The Writers Guild at Bloomington is an association of writers committed to mutual support and the professional development of their craft. Its mission is to foster interaction among writers as well as other artists, educators, and the Monroe County public, thereby enhancing the vibrancy of the arts and the writing community in the greater Bloomington area.

Events Calendar

Apr
1
Thu
Phone a Poem
Apr 1 @ 1:00 am – Apr 30 @ 1:00 am
Phone a Poem

Phone a Poem – Monroe County Public Library

Celebrate National Poetry Month with a series of recordings of family-friendly poems on a variety of topics.

 

Call 812-349-3208 to listen!  Any time!

 

Recordings will be updated by 5 PM each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in April for a total of 13 delightful poems! 

 

All ages.

Apr
7
Wed
Spoken Word Series
Apr 7 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
TWO WAYS TO EXPERIENCE:
Drop a note to demand4poetry@gmail.com and we will send you the ZOOM link
OR
watch LIVE on the Writers Guild at Bloomington Facebook page
WEDNESDAY, APR 7
6pm EST
featuring
Joan Hawkins, KH Brower, Abegunde
reading excerpts from the forthcoming book Rape Escapes
films by Valeria DeCastro
Sponsored in part by the Indiana Arts Commission, Bloomington Arts Commission, and the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association
JOAN HAWKINS is an associate professor in cinema studies at Indiana University. Her creative writing has appeared in Fevers of the Mind, Sand, and the Performing Arts Journal. Her most recent book publication is William S Burroughs Cutting Up the Century, co-authored with Alex Wermer-Colan. The piece she is reading this evening comes from Rape Escapes, a poetry and prose anthology-in-progress that she is co-editing with K.H. Brower. Rape Escapes is organized around near misses. Assaults that did not happen or that did not happen to the narrator of the story. Assaults that did happen but were survived.
Maria E. Hamilton ABEGUNDE, Ph.D., is a Memory Keeper, poet, ancestral priest in the Yoruba Orisa tradition, healing facilitator, and doula. Her research and creative works are grounded in contemplative practices and respectfully approaching the Earth and human bodies as sites of memory, and always with the understanding that memory never dies, is subversive, and can be recovered to transform transgenerational trauma and pain into peace and power. Her most recent works address anti-Black racism and violence, genocide, sexual violence, and healing in the US, Brazil, and Juba, South Sudan, and can be found in If My Body Could Talk (Mouth), North Meridian Review, the Massachusetts Review, Tupelo Quarterly, FIRE!!!, and Keeper of My Mothers’ Dreams. She is the founding director of The Graduate Mentoring Center, and a faculty member in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. In 2021, she was featured in Bloom magazine in the February/March Issue that recognized the accomplishments and contributions of Black Women of Bloomington. Dr. Abegunde is a Cave Canem, Sacatar, Ragdale, and NEH fellow.
K.H. BROWER most often writes science fiction for young people. Her YA SolarPunk series of novels imagines a future world in which her heroines and heroes actively regenerate damaged ecosystems across the galaxy. She is currently pitching a new TV streaming series, also SolarPunk, and is writing a contemporary feature film about a girl who rescues her neighbor’s pet bull, and together they save their forest. Among the Magic Mountains, her half-hour memoir master’s thesis film for USC School of Cinema-Television, has been screened at festivals worldwide, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. “Escaping Beaver Trapper” is her return to the memoir form.
VALERIA DeCASTRO is a performance artist, Butoh dancer, and works in non-traditional and contemporary theatre. She studied music at the University of Brasilia (Brazil) and holds an MA in Italian literature with a concentration on Film Studies from the Indiana University. Her work is interdisciplinary and largely influenced by Maura Baiocchi’s innovative methodology of the “Choreographic Theater of Tensions.”
Apr
9
Fri
Double Exposure IU Cinema
Apr 9 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Double exposure

IU Cinema 

Friday April 9

7 pm

Free virtual screening, 
but you need to register.
This program brings together student filmmakers from the IU Media School, composers
from the Jacobs School of Music and writer from the Writers Guild at Bloomington
To register and for more information, see
Apr
13
Tue
Poetry Night for Teens virtual at MCPL
Apr 13 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Poetry Night for Teens virtual at MCPL

Poetry Night for Teens on Discord

April 13 

at 5 PM virtual 
Monroe County Public Library
For National Poetry Month, come share a poem you wrote or one you enjoy at our virtual poetry open mic for teens on Discord!
Sharing is highly encouraged, but not required––you can come to listen too!
To participate, sign up for a Discord server invite link at mcpl.info/discord, if you haven’t already, then drop in.
Ages 13–19.
Apr
17
Sat
Writers Guild Monthly Business Meeting
Apr 17 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Writers Guild Monthly Business Meeting

Writers Guild Monthly Business Meeting

Virtual via Zoom

 

For Zoom link please contact any of the following:

Joan Hawkins (jchawkin93@yahoo.com)

Tony Brewer (beatnik_a_go_go@yahoo.com)

Kyle Quass (kylequass@gmail.com)

 

Apr
18
Sun
Third Sunday Write
Apr 18 @ 1:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Third Sunday Write

Third Sunday Write

An on-going writing group

offered through the Writers Guild at Bloomington

 

Third Sunday Write offers all writers a chance to share in a writing community and flex and tone their writing muscles through exercises and discussion. While we can’t gather in person we are continuing to gather online.

 If you’re interested in receiving monthly prompts and having a friendly place to share your writing responses and read others’ please email shana747@gmail.com to get invited to the private FaceBook group 3rdsundaywrite.

Please note:  The website notice mentions a date and time but please ignore them. It is a required field we have to fill in.

THANKS!

May
5
Wed
Writers Guild Spoken Word Series
May 5 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Writers Guild Spoken Word Series

OBSERVING ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH

featuring
David Mura, Anni Liu, Danny Nguyen
music by vocalist Kyoko Kitamura
Wednesday May 5, 2001
6 p.m. EST Online
TWO WAYS TO EXPERIENCE:
Email demand4poetry@gmail.com and we will send you the ZOOM link
OR
watch LIVE on the Writers Guild at Bloomington page
Sponsored in part by the Indiana Arts Commission, Bloomington Arts Commission, and the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association
ANNI LIU is a writer, editor, and translator with work featured in Ploughshares, Ecotone, the Georgia Review, Two Lines, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Indiana University and works at Graywolf Press. Winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Prize from Persea Books, her first book will be published in 2022.
DAVID MURA’s newest book is A Stranger’s Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing. He has written four books of poetry: The Last Incantations, Angels for the Burning, The Colors of Desire (Carl Sandburg Award), and After We Lost Our Way (National Poetry Contest winner). His two memoirs are: Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Oakland PEN Josephine Miles Book Award) and Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity. His novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the John Gardner Fiction Prize and Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award. He is finishing a book of essays on race and a book of essays on Asian American identity. Mura has taught at the VONA Writers’ Conference, the Stonecoast MFA program, the U. of Oregon, the U. of Minnesota, St. Olaf College, and Hamline University. He has worked as Director of Training for the Innocent Classroom, a program designed by writer and educator Alexs Pate to train K-12 teachers to improve their relationships with students of color. He helped start the Twin Cities community arts organization, The Asian American Renaissance, and served as its artistic director.
DANNY THANH NGUYEN (they/she/he equally) has published stories and personal essays in The Offing, The Journal, Gulf Coast, Foglifter, and elsewhere. They have been awarded fellowships and grants from Ragdale Foundation, Lambda Literary, Kundiman, and San Francisco Arts Commission. Her column on BDSM/kink culture appears in the international fetish social network platform Recon and is translated into five languages. Follow him on social media: @engrishlessons.
KYOKO KITAMURA is a vocal improviser, bandleader, and composer based in Brooklyn. She leads her ensemble Tidepool Fauna (featuring saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, bassist Ken Filiano and drummer Dayeon Seok), co-leads Geometry (with Taylor Ho Bynum, Joe Morris, Tomeka Reid), and is an active side person with recent appearances on albums by William Parker, Cory Smythe, and Russ Lossing, for which she has garnered stellar reviews. Kitamura is also known for her decade-long association with musician and composer Anthony Braxton and is featured on many of his releases including GTM (Syntax) 2017, the 12-hour recording of his vocal works performed by the Tri-Centric Vocal Ensemble which she directed and co-produced, as well as his operas Trillium E and Trillium J. Separate from her music career, Kitamura is also a media professional. She was a reporter for Fuji Television Japan and was their Paris news correspondent, did a stint as a Gulf War reporter in Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and also wrote for numerous magazines. Between 2010 and 2019, she was the Director of Communications for the Tri-Centric Foundation, Anthony Braxton’s nonprofit organization, and then the Executive Director of the same organization until April 2021. Kyoko studied piano at Juilliard Pre-College with Ms. Jane Carlson, and privately studied counterpoint and Schoenberg harmony with Mr. Paul Caputo.
May
16
Sun
Meet Nate Powell: graphic novelist
May 16 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

The Friends of the Library presents Coffee with Friends

 

with author and graphic novelist, Nate Powell

 
via Zoom.
You can Register below or on MCPL website..
Please only register one person if watching in a group.
Audience members will have an opportunity to ask questions at the end of this virtual program.
In seven comics-style essays, Nate Powell addresses living in an era of “necessary protest. Save It for Later: Promises, Parenthood, and the Urgency of Protest is Powell’s personal reflection on witnessing the turmoil during the Trump presidency, and how he explains the events to his children.
He reveals the electrifying sense of trust and connection with neighbors and strangers in protest, and also explores how to equip young people with tools to best make their own.
Nate Powell is also the illustrator for the award-winning graphic-novel series March, written by Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, chronically the historic events of non-violent revolution in the civil rights movement.
Nate Powell is the first cartoonist ever to win the National Book Award. An Arkansas native, Powell began self-publishing in 1992 at age 14. His work includes Save It For Later, the March trilogy, Come AgainTwo DeadAny EmpireSwallow Me Whole, and The Silence of Our Friends.
Powell’s work has also received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, three Eisner Awards, two Ignatz Awards, the Comic-Con International Inkpot Award, four YALSA Great Graphic Novels For Teens selections,
and is a two-time finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

REGISTER

May
22
Sat
Writers Guild Monthly Business Meeting
May 22 @ 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
Writers Guild Monthly Business Meeting

Writers Guild Monthly Business Meeting

Virtual via Zoom

Saturday May 22, 2021
3-4:30 

For Zoom link please contact any of the following:

Joan Hawkins (jchawkin93@yahoo.com)

Tony Brewer (beatnik_a_go_go@yahoo.com)

Kyle Quass (kylequass@gmail.com)

May
28
Fri
Morgernstern’s Author Talk with Shana Ritter
May 28 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Morgernstern's Author Talk with Shana Ritter

Morgernstern’s  Author Talk.

 

With Shana Ritter the featured reader

  Join on Zoom or Facebook LIve https://www.facebook.com/events/472297960718509/?ref=newsfeed

 

 

Morgernstern’s will be opening at the old Pier 1 site in June. 

In the meantime they have a pop-up shop in Bloomingtea’s and you can always order online https://bookshop.org/shop/Morgensterns.

And while we’re talking Indie bookstores, don’t forget

Book Corner, which is open again for browsing (wear a mask!)

the Friends of the Library Bookstore

and the Friends of Art Bookstore at IU will be re-opening soon.

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