Mission
Gemini Ink’s mission is to teach the craft of writing to people of all skill levels so they can bring their stories to life.
Vision
We envision a world where all people experience the power of the writing arts.
The Four Pillars of Craft
Form
Ambition
Language
Polish
Strategic Vision
Our strategic vision is to teach 12,000 people how to bring their stories to life by 2024.
Everyone Has A Story
We believe writing that story is powerful. When people learn the four pillars of writing, they learn the power of the craft of writing. When they learn the power of the craft of writing, they bring their stories to life. Our strategic vision is to teach 12,000 people how to bring their stories to life by 2024.
Results
Gemini Ink’s programs serve children, youth and adults across San Antonio. We serve an estimated 3500 participants annually: 83% take our programs free of charge, and 67% of those served are people of color. With 25% of households in the city under Federal poverty and a population 63% Latino and 8% African American, our outreach into all corners of the city is especially significant. Since 1992, we’ve increased access to the writing arts, grown literacy, and built joy in and engagement with reading and writing.
Staff
Joshua Cantú
Operations Manager
joshua@geminiink.org
Joshua Cantú joined Gemini Ink in 2018 as a marketing volunteer/intern and is now the operations manager. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Arts from the University of the Incarnate Word. Joshua is multidisciplinary at heart, being a photographer, frustrated painter, blogger/essayist, poet, and now short story writer who is not yet ready to share his writing with the world. In his free time, Joshua enjoys watching telenovelas, starting books and never finishing them, and gobbling up varying podcasts & YouTube videos. If he’s not in San Antonio, he’s enjoying the sunny Southwest or mountainous Mexico.
Florinda Flores-Brown
Director of Programs
fbrown@geminiink.org
Florinda Flores-Brown is a writer, educator, and nonprofit professional from Laredo, TX, now living in San Antonio. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Dance from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She currently works as Gemini Ink’s Director of Programs, through which she oversees creative writing workshops that help diverse communities across San Antonio bring their stories to life. Florinda has performed live stories at TPR’s Worth Repeating, Listen To Your Mother, Jump-Start Performance Company, and other San Antonio shows and venues. She also writes short fiction and plays.
Mandy Lynn Lara
Public Classes Coordinator
mllara@geminiink.org
Mandy Lynn is a member of San Antonio’s PuroSlam slam poetry team representing San Antonio in the national competition. She is co-founder of Raise the Whisper, a poetry and arts group dedicated to using art to help heal the effects of family rape. For the last four years, Mandy Lynn has worked with Write Art Out, Inc., a literary non-profit organization in San Antonio, and has lead writing workshops, hosted events, mentored emerging writers, and is currently taking a lead role in organizing Fresh Ink Youth Slam.
Catherine Burianek
Partner Classes Program Coordinator
cburianek@geminiink.org
Catherine is an artist, educator, and former editor with a MA in English from UTSA. A few of her poems appear in Sagebrush Review and Borderlands. During her free time, she works on projects, paints, reads, and plays board games with her family. She’s wanted to be a part of the Gemini Ink family since first learning of the organization 20 years ago, so this job has been a literal dream come true.
Anisa Onofre
Marketing Director
aonofre@geminiink.org
Anisa has worked at Gemini Ink since 2009, when she was hired as the Writers in Communities director (now called Partner Classes), placing writers and artists to work in community settings such as public schools, senior centers, detention centers, and homeless and crisis shelters. From these projects, she has published numerous anthologies of poetry, fiction, prose, drawings, photography, recipes, and more. She has been Gemini Ink’s Marketing and Publications director since 2013. She is also a co-publisher at Aztlan Libre Press.
Alexandra van de Kamp
Executive Director
avandekamp@geminiink.org
Alexandra is the author of three full-length collections of poems: Kiss/Hierarchy (Rain Mountain Press, 2016) and The Park of Upside-Down Chairs (CW Books, 2010). Her recent collection, Ricochet Script, from Next Page Press was published in the spring of 2022. She has also published several chapbooks, including 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, 32Poems, Denver Quarterly, The Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, and Washington Square. Her work has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net.
Interns
Jimena Ibarra
Jack Vela
Board of Directors
Charles Massiatte, President
Erik Aagaard, Secretary & Interim Treasurer
Jay Brandon
Cary Clack
Martin Rico
John Phillip Santos
Christa Squyres
Alexandra van de Kamp (Ex-Officio)
National Advisory Board
Andre Dubus III
Ben Fountain
Juan Felipe Herrera
Edward Hirsch
Debra Monroe
Urayoan Noel
Barbara Ras
Martha Rhodes
Richard Russo
David Shields
Naomi Shihab Nye
Joan Silber
Patricia Spears- Jones
Chuck Wachtel