When writing a personal narrative, how do writers select what will most speak their truth and resonate with readers? In this 4-week course, we’ll focus on demystifying the personal narrative process by figuring out what’s a snapshot and what’s a story.
In this 4-session workshop, we will dig up memories we associate with food, and use these recollections to explore writing about the delectable in different poetic forms, including haiku, odes, sonnets, lists, etc. Each session will include mentor texts and generative work. This course is open to adult writers of all skill levels.
Do you want to run your own press or independent publishing house, but don’t know where to begin or take your current press to the next level? In this course, we will walk through the steps of starting or growing a small press, and discuss mission statements, resources, operating budgets, customer profiles, and distribution options. We will use these elements to build a business plan that will help you execute your vision. This course is for anyone who has dreamed of starting their own publishing endeavor or any established publishers looking for new business ideas.
Tuesdays, Sept 12, 19 & 26, 2023 6:30pm-8:30pm CST, Hybrid (in-person at Gemini Ink and...
Join Gemini Ink on Thursday, September 21st, for a night of poetry, prose, and performance as we celebrate the personal artistry of our Gemini Ink Partner Class teaching artists. Every day these instructors bring their passion for the writing arts to community spaces and inspire students of all ages. Tonight we hear their stories!
Our featured writers will include theater artist and playwright Marisela Barrera, lyricist and San Antonio Poet Laureate emeritus Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, accomplished poet and educator Jim LaVilla-Havelin, award-winning fiction writer Desiree Kannel, and local poet and member of the Wyrdd Writers collective Annie Snider.
In the age of TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts, how can you present your writing in a way that’s on trend and easily consumable? Would you like to use your digital platform to showcase your work in a new way and expand your audience?
In this 6-week course, we will use simple, open-genre writing prompts to generate short poems and/or impactful prose. We will polish our short pieces and explore gathering images that will visually accentuate our words. We will then create short literary videos that include an audio recording of the work, captions, and either moving or still images. Our entire project will be built and edited using a FREE video editing app available for phones and laptops!
Join Gemini Ink on Friday, October 6th, to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 2023 with a timely and intimate literary discussion about current publishing trends and Latinx representation in books.
This event features Latinx authors and publishers and provides a space to discuss how to break barriers and create pathways toward publication in a literary landscape where Latinx writers account for only 7% of published authors. Our guests will talk about how they navigated the publishing industry and illuminate how Latinx writers can forge a path toward sharing their own stories.
Place can be a tool for connection, history, freedom, discovery, and even tension. But how do we capture a setting with nuance so that a reader gains understanding and clarity of the world the story/poem lives in? In this three-hour workshop, participants will examine passages that use strong sensory details to bring the texture, mood, geographic and/or aesthetic quirks of a place to life. We will then practice various approaches for generating descriptive language and apply it to our own work. Don’t miss this chance to spend a morning with one of the most intriguing literary voices of our time, who is a ground-breaking voice in the world of eco-writing! This course is open to writers of all genres and skill level, 18+.
Tuesday, October 24th, 6:30-8pm HYBRID: in-person at Gemini Ink or online via Zoom Free and...
Join New Jersey-based playwright Mikaela Simon in this two-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 on stage. This course will cover 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.
In this 4-hour workshop, writers will analyze scenes from their own work and learn how to decide what to cut and what to revise. We will discuss scene structure, effective transitions, and how to let character motivation drive the plot instead of the author’s agenda. Writers will leave with a better sense of what may be missing from their work in progress and tips on how to move forward. This workshop will include exercises on dialogue and setting. Each student will be asked to bring a scene from their own work to be revised in class.
In this workshop, we will explore the idea of our own unique heritage as a museum of poetic artifacts, reflect on spoken word pieces, and generate writing. In the discussion portion, we will explore the concrete and intangible elements of culture, any logical or illogical fears these may evoke, and the impact of that. We will study how “Hairitage,” “Fear,” and Nina Simone’s “Four Women” depict culture and use literary devices to create memorable pieces. We will use all of our explorations of culture and fear to create new poems that use some of the literary techniques covered.
