People rarely feel only one emotion at a time. How do you show a complex emotional landscape without chucking your character’s emotions in a blender and dumping the resulting feelings-soup in your readers’ laps? This workshop will experiment with strategies to layer multiple emotions in your writing. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss a few examples, try a couple exercises, and share techniques with each other.

Damien Pine (he/him) is many things: writer, artist, businessman, graphic designer, former aerospace engineer, cat lover, concerned, optimistic, and he never has enough time for some reason. He’s currently working on a novel which he hopes to finish in the vague, noncommittal timeframe of “soon”.

Join us for the Bricks Reading event at H&H Books on Tuesday, April 16 @ 7PM. The readers for this event are Denise Laidler, Mia Kang, and Monique Laban.

Can’t make it to the in-person event? Join us virtually for the live stream on our Youtube channel here!

This event is sponsored by Blue Stoop! Light refreshments will be provided.

The Bricks is a reading series dedicated to building transcultural conversations on literature & aesthetics.

In this workshop we will play with matching—and mismatching—text and image. There are many reasons comics artists create a disparity between the two: for comedic effect, to imbue a scene with feeling, to muddle time and place. We will look at effective examples of this in contemporary comics and create a mismatched comic of our own.

Cathy is a cartoonist and educator. Her comics have been published in the Rumpus and the Florida Review. Her graphic novella, The Last Time I Saw Deborah, is out with Go Press Girl. She co-runs The Gutter, a newsletter for comics creators to share and submit work.

Join us for a fun, experimental, and generative session! Bring existing work to add to, or create a brand new piece. We'll brainstorm keywords at the top of the session which will be thrown in, along with other surprises, as prompts during our free write to drive, complicate, and shake up your writing. All genres and levels of experience encouraged.

Mary Zhou (they/she) is an artist based in Philadelphia. They explore devotion, identity, and the body through writing, dance, and visual art. They are an alumnus of the VONA/Voices residency in poetry. Their work is shared in The Rumpus, Oversound, ANMLY, and more. You can find their work at marzhou.com

Join actor Kristina Mueller and poet Amy Beth Sisson in this master class setting. Observe as Kristina works with Amy Beth to lift one of her written works off the page and into the world of living, breathing performance. The aim is to help writers analyze and rehearse their work, as well as experience their poems with fresh eyes and ears. Performing a poem mindfully helps play on its strengths (image, music, repetition, contradiction, emphasis.)

Kristina Mueller is an actor and writer, originally from Munich, Germany, and currently based in Los Angeles. She studied theatre at NYU/Tisch (BFA) and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She has performed opposite Wallace Shawn at The Public Theatre in NYC, at the New York and Hollywood Fringe festivals, as well as off-Broadway, and at various theatres in LA. She loves to bake & hang out with her goofy dog, Gigi.

Amy Beth Sisson lives near the skunk cabbages in a town outside of Philly. Her poetry has appeared or is upcoming in One Art, The Night Heron Barks, The Shoutflower, Hot Pink Magazine and others. She received her MFA in poetry in 2023 from Rutgers Camden, is an Associate Artist for the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, and an Editorial and Special Projects Assistant for Fence.

English classes aim at teaching students how to be better wordsmiths, to hone our individual voices. But how do you compose stronger prose if you don't know what a sloppy, inconsistent sentence looks like? This playful, hilarious class, taught by a professional line editor, uses excerpts from real fantasy romances and bestsellers to demonstrate the nuts and bolts of what makes good, solid writing stand out from the bad.

C.M. Crockford is a poet, writer, and editor based in Philadelphia but he's originally from New England. He's published many poems, stories, and essays, sung in a few bands, edited over a dozen books, and co-hosted The Barn: A Podcast About The Shield. In 2022 "Spam Love Poem" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry collection, Birdsongs: Poems 2020-2023, is forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press.

Join us for the TENTH Bricks Reading event at H&H Books on Tuesday, March 19 @ 7PM. The readers for this event are Phillip B. Williams, Moa Short, and Athena Dixon

This event is sponsored by Blue Stoop! Light refreshments will be provided.

Can’t make it in person? Watch the livestream on YouTube here.

The Bricks is a reading series dedicated to building transcultural conversations on literature & aesthetics.

When working on a project that contains a large cast of characters, whether in fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, writers benefit from practices and mechanisms that help them generate and organize said characters in a way that supports, rather than constrains, the creative process. In this practical, generative workshop, we’ll explore several mechanisms for creating and developing memorable characters—from D&D character sheets to case studies from contemporary novels and poetry collections—and then we’ll use provided shells to kickstart the process of character-building in a way that allows us to keep track of those characters in a writer-friendly and efficient way. We’ll conclude with time for experiential sharing, Q&A, and trouble-shooting.

Participants may have a project in mind/project in progress to work on during the workshop, but that is not required. Participants will receive digital copies of the provided generative and organizational shells that they can modify for their own use.

Holly M. Wendt is the author of Heading North (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023) and Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing and Director of Creative Writing at Lebanon Valley College. A former Peter Taylor Fellow for the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Holly is a recipient of the Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship for Creative and Performing Artists from the American Antiquarian Society and fellowships from the Jentel Foundation and Hambidge Center. Their writing has appeared in Shenandoah, Four Way Review, Barrelhouse, Memorious, and elsewhere.

This virtual Thursday on the Stoop will be all about revision techniques for poetry. According to Robert Graves, “There’s no such thing as great writing, only great rewriting.” We will read and discuss example drafts of published poems, examining how each subsequent draft brought the poem closer to a place where it pleases linguistically, intrigues intellectually, and moves emotively. You’ll learn a number of revision techniques developed by published poets, and you’ll have a chance to try some of these techniques on a poem you bring to class. Open to all level writers.

Caroline N. Simpson’s chapbook, Choose Your Own Adventures and Other Poems, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018. In 2020, Delaware Division of Arts awarded Caroline an Established Artist Fellowship in Poetry, and she has been nominated several times for a Pushcart Prize in both poetry and nonfiction. carolinensimpson.com

I often teach a comprehensive course on How to Get Published in Lit Mags. For Thursday on the Stoop, I’ll focus on one aspect—how to find a good fit for your work. That takes knowing how to read and evaluate a journal and understanding the submission guidelines. I’ll keep the focus tight, given the time. But then we’ll have lots of time in the second half to address their questions about submitting. And that will allow us to touch on other parts of the process that tend to confuse.

Andrea A. Firth is a writer, editor and educator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is an Editor at Brevity Blog, which publishes essays on CNF craft and the writing life every week day in the year. She is cofounder of Diablo Writers’ Workshop where she teaches creative writing and provides developmental editing. She’s had the pleasure and privilege of teaching for Blue Stoop more than once. Andrea has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Saint Mary’s College of California. She was a finalist for The Missouri Review's 2021 Perkoff Prize in nonfiction, and her work has appeared in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Allium, The Coachella Review among others. Learn more about her and read her recent work at www.andreaafirth.com.

Join us for the second Bricks Reading event of 2024 at H&H Books on Tuesday, February 6 @ 7PM. The readers for this event are Carina del Valle Schorske, Jubi Arriola-Headley, and Annie Liontas

This event is sponsored by Blue Stoop! Light refreshments will be provided.

The Bricks is a reading series dedicated to building transcultural conversations on literature & aesthetics.

A generative 1-hour co-working session. This TOTS event will give you a sample of what to expect from the full 2.5 hour version of Sit & Write (S&W). S&W is a free online writing group that meets for 2.5 hours on Saturday afternoons (collectivelit.com). Meetings are always free, supportive, and do not require any commitment. While full-length meetings have a drop-in format, please plan to arrive on time and stay for the duration of this Blue Stoop mini S&W. Agenda: Brief intro (5 min), check-in (5 min), silent working (45-ish min), check-out (5 min).

Julian Shendelman lives with his husband and dogs near Philadelphia. After pursuing—and ultimately abandoning—an academic career as a queer/trans theorist, Julian turned his attention to re-establishing his writing practice and community. His poetry chapbook, “Dead Dad Club,” was published by Nomadic Press in 2017, his creative nonfiction has appeared in Philadelphia Stories, and his fiction is forthcoming in Cleaver Magazine (March 2024). When he's not freelancing, he's running Collective Lit.

Join us for the first Bricks Reading event of 2024 at H&H Books on Tuesday, January 16 @ 7PM. The readers for this event are Maggie Millner, Nuha Fariha, and Denise Laidler.

This event is sponsored by Blue Stoop! Light refreshments will be provided.

The Bricks is a reading series dedicated to building transcultural conversations on literature & aesthetics.

A generative 1-hour co-working session. This TOTS event will give you a sample of what to expect from the full 2.5 hour version of Sit & Write (S&W). S&W is a free online writing group that meets for 2.5 hours on Saturday afternoons (collectivelit.com). Meetings are always free, supportive, and do not require any commitment. While full-length meetings have a drop-in format, please plan to arrive on time and stay for the duration of this Blue Stoop mini S&W. Agenda: Brief intro (5 min), check-in (5 min), silent working (45-ish min), check-out (5 min).

Julian Shendelman is a trans man living near Philadelphia with his husband and dogs. After studying creative writing at the Orange County High School of the Arts, Julian pursued—and ultimately abandoned—an academic career as a queer theorist. Since then, Julian has turned his attention to reconnecting with his writing practice and community. His poetry chapbook, “Dead Dad Club,” was published by Nomadic Press in 2017 and his writing has appeared in Bat City Review. When he's not at his day job, he's attending his weekly writing group and learning to make up stories.

People live by routine. We all have a thing. Whether it be the first cup of coffee in the morning, the time it takes for tea to seep, freewriting first thing in the morning, or listening to calming music at night. We all have a series of things that make the day feel a little bit better. This Thursday on the Stoop is going to write out a routine not for the sake of writing a list but for the thoughts that live beneath the routine. The creative murmurs that are happening when going about on day. Bring a writing instrument and your go to routine.

Kabria Rogers is a writer and Philadelphia native. She has led a diverse career path from corporate to philanthropy. She has been published in two anthologies, I Am Strength and Ways of Walking. Kabria has written a variety of things both creatively and professionally. She is a creative wanderer, pulling together the random threads of her life through creative practice, curiosity, and community building. Check out her random ramblings about sexual health, and the oddly poetic moments of everyday life on her instagram. Kabria holds a B.A in English Writing from King's College and lives in West Philadelphia with her wife and two spoiled senior citizen cats.

The season of autumn has inspired writers for centuries. The changing palette of the leaves, the move into longer nights, the shift into cooler temperatures evoke many emotions. In this workshop, we'll explore themes of harvest, loss and transformation through writing prompts and poetry. Whether you write fiction, non-fiction, poetry or another form, this session will invite reflection and curiosity.

Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer is an author and educator who teaches expressive writing workshops focused on the intersection of creativity and spiritual growth. She is in training to become a Jungian-focused spiritual director with the Haden Institute. She's currently drafting a memoir about life-changing dreams and tapping into ancestor wisdom.

Join us for the seventh Bricks Reading event of 2023 at H&H Books on Wednesday, November 29 @ 7PM. The readers for this event are Daisuke Shen, Gabriel Ramirez, and Holly M. Wendt.

This event is sponsored by Blue Stoop! Light refreshments will be provided.

The Bricks is a reading series dedicated to building transcultural conversations on literature & aesthetics.

Join us for a free hour long Q&A with Philadelphia area MFA program directors to discuss who, what and why’s about MFA programs. This panel is an opportunity to ask the questions you’ve always had about the application process and what being in both full and low residency programs are like. Though it will focus on Philadelphia area programs specifically, the topics covered will be widely applicable to national MFA programs as well.

Participants are encouraged to submit questions ahead of time at the Zoom registration link below, but can also ask questions during the webinar itself.

How do line breaks change the music and meaning of poems? In this session we'll discuss many approaches to breaking the poetic line, reading a variety of contemporary poems as examples. The instructor will share an early draft and finished version of one of her own poems and discuss the choices she made in revision. Then we'll take on a short line-breaking exercise for fun!

Sarah Browning is the author of the poetry collections Killing Summer and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden. Co-founder and past Executive Director of Split This Rock, the poetry and social justice organization, she now teaches with Writers in Progress. Browning received the Lillian E. Smith Award and fellowships from DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, VCCA, Yaddo, and Mesa Refuge. She holds an MFA in poetry and creative nonfiction from Rutgers Camden and lives in Philadelphia. More at www.sarahbrowning.net

So often we're urged to "write what you know" – but what happens when there are gaps in your memories, absences in family history, or disputes about what really happened? In this open-genre generative workshop, we'll practice approaches to writing beyond what you remember and into what you don’t or can't know. We’ll explore ways to research your own life and add details that enrich your memories, and we’ll also use what essayist Lisa Knott calls “perhapsing” to speculate about those parts of our histories that we can never really know.

Nancy Reddy is the author of the poetry collections Pocket Universe and Double Jinx and co-editor of The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. Her first book of narrative nonfiction, The Good Mother Myth, is forthcoming with St. Martin’s Press. Her essays have appeared in Slate, Poets & Writers, Romper, The Millions, and elsewhere. The recipient of grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, she teaches writing at Stockton University. She writes the newsletter Write More, Be Less Careful.

“Poetry as Resistance” is a workshop that examines poems of protest, justice, power, and liberation by revolutionary Black women. Such works include that of Audre Lorde, Patricia Smith, Gwendolyn Brooks, June Jordan, Yolanda Wisher, Ursula Rucker, Sonia Sanchez, and countless others. This Thursday we honor Audre Lorde, with a focus on her essay “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” and her poem “Litany for Survival.” The workshop includes an analysis of her work and life, political education and discourse, and an invitation to share individual work that reflects those themes of resistance. With a commitment to upholding Black radical tradition, this space is inherently revolutionary.

Saskia Kercy is a multidisciplinary scholar and poet from Philadelphia by way of Haiti. She has two bachelors in economics and global studies from Temple University and a masters in economics from Howard University. Saskia currently serves as a research consultant, educator, organizer, spoken word performer, and eldest daughter in her community. Her work has been published in The Amistad, for which she received the 2022 May Miller Creative Writing Award, The Washington Informer, and The Root, among others. She recently concluded a poetry residency as an Anaphora Literary Arts Fellow and is the curator of the elusive Sunset Saloon. In her free time, Saskia is a blossoming artist, yogi, and marathoner. She is @saskiakercy everywhere.

In "Playing in the Dark," Toni Morrison wrote, “Writing and reading are not all that distinct for a writer. Both exercises require being alert and ready for unaccountable beauty, for the intricateness or simple elegance of the writer’s imagination, for the world that imagination evokes.”

In a collaborative and supportive environment, we’ll explore the interplay between our reading and writing practices and what it looks like to read with curiosity, pleasure, and a critical eye. In addition to Morrison, we’ll discuss work by Elaine Castillo, Adrienne Rich, and Kate Zambreno. There will be a short presentation, participatory and generative exercises, and opportunities to share work.

Katie Bennett is a writer and musician based in West Philly. She’s been in residence at Yaddo, published in Lit Hub, and she runs the reading series Personal Velocity. She also spent a decade touring North America and Europe with various bands and her songwriting project Katie Bejsiuk has been featured in Pitchfork, SPIN, and NPR’s All Songs Considered. You can learn more at www.katiepbennett.com

In this session, we will spend time with our heartbreak(s). In Camonghne Felix’s memoir, Dyscalculia, she says that Black women aren’t allowed the cliché of heartbreak. This session will allow us the space to be cliché–to write about the hurt and everything in between.

We will read multiple genres that explore the many facets of heartbreak–how it affects mental health, the ability to work or function daily, the willingness to love again. Between readings, we’ll respond to generative prompts that allow us to be vulnerable about our heartbreak(s) and dig into the multiple stages of grief we’ve experienced.

Arriel Vinson is a Reese's Book Club LitUp Fellow who writes about being young, Black, and in search of freedom. She earned her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Kweli Journal, Catapult, The Rumpus, Waxwing, and others. A Tin House YA Scholar, 2020 Walter Grant recipient, and 2019 Kimbilio Fellow, her work has been nominated for Best New Poets 2020, Best of the Net 2019, and a Pushcart Prize. You can connect with her on Twitter @arriwrites and read her work at arriwrites.com

Join us for the sixth Bricks Reading event of 2023 at H&H Books on Wednesday, October 18 @ 7PM. The readers for this event are Minda Honey, Isle McElroy, and Camille Acker

This event is sponsored by Blue Stoop! Light refreshments will be provided.

The Bricks is a reading series dedicated to building transcultural conversations on literature & aesthetics.

Always Unfinished - Erasure as Revision

We’ve all heard “a poem is never finished.” But what if, instead, there were many finished versions of a poem, all of them in conversation? This workshop explores erasure as a way to dive deeper into your writing and your expectations of what your “best” or “finished” work may look like. Bring three copies of a piece of older work (whatever that means to you, but ideally something you haven’t looked at for a year or so), as well as an image that you feel resonates with the poem, either when you wrote it or right now. We’ll perform three separate erasures of our poems and explore how context and experience can influence and unsettle our writing.

Heather Bowlan is a writer, critic, and community organizer from Northwest Philadelphia and living in Germantown after time in London, Hilo, Long Beach, and Raleigh, among other places. Her collection of self-erasures and collaborative poems, Highlights & Blackouts, was released by _mixlit press as a chapbook and code poem experience in 2023. Heather’s work has appeared in the anthology Feminisms in Motion, the New Ohio Review, the Anarchist Review of Books, and elsewhere.

A 2-part creative writing workshop that pairs spiritual + emotional wellness along with writing prompts and creative activities for a holistic healing experience.

Mars Santi (she/her) currently resides in Germantown, where she continues to utilize food + drink, words, and community to explore themes of softness, healing, and connection. She received her Masters of Social Work In 2016 and has utilized her skills + knowledge to host a variety of community events, healing circles, and writers rooms.

Currently, Mars serves as a chatroom facilitator for the NY based mental health organization known as Sad Girls Club. SGC offers free mental and spiritual community wellness events, workshops, and groups to help support black and brown women/non binary folks in their day to day lives.

Mars has hosted many writers workshops as well as open mic events known as “spoken Saturdays” where community members come together to create & perform personal pieces. Mars hosts open mics events at Avenues Café in Mt.Airy. Lastly, she hosts intimate food and beverage events in her own home known as “Dine + Dish” where guests come together to enjoy a home cooked meal and intentional dialogue around mental health, spirituality, and life.

A 2-part creative writing workshop that pairs spiritual + emotional wellness along with writing prompts and creative activities for a holistic healing experience.

Mars Santi (she/her) currently resides in Germantown, where she continues to utilize food + drink, words, and community to explore themes of softness, healing, and connection. She received her Masters of Social Work In 2016 and has utilized her skills + knowledge to host a variety of community events, healing circles, and writers rooms.

Currently, Mars serves as a chatroom facilitator for the NY based mental health organization known as Sad Girls Club. SGC offers free mental and spiritual community wellness events, workshops, and groups to help support black and brown women/non binary folks in their day to day lives.

Mars has hosted many writers workshops as well as open mic events known as “spoken Saturdays” where community members come together to create & perform personal pieces. Mars hosts open mics events at Avenues Café in Mt.Airy. Lastly, she hosts intimate food and beverage events in her own home known as “Dine + Dish” where guests come together to enjoy a home cooked meal and intentional dialogue around mental health, spirituality, and life.

POEM PLUS PROMPT (PPP) with Dilruba Ahmed

With a poem by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the focus of our conversation, we’ll discover what we can learn about narrative detail, metaphor, sensory description, tone, and more. After our discussion, we’ll commit to a round of shared quiet writing time inspired by a related prompt.

Dilruba Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), with poems featured in New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, and Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama. Her debut book of poetry, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf Press), won the Bakeless Prize. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, & Virginia Quarterly Review. Her poems have also been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2019 (Scribner), Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books), Literature: The Human Experience (Bedford/St. Martin’s) and elsewhere. Ahmed is the recipient of The Florida Review’s Editors’ Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize, and the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellowship in Poetry awarded by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. She has taught with Chatham University’s MFA Program, Hugo House in Seattle, and workshops across the U.S. In January 2021, Ahmed joined the faculty at Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers.

Classes & consultations: https://www.dilrubaahmed.com/writing-lab

Join us for the fifth Bricks Reading event of 2023 at H&H Books on Wednesday, September 20 @ 7PM. The readers for this event are Elisa Gonzalez, Gerardo Sámano Córdova, and Eshani Surya.

This event is sponsored by Blue Stoop! Light refreshments will be provided.

The Bricks is a reading series dedicated to building transcultural conversations on literature & aesthetics.