Cost: Sliding Scale $500, $375, $250
In this workshop we will read and write all the brilliance and beauty of what we have survived and what we are building. Using prompts, free-writes, the magnificent muck of our lives, and the full wing-span of our imaginations, we will create new writing across genres. Be prepared to dig deep. In our writing, we will make space for the fierce, radiant, sexy, disastrous, sacred and profane facets of our truths as queer and gender-fabulous folks navigating a mad mad world. Let this retreat be your permission to play, work, and risk.
This weekend retreat will focus on helping writers of all levels generate new work, build community, explore identity, and craft gorgeous writing. In each session we’ll explore a variety of juicy writing prompts and read or watch inspiring examples by queer, trans, and gender-expansive writers, with particular attention to QTBIPOC and/or disabled writers. The class format will include time for free-writing, peer workshopping, fishbowl-format workshopping with the instructor, and Q&A, as well as time for some somatic and mindfulness exercises to help us get connected with ourselves.
Jacks McNamara is a queer, trans, neurodivergent poet, artist, activist, educator, performer, and somatic healing practitioner based on the Tewa land of O’ga P’ogeh, also known today as Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2012 Jacks was selected as a Lambda literary fellow, and their first book of poetry, Inbetweenland, was released by Deviant Type Press in 2013. Co-author of Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness, Jacks has toured across the US and Canada offering readings and workshops. They have also worked as a writer/artist in residence in many community organizations and the Santa Fe Public Schools. Their writing has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, blogs, and zines. Jacks is the co-founder of The Icarus Project, now known as the Fireweed Collective, a project that offers mental health education and mutual aid through a Healing Justice lens. Jacks’s life and work are the subject of the poetic documentary film Crooked Beauty.