4-01.png

Office Hours Poetry Workshop

A community-based writing workshop for poets who show a demonstrated commitment to writing. We provide continued support for manuscript-development and everyday writing. The workshop culminates in a public reading each fall and spring to showcase sizzling new work. 

We especially welcome poets of color,  LGBTQ+, and those who are womxn-identified. Our name derives from our side hustle. Many of us are freelance, writing instructors, who continue to thrive in the margins of academia.  

The workshop fellowship meets every two weeks following the fall and spring academic calendar with optional sessions like book club and generative write ins. We charge zero fees to join. Interested writers should submit 6 pages of work to be reviewed by the workshop facilitator sarahmariesala@gmail.com or drop us a line to learn more! 

Spring 2024 Craft Classes in collaboration with BGSQD.

1) Saturday, February 24th, 2024: Mariam Bazeed
11:00 AM-1:00 PM Craft Class
1:00 PM-1:15 PM Reading

Once Upon a Pandemic: I attended a Zoom reading featuring Natalie Diaz, wherein she described some of her work as a native poet as a kind of writing through English, and the phrase stuck! In this generative workshop, we will consider poets whose work, though cloaked in English, challenges its archives, uncovers its erasures, and rewrites its invented histories through formal and semantic inter- and contraventions. I'll prepare a packet including works by Jordan Abel, Jessica Abughattas, Fatimah Asghar, Franny Choi, Natalie Diaz, Marwa Helal, Noor Hindi, Cathy Park Hong, Noor Ibn Najam, and Layli Long Soldier, and we'll discuss a subset to write from their prompt. For my reading, I'll share some of my recent erasure and bilingual work, tracing the Arab as the Arab is effaced and erased in the landscape of American legacy media. RSVP here.
__________________________________________

2) Thursday, April 11th, 2024: Alison Blevins
6:30 PM-8:30 PM Craft Class
8:30 PM-8:45 PM Reading

Packing Your Trauma: This generative workshop will discuss how and why writers explore traumatic experiences. You will look at examples, write, and have an opportunity to share your work in a supportive environment. The workshop will provide you with techniques you can use in both prose and poetry to begin the process of writing and pack trauma into various forms and styles. You will leave with new written work and concrete tips to help you move forward on your writing journey.
__________________________________________

Fall 2023 Craft Classes in collaboration with BGSQD.

1) Thursday, October 5th, 2023 with Omotara James
6:30 PM-8:30 PM Craft Class
8:35 PM-8:50 PM Reading

DESPERATELY SEEKING EROS: Edna St. Vincent Millay famously wrote “life is a quest and love is a quarrel.” What are your poems arguing against or toward? This workshop will eschew the traditional examinations of love and desire for poems that insist on exploring the existence of love in the less conventional or expected places. We will delve into the intractable relationship between eros and pathos (love and suffering). How can you shape the container of the poem to best articulate experience? What poetry forms most effectively carry the poetics of joy and despair? What does the modern discourse on desire leave out? Come ready to write yourself into the cannon. This experience will be more of a writing lab than a workshop, so arrive ready to connect, experiment, and play!

__________________________________________

Spring 2024 POETRY FELLOWS
Dina Abdulhadi
Abba Belgrave
Linda Harris-Dolan
Ryan Dzelzkalns
Ashley Harris
Emily Alta Hockaday (Craft Class Coordinator)
J. Freeborn
Carrie Hohmann-Campbell
Sarah M. Sala
Shakeema Smalls
Noel Sikorski
Avia Tadmor

POETRY FELLOWS ALUMNI
Mary Block
Michael Broder
Marty Correia
Danielle Cowan
Laura Cresté
Sharon Her
Aimee Herman
Sophie Herron
Jen Levitt
Jimena Lucero 
Christine Malvasi 
Paco Marquez
Caitlin McDonnell
Holly Mitchell
Maddie Mori
James Funjinami Moore
Sanjana Nair
Elsbeth Pancrazi
Dacota Pariseau
Megan Pinto
Vanessa Rodriguez Moody
Sahar Romani
Victoria Sanz
Irene Villasenor
Yanyi

PREVIOUS CRAFT INSTRUCTORS
Catherine Barnett
Jericho Brown
Wo Chan
Chen Chen
Kai Coggin
CAConrad
Shira Erlichman
Joan Kwon Glass
Roy Guzmán
Kimiko Hahn
Darrel Alejandro Holnes
JP Howard
Jen Hyde
Patricia Spears Jones
Myung Mi Kim
Dana Levin
Gregory Pardlo
Paco Márquez
C. Quintana
Crystal Valentine
Aldrin Valdez
Yanyi 
Nicole Wallace
Candace Williams
Laura Esther Wolfson

Read a recap of Aldrin Valdez’s Craft Class here

Check out a recap of the 2017 Office Hours Spring Showcase here.