Mandy Lynn Lara

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mllara@geminiink.org
Events from this organizer
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In the Age of Social Media: A Literary Video Lab with Joyous Windrider Jimenez

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!

$140

Breaking Through: A Conversation on Pathways to Publication for Latinx Writers

Gemini Ink 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, United States

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.  

Free

Evoking Place Through Sensory Writing: An Open Genre Workshop with Award-winning Eco-Writer Camille T. Dungy

Gemini Ink 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, United States

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+.

$135

Introduction to Playwriting with Mikaela Simon

Online via Zoom

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.  

$140

Creating Scenes that Move the Story with Desiree Kannel

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.

$105

Exploring Your Cultural Inheritance through Poetry with Ebony Stewart

Online via Zoom

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. 

$100
Recurring

Open Writer’s Labs

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.

Free

The Art of Zine Making with Caesar Morales

Gemini Ink 1111 Navarro St, San Antonio, TX, United States

Saturdays, February 3 & 10, 2024, 10am-12pm CST, in-person at Gemini Ink Instructor: Caesar Morales...

$100