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 Community Building Art Works (CBAW) 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, April 18 | 7pm Eastern Time
Flash in a Dash: Exploring the Micro Essay
with Shuly Xóchitl Cawood
Small essays can still have a big impact. We’ll look at micro essays that pack a punch in few words and explore why they work. You’ll also be given a prompt to dive into your own micro draft in class.
Shuly Xóchitl Cawood is the author of several books, including the flash essay collection What The Fortune Teller Would Have Said, winner of the 2022 Iron Horse Literary Review Prose Chapbook Competition, and the poetry collection Something So Good It Can Never Be Enough. Cawood has an MFA in creative writing, and her work has been published in The New York Times, The Sun, and Brevity. Learn more about her at shulycawood.com.
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Thu, May 16 | 7pm Eastern Time
Poems of Celebration (for a World Upside Down)
with Kevin Basl
It can be challenging to write about joy and wonder when it feels like our world is falling apart. How do we write celebratory poems that don't sound like they were made for store-bought greeting cards? How can writing about life's good things serve as an act of resistance against forces working to divide us?
Kevin Basl lives near Ithaca, New York, where he writes, records music, and enjoys the outdoors. For over a decade, he’s facilitated writing workshops for service members, veterans, and their communities with several arts nonprofits. He’s also taught writing at Temple University, where he completed his MFA in fiction. His most recent book is Midnight Cargo (2023, Illuminated Press), a collection of stories and poems inspired by events and epiphanies he experienced while serving in the US Army, in the Iraq War, and in the years after.
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Thu, June 20 | 7pm Eastern Time
The Seasons Change Us: Calling to the Sun
with Hari Alluri
The closing lines of Sanctificum by Chris Abani read: “They say you cannot say this in a poem. / That you cannot say love and mean anything. / That you cannot say soul and approach heaven. / But the sun is no fool, I tell you. / It will rise for nothing less.” In this Summer Solstice workshop we will look to poems that invoke the sun, ask ourselves what it means to be changed by the world around us, and write through the things we wish to change, towards the shifts within ourselves from which our writing connects back to the world.
Poet and editor Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is author of The Flayed City (Kaya Press) and chapbook Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (NextPage Press). Recipient of the Vera Manuel Award for Poetry, among other awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies, siya is co-editor—with Seema Reza—of We Were Not Alone (Community Building Art Works) and co-founding editor at Locked Horn Press. With work that appears widely in print and online, his next collection is forthcoming from Brick Books in Spring 2025.
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Thu, July 18 | 7pm Eastern Time
Back Down Memory Lane
with Teri Ellen Cross Davis
This generative workshop will explore family and ancestry through poetry. Using close readings of poems by Etheridge Knight, Rita Dove, Lucille Clifton, Linda Pastan, and more, we will consider how the use of persona can examine, celebrate, and/or reconsider history.
Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of a more perfect Union, winner of the 2019 Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and finalist for the 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry. Her first collection, Haint, won the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2022 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award and the Poetry Society of America's Robert H. Winner Memorial Award. She has received grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and The Freya Project and has been awarded fellowships and scholarships to Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop, and others. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies. She was the 2019–2020 HoCoPoLitSo Writer-in-Residence for Howard County, Maryland, and is the O.B. Hardison Poetry Series curator and Poetry Programs manager for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.
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 Community Building Art Works, 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.