WRITE CLUB is on Substack! + Writing Highlights From Minnesotan Writers

Welcome to the WRITE CLUB Substack!

We are taking our newsletter to the next step! If you’re on our email list, you’ll know that we occasionally send out newsletters directly to your email, but we wanted to expand to more than just updates from our organizers. Alongside normal WRITE CLUB news – dates and links for upcoming events, updates on our Punching Bag series, and any other pertinent community updates — we plan to incorporate writing highlights, interviews with community members, theatre & film show bulletins, and reviews! So stay tuned as we figure out the regularity and routine with our Substack posts. We’re excited to share a new avenue of creative writing and community with you all.

Firstly, we will be hosting the next WRITE CLUB at Grey Studios, 39-45 Crescent St, Long Island City, on Sunday, February 15th, from 7 to 9 pm (doors at 6:30) –link for tickets. If you came to our WRITE CLUB session back in October, you would have seen an original song, Maddie, performed by Yael S. Copeland. Yael has graciously offered us her event space (@greystudioslic) to host the next WRITE CLUB! As we continue to grow and meet new people, we are grateful for the opportunity to share resources. We are always looking for more spaces to hold our events in, so if you are involved in any community organizations that would be interested in getting involved in WRITE CLUB, let us know – we would love to build out relationships with orgs in the community.

Next, our Punching Bag program is chugging along. Our writers have been working on their feature-length screenplays and stageplays for the past two months. We have been hosting bi-weekly meetings where writers submit their word count and discuss the updates they’ve made to their work. Alongside these bi-weekly check-ins, we’ve also begun actor sessions, where writers have the opportunity to see their writing acted out to help further develop their scripts. Our most recent actor session was on Monday, February 2nd, at a theatre production space in Williamsburg – The Brick Aux.

As we begin this Substack page, it feels important to inaugurate it with a highlight on the importance of community. WRITE CLUB has led us to meet so many writers, actors, and artists alike, and we deeply care about these bonds as motivations to continue creating art. Our community here is especially important at a time when the world does not care about our voices. We are seeing the epitome of community solidarity right now in cities like Minneapolis, Minnesota. From George Floyd to the violent occupation of ICE agents, the solidarity in Minneapolis is such a beautiful triumph against tyranny. The artists, writers, and voices coming out of this city feel so essential to uplift. I’ve gathered a few Minnesotan poets to highlight and end this post with–

As I was doing outreach to find smaller, lesser-known creative writers from Minneapolis, I was reached out to by a poet who has chosen to remain anonymous–

Danez Smith – a black, queer, Minnesotan poet – has more recent and community-oriented poetry than what I have chosen to share below; they are doing a piece of writing a day on their Instagram (@danez_smif) for the month of February. This one I just happen to love so much.

In my research about creative writers in Minneapolis, I learned about the Minneapolis Poet Laureate. Every two years, the city of Minneapolis’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Department appoints a “Poet Laureate.” They become the official ambassador of the city’s literary culture and connect the community through poetry and public service engagement. You can read more about the role here! The current poet laureate is Junauda Petrus-Nasah (@junauda).

Lastly, Literary Hub is running a series called Letters From Minnesota – a short prose essay is released every few days, written by writers living through the ICE atrocities in Minnesota. Kawai Washburn’s A Prayer Must Be More Than Asking has really stuck with me, but you can browse through even more on their website.