2018 – 2019 RQ Writing Academy Schedule
The Reading Queer Writing Academy aims to inspire and prepare members of the queer community to tap into the powerful potential inherent to the act and the art of writing. Consisting of a series of distinct workshops spread out throughout the calendar year, the Academy will serve as a platform for writers of all walks of life to explore, pursue and perfect the craft in its myriad forms. As an expression of our conviction that writing is a right, not a privilege, all workshops are open to the general public regardless of an individual’s ability to pay.
All Reading Queer workshops are free and open to the public. However, we depend on your donations to support our programming.
10.20.2018 | “SHADOW SELF” with Cathleen Chambless
DATE: OCTOBER 20TH, 2018 from 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
LOCATION: THE LIGHT BOX @ GOLDMAN WAREHOUSE @ 404 NW 26TH ST, MIAMI, FL 33127. Map here.
COST: FREE. Donations appreciated. Donate here.
DESCRIPTION: Come explore your shadow. Your shadow is the part of yourself that you are unfamiliar with. What’s lurking in between the crevices of that beautiful queer brain of yours? This workshop will include elements such as tarot and ritual to draw forth the magical queer being waiting to be released from within you.
RSVP HERE:
CATHLEEN CHAMBLESS is from Miami, Florida. She graduated with her MFA in poetry from FIU. She is also a visual artist and activist. Her work has appeared The Electronic Encyclopedia of Experimental Literature, Jai-Alai, Fjords Review, Grief Diaries, Storm Cycle 2014 & 2015, and Wussy Mag. Her debut collection of poetry, Nec(Romantic), was a finalist for the Bisexual Book Awards in 2016
01.19&20.2019 | “BOOT CAMP” with Jan Becker
DATE: JANUARY 19TH & 20TH, 2019 from 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM
LOCATION: THE LIGHT BOX @ GOLDMAN WAREHOUSE @ 404 NW 26TH ST, MIAMI, FL 33127. Map here.
COST: FREE. Donations appreciated. Donate here.
DESCRIPTION: The source text for this year’s Boot Camp will consist of poems from Reading Queer’s debut anthology Reading Queer: Poetry In A Time of Chaos (Anhinga Press, 2018).
Lace up your combat boots; we’re recruiting for an army of fierce writers. “BOOT CAMP FOR QUEER WRITERS” with Jan Becker is an intensive, prompt-driven poetry and flash nonfiction workshop. The term ‘boot camp’ may sound intimidating, but the only real order is, “permission to write freely.” This workshop is designed to liberate writers from their individual closets and get their words down on the page. The fast-paced writing drills disengage writers from that nagging, negative voice that plagues and prevents us from accessing what poet Maria Mazziotti-Gillan calls “the wise person who lives within our bellies.”
Join us for the fourth iteration of what has proven to be a productive, empowering experience for writers from beginning level to published.
Reading Queer: Poetry In A Time of Chaos (Anhinga Press, 2018) brings fifty LGBTQ poets together in the spirit and solidarity of poetry at its finest and fiercest. Edited by Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton, Reading Queer: Poetry in a Time of Chaos is vulnerable, sexy, heartbreaking, revolutionary. It’s poetry that pushes against and beyond boundaries in both form and content.
DISCLAIMER: Participants are free to attend both dates or either one.
MATERIALS: Please bring your own writing utensils and papers.
RSVP HERE:
JAN BECKER is from a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania. She didn’t stay there very long. She grew up in a Marine Corps family, on military bases all over the United States. She is currently an MFA candidate at Florida International University, and has taught courses there in composition, technical writing, creative writing and poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Jai-Alai Magazine, Colorado Review, Emerge, Brevity Poetry Review, Sliver of Stone, and the Florida Book Review. She is the 2015-2016 Writer in Residence at the Girls’ Club Collection in Fort Lauderdale, and winner of the 2015 AWP Intro Journals Award in Nonfiction.
ANTHOLOGY FEATURES: Thalo Kersey, Aaron Smith, Bryan Borland, Caridad Moro-Fronlier, Cathleen Chambless, Celeste Gainey, cin salach, Collin Kelley, Eduardo C. Corral, Elizabeth Bradfield, Ellen Bass, Farah Milagros Yamini, Gem Blackthorn, Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Gregg Shapiro, Holly Iglesias, James Allen Hall, Jan Becker, Jason Schneiderman, Jen Benka, Jim Elledge, JV Portela, Joseph O. Legaspi, JP Howard, Julie Marie Wade, Julie R. Enzer, Justin Torres, Kevin Simmonds, L. Lamar Wilson, Lori Anderson, Megan Volpert, Meredith Camel, Phillip B. Williams, Qwo-Li Driskill, Ruben Quesada, sam sax, Samiya Bashir, Samuel Ace, Seth Pennington, Shane Allison, Stacey Waite, Stephanie Lane Sutton, Stephen S. Mills, Tara Burke, Ching-In Chen, Nicholas Wong, tc tolbert and Valerie Wetlaufer.
02.02.2019 | “WRITING THE SURREAL MEMOIR” with Julie Marie Wade
DATE: FEBRUARY 2ND, 2019 from 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM
LOCATION: ALASKA COFFEE ROASTING @ 13130 BISCAYNE BLVD, NORTH MIAMI, FL 33181. Map here.
COST: FREE. Donations appreciated. Donate here.
Alaska Coffee Roasting supports Reading Queer; Please support Alaska Coffee Roasting by buying a cup of coffee or snack at this event!
DESCRIPTION: In recent years, surreal or speculative memoir has emerged as a fascinating sub-genre of creative nonfiction. Many writers working in the self-referential arts have realized they are just as interested in writing what might have happened, what may have happened, as they are in what most certainly did. In this workshop, we’ll read short-form examples from contemporary writers engaging the subjunctive to explore what if? aspects of their lives and use these texts as templates for our own written emulations. You can expect opportunities to read, write, share, and write again in response to works like Anne Panning’s “Remembering, I Was Not There,” Paisley Rekdal’s “The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee,” Patricia Smith’s “Pearl, Upward,” and Bernard Cooper’s “Where to Begin.”
Please Bring your own paper and writing material.
RSVP HERE:
JULIE MARIE WADE is the author of ten collections of poetry and prose, including Same-Sexy Marriage: A Novella in Poems (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2018) and The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose (Noctuary Press, 2019), co-authored with Denise Duhamel. A recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir and grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, she teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University and reviews regularly for Lambda Literary Review and The Rumpus.
03.24.2019 | “WRITING IN QUEER SPACES” with Freesia McKee
DATE: MARCH 24TH, 2019 from 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
LOCATION: HISTORY MIAMI MUSEUM @101 W FLAGLER ST, MIAMI, FL 33130. Map here.
COST: FREE. Donations appreciated. Donate here.
This workshop is brought to you in partnership with the Miami History Museum.
DESCRIPTION: Have there always been queer people in Miami? Who set the stage so that we could come out? In this workshop, we will write poetic responses to “Queer Miami: A History of LGBTQ Communities” at HistoryMiami. Using this archival photo exhibit as a creative prompt, we’ll write about our visible and invisible lineages.
We will also ask what it means for our own bodies to inhabit the queer space the exhibit has created and think about what it might mean to “queer-ify” space on and off the page. Whether you’re LGBTQ+ or an ally, a local or a visitor, or a long-time writer or simply “poetry-curious,” this workshop is designed with everyone in mind.
Please Bring your own paper and writing material.
RSVP HERE:
FRESSIA MCKEE is author of the chapbook How Distant the City (Headmistress Press, 2017). Her words have appeared in cream city review, The Feminist Wire, Painted Bride Quarterly, CALYX, Gertrude, So to Speak, Nimrod International Journal, and the Ms. Magazine Blog. Freesia’s poetry is forthcoming in The Hollins Critic, Bone Bouquet, The Antigonish Review, The Grabbed Anthology,and Flyway. Her book reviews have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Gulf Stream, and The Drunken Odyssey. Freesia is the winner of CutBank Literary Journal’s 2018 Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry, chosen by Sarah Vap.
04.28.2019 | “STITCH & BITCH” Jan Becker & Fabienne Josephat
DATE: APRIL 28TH, 2019
LOCATION: TBD
COST: FREE. Donations appreciated. Donate here.
DESCRIPTION: Come learn the basics of crochet or bring your knit or crochet work in progress for a contemporary spin on the old fashioned stitch and bitch social with Jan Becker and Fabienne Josaphat. Clinical studies have shown fiber art practice can lower stress. We’ll discuss the history of crochet as a means of survival and art in times of hardship and how hooking works as a metaphor for writing and for life. You’ll walk away from this workshop with a stronger sense of community and the beginning of a fabulous accessory you made yourself.
RSVP HERE:
JAN BECKER is from a small coal mining town in Pennsylvania. She didn’t stay there very long. She grew up in a Marine Corps family, on military bases all over the United States. She is currently an MFA candidate at Florida International University, and has taught courses there in composition, technical writing, creative writing and poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Jai-Alai Magazine, Colorado Review, Emerge, Brevity Poetry Review, Sliver of Stone, and the Florida Book Review. She is the 2015-2016 Writer in Residence at the Girls’ Club Collection in Fort Lauderdale, and winner of the 2015 AWP Intro Journals Award in Nonfiction.