For the price of $75, you can have access to all four Maker, Mentor, Muse Spring 2024 salons, normally $25 each. All salons will be virtually held over Zoom. Please see the salon descriptions and dates below. We hope you can join us!

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Sunday, April 14th, 2024 - 3:30pm-5:00pm PDT
Poetry in Urgent Times with T.S. Leonard

Unprecedented is a word people use often now to describe a litany of disasters, from floods to plagues. During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, we all experienced the same slow-moving emergency, and every day was as ‘unprecedented’ as the last. Of course for many communities on the margins of society, the challenges presented by this novel virus were actually quite precedented—and often, documented by their poets. From the darkest hours of the HIV/AIDS epidemic to the early days of the Black Lives Matter movement, poets writing responsively and urgently have played an essential role in their communities pushing forward through catastrophe. Poetry, like catastrophe, has a way of bending time—on the page, past and possibilities mingle; a better future can be summoned. How do we write responsibly from a place of urgency? To whom are we speaking in our work, and what do we hope to offer them in condolence, or celebration? In what ways can we create spaces of peace or possibility on the page?

T.S. Leonard is the author of God Save the Queens! (Irrelevant Press, 2022) and poems published or forthcoming in Post Road, Fourteen Poems, Foglifter, Frontera, & Change, and The San Franciscan. Leonard’s work explores queerness, loss, and community at the intersection of disco music and time travel. Leonard was a finalist for the 2022 Jane Underwood Poetry Prize and a poetry finalist at the 18th Annual Saints + Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival. Leonard holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco. Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, he lives and teaches in San Francisco.

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Sunday, April 28th, 2024 - 3:30pm-5:00pm PDT
Think of Your Poem as a Mug with Vince Montague

The abstract nature of working with words and language separates us from the physical world. Think of Your Poem as a Mug is a 90 minute conversation with artist and writer Vince Montague who proposes looking at your writing as an object in the physical world. Consider the line of a poem as a type of physical landscape in an empty desert. Think of the form of your writing as an object that can be held and touched. Build a poetic universe that casts shadows on the cement. This workshop is for those interested in writing, in visual art, and/or the intersection between them. There will be writing prompts and a chance to generate new ideas, but this workshop is open to all writers and non-writers looking for a way to cultivate their creativity.

Vince Montague is an artist and writer who works with language and clay. He will share his experience as a writer and how he came to work in the visual arts and how the experience of working in a studio shaped his idea of writing. The influence of making physical objects such as cups and bowls created a structure for his memoir, Cracked Pot (Latah Press, 2023) and the poetry chapbook, Next Door (Bottlecap Press 2023).

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Saturday, May 18th, 2024 - 3:30pm-5:00pm PDT
Fictionalizing the Family Archives with Noelani Piters

What happens when we turn our attention to family, shared history, and that which we do not know? How can we honor the stories we inherit, while also incorporating our own perspectives? How can we use the idiosyncrasies of our relatives to bring fictional characters—and our work in general—to life?

In this generative workshop, we will focus our energies on the art of observation. We will examine fiction, poetry, and visual art that engages family and heritage through innovative and surprising methods. Then, we will use our own family histories as a jumping-off point. With an emphasis on sensory details, we will experiment with literary devices and points of view to create evocative writing that is rooted in the real.

Open to all writers, whether you consider yourself a beginner or a seasoned pro. No prior creative writing experience is necessary to participate. Bring your preferred writing tools and your own family photos—one or two (or many)!

Noelani Piters is a writer living in San Francisco, on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples. She was a 2023 Moloka‘i Arts Center Artist in Residence and has received support from Disquiet, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and Kearny Street Workshop. Her work has been published in swamp pink, Reed Magazine, and Pleiades, and she has contributed to The Rumpus and SOMA Magazine. She is the former Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Ignatian Literary Magazine. https://www.noelanipiters.com/

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Sunday, June 9th, 2024 - 3:30pm-5:00pm PDT
Writers Reclaiming Wholeness Through Identity and Community with Karla Brundage

How can writing about identity become a transformational vehicle to build community? This painful, yet affirming process, can break down social barriers and allow for more connection and compassion. Together we will explore common questions that haunt us in this process. What if all one believes is not as was expected? Is this betrayal or enlightenment? In this workshop, we will endeavor to voice our multiple selves through writing about identity as it presents in light of history. We will begin by calling in all the identities in the space evoking images and words. By calling in all identities, voices feel valued and community is built. I am asking that each poet bring an image of an ancestor or ancestral figure for generative writing, and a piece that is hidden or unwritten to be revised and or to share.

Karla Brundage is an Oakland poet, editor, essayist, activist with roots in Hawaii. A performer, teacher and beach lover, Karla is also a board member of Before Columbus Foundation. A recipient of a Fulbright Teacher Exchange she spent a year teaching in Zimbabwe and three years in Côte d'Ivoire where she founded West Oakland to West Africa Poetry Exchange. Her books Swallowing Watermelons and Mulatta-Not So Tragic (co-written with Allison Francis) reflect on mixed race identity, single parenting, and living with epilepsy. In 2020, her poem Alabama Dirt was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has performed her work onstage and online, and has published both nationally and internationally. Her work can be found at https://www.karlabrundage.com/. Her book Blood Lies:Race Trait(or) came out in February 2024 and is available at Finishing Line Press.

Maker, Mentor, Muse is a teaching platform founded in 2022 by Mary Volmer, Maw Shein Win, and Dawn Angelicca Barcelona. Hailing from three distinct backgrounds, generations, and spiritual traditions we believe community is essential to building a satisfying and sustainable literary life and that true success requires balancing all three artistic roles: maker, mentor, muse. In collaboration with Alta Mesa Center for the Arts, sponsored by Orinda Community Church, we are building a place where artists embrace practices that honor process, spiritual growth, connection, and ongoing community with other writers.