Gemini Ink

LitMinds Book Club: Art Above Everything
2026-09-09 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Join us as we read Art Above Everything by Stephanie Elizondo Griest.

A new kind of travel writing.
— Booklist
…a potent testament to the value of pursuing one’s passion.
— Publishers Weekly
A global exploration of what it means to choose a creative life.
All artists struggle. But women are especially pushed to give up their creative ambitions, from societal disapproval against “selfishness” to the pressure (or desire) for children and economic stability. Throughout her 20s and 30s, Stephanie Elizondo Griest wondered if constantly prioritizing her writing over everything else was leading her to fulfillment or regret. After a brutal break-up and narrowly surviving a health crisis in her early 40s, she turned to other women for their perspectives on that haunting question: is art enough?
Art Above Everything documents her travels to 10 nations—from Cuba to Iceland; Rwanda to Qatar—where she meets with legendary painters, poets, actors, dancers, and musicians who talk intimately about their art, both what it gifts them and what it costs them. Collectively, these artists speak dozens of languages and worship a spectrum of faiths, but their compulsions to create despite financial hardship, misogyny, sexual violence, and family ostracization are wholly akin. Bold and inspiring, Art Above Everything illuminates the ways we can wield creativity as a vitalizing force.

About the Author

Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from the Texas/Mexico borderlands and the author of six books, including Around the Bloc, Mexican Enough, All the Agents and Saints, and Art Above Everything. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, VQR, The Believer, BBC, Orion, Lit Hub, and Oxford American, and has earned a Margolis Award, a PEN Southwest Book Award, an International Latino Book Award, and two Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism prizes.
She is currently Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. She has traveled to 50 countries and 49 states, is a cancer survivor now in remission, and recently endowed Testimonios Fronterizos, a research grant for borderlands student journalists at the University of Texas at Austin.

Visit our LitMinds page to see what we’re reading next!

Veterans' Writing Collective with Sarah Colby
2026-09-16 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-10-21 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-11-18 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-12-16 18:30 - 20:30 (America/Mexico_City) | Online via Zoom
The Veterans’ 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.

Teen Writing Circle with Daniel Ramirez
2026-09-26 12:00 - 13:30, 2026-10-31 12:00 - 13:30, 2026-11-28 12:00 - 13:30, 2026-12-26 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 Writers' Labs
2026-09-28 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-10-26 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-11-30 18:30 - 20:30, 2026-12-28 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.

LitMinds Book Club: The Awakening
2026-10-14 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, 78205, United States
Join us as we read The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

“The great power of The Awakening resides not in the answers it provides, but in the questions it exposes.” —Washington Post
“Kate Chopin . . . smoked and went hatless and played cards into the small hours; she wrote stories about venereal disease, adultery, divorce and the ‘monstrous joy’ of widowhood . . . scandalous in her own age; held up as a heroine by feminists of the Seventies.” —Observer
First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished for decades afterward.
On vacation in Grand Isle, Louisiana, a married woman falls in love with a charming, attentive young man. The relationship spurs Edna Pontellier to explore her longing for independence and creative fulfillment. It also compels her to defy conventions, rejecting the constraints of marriage and motherhood.
First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, The Awakening has been hailed as an early vision of women’s emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman’s abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her awakening to desires and passions that threatened to consumer her. Originally entitled A Solitary Soul, this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction, rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson.

About the Author

Born and raised in St. Louis, Kate Chopin (1850-1904) moved to Louisiana to marry the son of a cotton grower. A mother of six by the age of twenty-eight and a widow at thirty-two, she turned to writing to support her young family. She is best known today for The Awakening (1899), a portrait of marriage and motherhood so controversial it fell out of print shortly after publication and was not rediscovered until the 1960s.

Visit our LitMinds page to see what we’re reading next!
