Creative writing is a tool for knowing yourself, understanding the world, and connecting with other people. Led by author Seema Reza and accomplished guest writers—including poets, memoirists, novelists, and storytellers—these community workshops follow the model developed by Mission Belonging over the course of a decade of bringing people together in military and hospital settings. Each workshop is designed to help participants put their personal stories on paper in a supportive environment.
Whether you’re just starting out or have been writing for years, you are welcome; no experience is required. Bring a pen, a notebook, and an open mind!
Registration closes at 4pm Eastern Time before each session so we can prepare. Please make sure you're subscribed to Strathmore emails to receive the Zoom info.
Thu, June 19 | 7pm Eastern Time
Attention & Transformation: A Summer Solstice Workshop with Hari Alluri
At the core of the writing process is attention, and finding the versions of this attention that move us can lead to transformative experiences. As Patrick Rosal notes in his phenomenal book Atang, “Attention changes you. Art is one version of attention.” In this workshop—with a focus on the place where our inner worlds and the outer world meet—we will connect with writing that exemplifies transformative surprises of music and meaning, think about the ways we can deepen our practice, and compose new work.
Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is an award-winning poet, editor, and facilitator. Author of The Flayed City (Kaya Press) and chapbook Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press), his new collection is Tabako on the Windowsill (Brick Books). Co-editor of We Were Not Alone (Community Building Art Works) with Seema Reza, his collaborations range from the local to the international, and his work is available widely through these venues: Best of the Net (via Split This Rock), Library of Elemental Bending Vol. 1 (SMALL CAPS / TCR), Poem-a-Day, and We the Gathered Heat anthology (Haymarket Books).
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Thu, July 17 | 7pm Eastern Time
Where Does Your Grief Sit? with Maya Williams
It is difficult to talk about grief, and it can even be more difficult to write through grief. In this workshop, we'll read Simonides' poetry for epitaphs in Ancient Greece, Anis Mojgani's poems that are in response to a person who is no longer living and in response to a person who is still living, and Kaveh Akbar’s poem about the repetition and images of grief. We'll explore how grief is related to our mental health, and how poems might be written and revised during hard times.
Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who was selected as Portland, ME's seventh poet laureate for a July 2021 to July 2024 term. Maya received a MFA in Creative Writing with a Focus in Poetry from Randolph College in June 2022. Eir debut poetry collection Judas & Suicide (Game Over Books, 2023) was selected as a finalist for a New England Book Award. Their second poetry collection, Refused a Second Date (Harbor Editions, 2023), was selected as a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Their third poetry collection, What's So Wrong with a Pity Party Anyway?, was selected as one of four winners of Garden Party Collective's chapbook prize in 2024. Maya was one of three artists of color selected to represent Maine in The Kennedy Center's Arts Across America series in 2020, one of The Advocate's Champions of Pride in 2022, and one of Maine Humanities Council's recipients of the Constance Carlson Public Humanities Prize in 2024. You can follow more of eir work at mayawilliamspoet.com.
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Thu, August 21 | 7pm Eastern Time
Breaking the Little Song: Subverting the Sonnet Form with Diannely Antigua
Breaking the Little Song: Subverting the Sonnet Form explores how contemporary poets are reshaping a form that originated in 13th-century Italy as a vessel for love poems. Once rigid in rhyme and structure, the sonnet now offers fertile ground for innovation and resistance—what Terrance Hayes calls "part music box, part meat grinder." In this workshop, participants will study examples of subverted sonnets and experiment with transforming the form to suit their own voices and urgencies. Through guided writing exercises and discussion, we’ll break open the “little song” and reimagine what a sonnet can be.
Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. She is the author of two poetry collections, Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019), which was the winner of the Pamet River Prize and a 2020 Whiting Award, and Good Monster (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She received her BA in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship, and received her MFA at NYU, where she was awarded a Global Research Initiative Fellowship to Florence, Italy. She is the recipient of additional fellowships from CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Fine Arts Work Center Summer Program, and was a finalist for the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and chosen for The Best of the Net Anthology. Her poems can be found in Poem-a-Day, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. From 2022-2024, she was the 13th Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, the youngest and first person of color to receive the title. In 2023, she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship to launch The Bread & Poetry Project, and in 2024, she was awarded an Excellence in Artistry Award from Black Lives Matter New Hampshire. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of New Hampshire as the inaugural Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence. She hosts the podcast Bread & Poetry which seeks to make poetry accessible to all in a way that nourishes the soul.
Instagram: @nellfell13
RegisterRegistration closes at 4pm before each session so we can prepare. Please make sure you're subscribed to Strathmore emails to receive the Zoom info.
Check back soon for more information on instructors for the remaining dates.
Seema Reza is the author of the poetry collection A Constellation of Half-Lives and the memoir When the World Breaks Open. Reza has led writing workshops within correctional facilities, military and civilian hospitals, and schools. She is the Executive Director of Mission Belonging, a unique arts organization that encourages the use of the arts as a tool for narration, self-care, and socialization among a military population struggling with emotional and physical injuries.