21, 6-8pm CT, via Zoom
Nonmember $150; Member $129; Student/Educ/Mil $105

Join writers from across the country connecting on Zoom.

Calling all experienced writers looking to level up! Give your written work a power boost and learn to revise like a pro.
This three-session workshop is designed to empower writers with revision techniques for memoir, essays, flash, short stories, or novels. Whether trying to revise a stand-alone chapter or considering the broader arc of your full manuscript, these techniques are graspable, effective, and empowering.
We’ll cover these types of revision: thematic, developmental, sentence-level, and structural. You’ll practice each technique using excerpts from your own work in progress, which you should bring with you to class. You’ll come away with systematic tools to address areas for improvement, as well as a re-invigorated understanding of the joys of revision.
This course is for intermediate or advanced writers who have, at minimum, worked through a partial or complete first draft of a full manuscript, or who have published books and are ready to improve their next manuscript by learning how to become their own best editors.
You’ll walk away with pages in hand and new skills for every story you write.
Students will leave this class with:

An increased confidence in your ability to apply developmental, sentence-level, and structural revision techniques to your works-in-progress
A re-invigorated understanding of the joys of revision and the key role it plays in the writing process

Read Katey’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

Katey Schultz is the author of Flashes of War, which the Daily Beast praised as an “ambitious and fearless” collection, and Still Come Home, a novel, both published by Loyola University Maryland. Honors for her work include North Carolina’s Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, the Linda Flowers Literary Award, Doris Betts Fiction Prize, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year award, gold and silver medals from the Military Writers Society of America, the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year award, five Pushcart nominations, a nomination to Best American Short Stories, National Indies Excellence recognition, and writing fellowships in eight states. She has taught all over the country—at Interlochen College of Creative Arts, Fishtrap, 49 Alaska Writing Center, StoryStudio Chicago, and her own organization Maximum Impact, among many others. She lives in Celo, North Carolina, and is the founder of Maximum Impact, a transformative mentoring service for creative writers that has been recognized by both CNBC and the What Works Network.

Introduction to Playwriting with Mikaela Simon
2025-10-07 18:00 - 21:00 (America/Chicago) | Online via Zoom
Write scenes that demand to be performed.
STARTS TOMORROW, OCT 7!
Tuesday(s), October 7, 14, 6-9pm CT via Zoom
Non-member $225; Member $194; Student/Educ/Mil $158
Class Closed
Join writers from across the country connecting on Zoom.

How do you write a story that comes alive on stage? Excellent theatre has a way of getting a great story up on its feet. But how do you tell a story on the page so that it comes to life on the stage?
Join New Jersey-based playwright Mikaela Simon in this three-session course which will cover the fundamentals of writing a play. Workshop participants will learn how playwriting differs from other genres, what “show don’t tell” means when writing for the stage, and how to use it to create dynamic storytelling.
This course will examine structure, format, dialogue, monologues, characters, dramatic action, and theatricality. Participants will explore these elements and use them to create their own short plays and/or scenes.
This course is open to writers of all genres and skill level, 18+.
Walk away with the first draft of a 10-minute play or the first few scenes of a larger work!
Students will leave this course with:

Knowledge of how to structure and format a play
An understanding of playwriting elements and how to use them
The ability to apply the concepts to long-form works, such as one acts, full-lengths, etc.

Read Mikaela’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

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

Veterans Writing Collective with Sarah Colby
2025-10-15 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-11-19 18:30 - 20:30, 2025-12-17 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-01-21 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Mexico_City) | 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.

Get to “The End”in Style: A Prose Workshop with Guadalupe Garcia McCall
2025-11-01 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Chicago) | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Saturday(s), November 1 & 15, 10am–12:30pm CT, Hybrid (in-person and online via Zoom)
Nonmember $125; Member $108; Student/Educ/Mil $88
*EARN CPEs

Are you stuck trying to finish a great story? The journey to completing a first draft is always bumpy and nebulous, but having the right vehicle (writing exercises, plotting devices, and writing mode) can get your story to “The End” in style.
In this generative two-session workshop, participants will use various modes, structures, and forms of writing to enhance their stories and, in turn, their own writing process. We will also explore Sequence and Sequel and the cause and effect of a scene–two intimately connected elements that impact our characters, motivations, and plot. Students will apply these concepts to their own writing in class.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 18+.
Students will:

Discuss their personal writing process
Analyze various plot structures
Use writing exercises to apply the concepts of Scene & Sequel to their work

Read Guadalupe’s Writer’s Desk Q&A!

Guadalupe García McCall is the national bestselling, award-winning author of several young adult novels, some short stories for adults, and many poems. She has received the prestigious Pura Belpré Author Award, a Westchester Young Adult Fiction Award, the Tomás Rivera Mexican-American Children’s Book Award, among many other accolades. Guadalupe is currently an Affiliate Faculty in the MFA Creative Writing program at Antioch University LA. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, where she is working on the Seasons of Sisterhood series, three YA novels set in the world of Summer of the Mariposas, coming from Tu Books 2025-2027! Spring of the Cicadas, book 1 in the series, is coming in October 2025!

Voices of San Anto Workshop with Marisela Barrera
2025-11-01 13:00 - 17:00 (America/Mexico_City) | San Antonio Public Library, 600 Soledad, San Antonio, Texas, 78205
Join writer and performer Marisela Barrera for a free, two-session bilingual storytelling workshop at the Pan American Library.
Workshop participants will craft a 5-7-minute story about asignificant moment in their lives and present it at a live storytelling show.
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Spanish Flyer_Spanish

Attendance at all three sessions is mandatory.
Workshop dates: Nov 1 & 8, 1-5pmFinal Celebration: Nov 15, 2-4pm

Registration is required.
Space is limited to 15!
Sign up at: https://www.mysapl.org/Events-News/Events-Calendar?trumbaEmbed=search%3Dvoices%20of%20san%20anto

Event is Full!
Please email Sarah.DeLaRosa@sanantonio.gov to request being added to the waitlist.

LitMinds Book Club
2025-11-12 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Mexico_City) | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Note: This title replaces Empire of the Summer Moon by S. C. Gwynne, which appeared in our previous class schedule.
Register

“A riveting tale of perseverance and the lengths humans will go to help each other in times of struggle.”—Dave Eggers
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Vulture, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews
Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.”
Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.
At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents’ arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.
A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.

About the author

Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990. His father fled the country when he was one, and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents’ migrations were caused by the U.S.-funded Salvadoran Civil War. When he was nine Javier migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert. His debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, explores the impact of the war and immigration on his family. Zamora has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard and holds fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.

Writing in the Land with Emmy Pérez
2025-11-13 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Online via Zoom
Literary Masters Lecture Series
Thursday(s), November 13 & 20, 6:30–8pm CT, online via Zoom
Nonmember $90; Member $75; Student?Educ/Mil $63
*EARN CPEs
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

Have you been seeking a more intentional connection to nature? Writing about the land is an intimate way to slow down and reconnect to earth with purpose. Join us for the last Literary Masters Lecture of the year! Each session features an engaging craft talk, actionable writing strategies, and a live Q&A with the author.
In this two-part lecture, led by 2020 Texas Poet Laureate Emmy Pérez, we will discuss poems, songs, and prose that center the land and our connections to places and the environment. We will use these discussions and short writing activities to examine nature through a creative lens, explore attention to detail, integrate historical and cultural contexts, and encourage an eco-justice approach to the writing. We will leave the lecture with our own research plans to explore a place of personal interest.
This lecture is open to writers of all skill levels 18+.
In this lecture students will:

Discuss poems and short prose pieces
Start drafting a poem or short prose piece
Develop a research plan to include online and in-person exploration of a land or a waterway of interest

Emmy Pérez, Texas Poet Laureate 2020, is the author of Solstice, With the River on Our Face, and the forthcoming Boxes with Zero Tolerance, and Paper america: New and Selected Poems. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, United States Artists, the National Endowment for the Arts, and CantoMundo. A member of the Macondo Writers Workshop since 2008, she is a professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where she also serves as chair of the Department of Creative Writing.

Celebrating Our Stories: A Night with Gemini Ink
2025-11-14 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Chicago)
Friday, November 14, 2025 | 6:30–9:30pmRoosevelt Library, San Antonio
View sponsorship opportunitiesRegister now / Buy tickets
The Roosevelt Library
The Gemini Ink Board and team invite you to our autumn fundraiser, Celebrating Our Stories: A Night with Gemini Ink—an unforgettable evening that uplifts San Antonio storytellers and honors those who keep our literary community thriving.
This year, we’re moving the celebration to the Roosevelt Library, a stunning venue that reflects the beauty and history of San Antonio’s artistic spirit.
An Evening of Stories, Flavor, and Connection
Enjoy a culinary journey of small plates—from gumbo to Cacio e Pepe—paired with select wines and beverages. Hear from our Honorary Chair and Gemini Ink founder, Nan Cuba link, and mingle with fellow literary enthusiasts, including our recent Inkstravaganza honorees Cary Clack, Dr. Norma Elia Cantú, Jenny Browne, and Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson.
Featuring Live Performances
Experience riveting performances from some of San Antonio’s most dynamic voices, including Poet Laureate Eddie Vega, and Gemini Ink’s Voices of San Anto alums Dragonfly and Enedina Irene, sharing their powerful personal stories.
A Special Reveal
Be among the first to learn who will be honored at Inkstravaganza 2026—the announcement will be made exclusively during the event!
Support the Literary Arts
When you purchase a ticket link or become a sponsor, you directly support Gemini Ink’s year-round programs—helping us nurture the creative voices of tomorrow through initiatives like Partner Classes for under-resourced youth and our Writing for Resiliency workshops for frontline professionals.
Join us for this very special celebration of the writing arts. None of this would be possible without you!
View sponsorship opportunitiesRegister now / Buy tickets

Live Storytelling: Voices of San Anto Showcase
2025-11-15 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Chicago) | Pan American Branch Library, 1122 W Pyron Ave, San Antonio, 78221
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 writer, performer, and San Antonio Poet Laureate Eddie Vega, 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!

Gemini Ink Holiday Open House
2025-12-11 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Mexico_City) | UTSA Southwest Campus – Coates Chapel, 300 Augusta, San Antonio, Texas, 78205
Save the date for Dec 11!

Join our community of writers, readers, and friends to share your work, make connections, and close the year on a high note.
We’ll also be celebrating our Partner Classes Teaching Artist of the Year for 2025 is Daniel Ramirez! Daniel is our TA of the Year for the amazing work he has been doing, especially with youth, for his wonderful creativity, and his ability to be a great co-teacher and to take the lead when the situation calls for it. He has an excellent way of building rapport quickly with students, whether they are reluctant 5th graders or busy public health workers. Through this rapport, he helps participants feel safe enough to take risks in their writing and play creatively with ideas and words. We are so excited to honor Daniel this year!
Open mic sign-up starts at 6:30pm.Hosted by Mandy Lynn, Public Classes Coordinator.
Wine, non-alcoholic drinks, coffee, and snacks will be served.
Thank you to our sponsors!

Poetry as Praise with Amanda Johnston
2025-12-13 10:00 - 13:00 (America/Chicago) | Online via Zoom
Saturday, December 13, 10am–1pm CT, online via Zoom
Nonmember $75; Member $65; Student/Educ/Mil $53
*EARN CPEs
TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

Honor that special someone, a major milestone, or that first sip of coffee with a praise poem!
Through times of hardship and joy, poetry connects us to our shared human experience. Praise poems give writers a vessel to carry wonder and gratitude and to deliver loving messages to their community.
In this one-day workshop led by Texas Poet Laureate Emeritus Amanda Johnston, participants will explore poetic forms of praise, learn how to identify and celebrate the awe-inspiring everyday moments of life, and craft new works that can be given as gifts to loved ones.
This class is open to writers of all skill levels 18+.
In this workshop students will:

Explore poetic forms of praise.
Write and share new praise poems.
Build an idea catalog for future works.

Amanda Johnston is a writer, visual artist, and the 61st Poet Laureate of Texas. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, GUAP and Lock & Key, and the full-length collection Another Way to Say Enter, and editor of the anthology Praisesong for the People: Poems from the Heart and Soul of Texas, coming Fall 2025 from Host Publications. Her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications, among them Callaloo, Poetry Magazine, The Moth Radio Hour, Bill Moyers, The Rumpus, and the anthologies Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism. She has received fellowships, grants, and awards from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Tasajillo, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Watermill Center, American Short Fiction, Prizer Arts & Letters, and the Academy of American Poets. She is a former Board President of Cave Canem Foundation, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, and founder of Torch Literary Arts.
IG: @poetamandajohnston
Facebook: Amanda Johnston
Website: AmandaJohnston.com

The Big Texas Author Talk featuring Cyra Sweet Dimitru
2025-12-17 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago)
Join us on Wednesday, December 17th, 2025, via Zoom for a conversation with Cyra Sweet Dimitru, to discuss her new book, Words Make a Way Through Fire: Healing After My Brother’s Suicide (Simon & Schuster).

(Virtual Readings Quarterly @ 7pm CST)

RSVP
Words Make a Way through Fire is an intimate, courageous memoir of a woman shattered by witnessing her eldest brother’s horrific suicide when she was a teenager. The book traces her creative journey of recovery and healing with poetry as a constant companion.
The primary means of Cyra Dumitru’s healing process, from age sixteen through adulthood, is writing poetry and journaling. During this decades-long journey, Cyra experiences a transcendent, loving presence called Voice who guides her and helps her imagine wholeness. She finds community with others through the sharing of poems. She studies poetry as craft and as medicine—becoming a published poet with multiple books, an award-winning college instructor of poetry writing, and a certified practitioner of poetic medicine who creates spaces where others can heal through poetry.
In Words Make a Way through Fire, Cyra explores the specific medicinal properties of poetry—giving order to interior anxiety, trusting the wisdom within—and invites her brother David to speak through her as he reflects upon his final hours. In doing so, poem by poem, she shifts gradually from being traumatized and feeling haunted to feeling empowered and spiritually expansive.

About the Author
Cyra Sweet Dumitru is a published poet and instructor of poetry, and one of four certified practitioners of poetic medicine in Texas. Her poems have appeared on the walls of City Hall, been spoken on national public radio and in museums, and appeared in city newspapers and national literary journals. Her collections of poems include What the Body Knows, Listening to Light, Remains, and Elder Moon. She offers therapeutic writing circles for adults learning to live with trauma, bereavement, depression, anxiety, and religious trauma. Cyra lives in San Antonio, Texas with her family.

About the Moderator
Natalia Treviño‘s fiction appears in Mirrors Beneath the Earth (Curbstone Press), The Platte Valley Review, and her non-fiction appears in Wising Up Anthologies, Complex Allegiances and Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens. Her first book of poetry, Lavando La Dirty Laundry, is available from Mongrel Empire Press and most online bookstores. A member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop, Natalia has been working to increase young adult literacy since 1992 in her teaching career and through programs sponsored by the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, Gemini Ink, and the Bexar County Juvenile Detention Center.

MOSAIC Poetry Reading & Print Sale
2025-12-18 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Mexico_City) | Contemporary at Blue Star, 116 Blue Star, San Antonio, Texas
We’re celebrating the work of high school students who created original visual art and poetry in this special series of workshops, in partnership with MOSAIC Studio, Contemporary at Blue Star. The celebration will be held at MOSAIC Studio at Contemporary at Blue Star.
Learn more about our Partner Classes Program!

LitMinds Book Club
2026-01-14 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | 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 Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.
Register

The #1 New York Times bestselling novel beloved by millions of readers the world over.
New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
“A vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people [of Afghanistan] have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violence—forces that continue to threaten them even today.”—The New York Times Book Review
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father’s servant, caught in the tragic sweep of history, The Kite Runner transports readers to Afghanistan at a tense and crucial moment of change and destruction. A powerful story of friendship, it is also about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons—their love, their sacrifices, their lies.
Since its publication in 2003, Kite Runner has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic of contemporary literature, touching millions of readers and launching the career of one of America’s most treasured writers.

About the Author

Khaled Hosseini is one of the most widely read and beloved novelists in the world, with over thirty-eight million copies of his books sold in more than seventy countries. The Kite Runner was a major film and was a Book of the Decade, chosen by The Times, Daily Telegraph and The Guardian. A Thousand Splendid Suns was the Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year in 2008. Hosseini is also a Goodwill Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Refugee Agency, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan. He was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and lives in northern California.
Visit our LitMinds page to see what we’re reading next!

For a Girl Becoming with Joy Harjo
2026-01-30 17:30 - 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Las Palmas Branch Library, 515 Castroville Rd, San Antonio, Texas, 78237
Join us for a special family-friendly reading of For a Girl Becoming with Joy Harjo, featuring illustrator Adriana Garcia and guest poets Laurie Ann Guerrero and Xelena González.
This free community event celebrates poetry and storytelling. Hosted at the Las Palmas Branch Library. All are welcome.
