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 17 | 7pm Eastern Time
Body as a Poem: Writing Through the Layers with Oliver Baez Bendorf
Our bodies carry stories of change, bouncebackability, and connection. In this workshop, we’ll explore the body as a site of transformation and creativity, using writing prompts to draw on physical sensations, memories, and the world around us. No prior experience is needed—just a willingness to write.
Oliver Baez Bendorf is an award-winning poet whose work explores themes of interconnectedness, transformation, and queer liberation. He is the author of Consider the Rooster (Nightboat Books, 2024), Advantages of Being Evergreen, and The Spectral Wilderness. His poems have appeared in publications such as The Nation, American Poetry Review, and Yale Review, and have been featured in anthologies like Latino Poetry and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. Recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Publishing Triangle Award, Oliver earned his BA from the University of Iowa and both an MFA in Poetry and an MA in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Born and raised in Iowa City, Iowa, he now resides along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Instagram: @oliverbaezbendorf
Register
Thu, May 15 | 7pm Eastern Time
Writing to the Moment: Poems on Current Events with Abby E. Murray
While the necessity of writing to witness current events hasn’t changed for centuries, a writer’s exposure to constant news and overwhelm has. How do we process the world around us when it is exploding in our hands, day and night? We start here: in community, making space to discuss the audiences we hope to reach and the poems we feel need to be written and read. In this workshop, we will consider poets and poems that have blazed a trail for us to follow into our historical moment. We will generate new work to take away and refine outside the workshop, and perhaps most importantly, we will be together to share the experience.
Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Their first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, while their second book, Recovery Commands, recently won the Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Ex Ophidia Press. Abby served as the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and currently teaches rhetoric in military strategy to Army War College fellows at the University of Washington.
Register
Thu, June 19 | 7pm Eastern Time
Attention & Transformation: A Summer Solstice Workshop with Hari Alluri
At the core of the writing process is attention, and finding the versions of this attention that move us can lead to transformative experiences. As Patrick Rosal notes in his phenomenal book Atang, “Attention changes you. Art is one version of attention.” In this workshop—with a focus on the place where our inner worlds and the outer world meet—we will connect with writing that exemplifies transformative surprises of music and meaning, think about the ways we can deepen our practice, and compose new work.
Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is an award-winning poet, editor, and facilitator. Author of The Flayed City (Kaya Press) and chapbook Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press), his new collection is Tabako on the Windowsill (Brick Books). Co-editor of We Were Not Alone (Community Building Art Works) with Seema Reza, his collaborations range from the local to the international, and his work is available widely through these venues: Best of the Net (via Split This Rock), Library of Elemental Bending Vol. 1 (SMALL CAPS / TCR), Poem-a-Day, and We the Gathered Heat anthology (Haymarket Books).
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.