sometimes I facilitate

I have been teaching a version of this workshop for over a decade. Participants, learn to make a mini-zine by folding a single piece of paper. We then develop personal narratives together.

Picture taken in Fes, Morocco where I facilitated the workshop for 15 English learners ages 18 and up. [picture by Ayoub Louizi]

I facilitated a week-long workshop geared towards an international cohort of artists, thinkers and dreamers on the theme of Memory and the reclamation of the archive. A mix of collective conversations, somatic exercises, writing practices. [picture by Emilia Yang]

https://www.pocoapocomx.org/sur-o-no-sur

Since 2007, the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices has offered sophisticated instruction in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young adult fiction, playwriting led by the most talented writers working today.

In my capacity as a coordinator, I work behind-the-scenes with the Program Manager and facilitate panels, Q&A sessions, office hours, readings etc...

Facilitated virtually (6 hours)
How can we tell our stories without telling too much? How do we, as writers of color, fill in the gaps of our existence and traumas on the page? In a world that wants us to show how we bleed and consume our pain, how do we reclaim our dignity and agency in the act of writing the essay?

Over the course of two sessions, we will learn about the radical potential of fragmentation via critical readings of essays and we will discuss the ways we can tell our truths via silence and shadows.

Through a mix of craft discussions, somatic practices and generative writing exercises, we will draft essays that expand our sense of what can be done on the page.