Ask an Audio Editor
Feb
25
to Apr 25

Ask an Audio Editor

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $70).

Step 2: Register for “Ask an Audio Editor” here.

Are you struggling to pin down an unruly audio project? Stuck in the early stages of a podcast pitch, or in need of edits on a current episode? Looking for tips on structure and workflow, or trying to make sense of the audio industry as a freelancer? Story editor Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong is available for 1-hour consulting sessions, including but not limited to:

-Detailed edits on an individual project
-Creating a production workflow
-Building narrative structure
-Navigating the audio world as a freelancer.

Existing pieces submitted for edits should be no more than ten minutes long. Upon registration, participants will be prompted to email Adowa to set up their individual session.

Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong is a Ghanaian-American story editor and producer. She has made work for NPR, Wondery, Radiotopia, Vox,and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Adwoa is an editing mentor for Seattle’s Wa Na Wari art collective and the Association of Independents in Radio.

View Event →
Outlaw Healing: Criminalized Women and the Politics of Repair
Apr
20

Outlaw Healing: Criminalized Women and the Politics of Repair

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Outlaw Healing” here.

This workshop introduces participants to what Nadj calls "outlaw healing," which is how criminalized women who use drugs imagine and experiment with transformation, solidarity, and repair beyond incarceration and forced cure.

They will then break down the main themes of "outlaw healing" that are embedded in the stories of these women and ask participants to talk with one another about what it would mean to practice this in their own lives. Beginning from the premise that people who lead criminalized lives have a lot to teach about surviving and evading repression, this workshop will offer space to think outside and beyond the law.

Nadj is a longtime abolitionist, transformative justice, and harm reduction organizer based in NYC and Hartford, CT. When they're not riding the Metro North, they can be found reading science fiction, hiking, and knitting.

View Event →
Thinking with Disability and Archives
Apr
24

Thinking with Disability and Archives

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Thinking with Disability and Archives” here.

How are disabled people documented in history? And how do disabled people meet these documents in archives today?

This workshop will investigate different types of archives & archival impacts through two readings: one that illustrates a history of archives created through medical incarceration in Hawaiʻi and one that shows how disabled people experience archives today through first-person accounts.

Participants will be provided with an overview of archives and recordkeeping processes and practices and collectively discuss how disabled people can be and have been documented in archives.

Through addressing different ways of meeting representation, misrepresentation, and erasure, participants will also have the space to reflect on colonialism, settler colonialism, and the power of archives in shaping understandings of history, ourselves, and others.

Auto-captions will be provided for this online event.

Gracen Brilmyer (they/them/iel) is a Disabled researcher working at the intersection of disability and archives. They are the director of the Disability Archives Lab, which hosts multi-disciplinary projects that center the politics of disability, how disabled people are affected by archives, and how to imagine archival futures that are centered around disabled desires.

View Event →
A Poetry Reading for Gaza IV
Apr
27

A Poetry Reading for Gaza IV

Step 1: Donate to Gaza Poets Society here (suggested donation $30).

Step 2: Register for “A Poetry Reading for Gaza IV” here.

Join Workshops4Gaza for our fourth online poetry reading featuring
Summer Farah, Ignacio Carvajal, Ayling Zulema Dominguez, Destiny Hemphill, Maryam Ivette Parhizkar, Mallika Singh, Jesús Valles and hosted by mónica teresa ortiz. The reading will be followed by a short moderated discussion and Q and A.

Summer Farah is a Palestinian American writer, editor, and zine-maker from California. She is the author of I could die today and live again (Game Over Books, 2024) and The Hungering Years (Host Publications, 2026). A member of the Radius of Arab American Writers and the National Book Critics Circle, she is calling on you to recommit yourself to the liberation of the Palestinian people each day.

ignacio carvajal is a poet, scholar, and translator. ignacio is the author of the chapbooks allow – a litany – (La Resistencia Press 2021) and Plegarias (el suriporfiado/University of Houston 2019) and his poems appear in places like the Acentos Review and the anthology The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, among others. ignacio was born in costa rica; they teach Central & Latin American Literature, Latin American Studies and creative writing at the University of California San Diego.

Ayling Zulema Dominguez is a poet, mixed media artist, and youth arts educator with roots in Puebla, México (Nahua) and the island of Kiskeya. Grounded in a poetics of anticolonialism, their art and writing ask who we are at our most free, and explore the subversions needed in order to arrive there. What can language do for our resistance efforts? How can we use it to birth new worlds and weave our ancestors into the fabric of them?

Destiny Hemphill is a chronically ill ritual worker and poet, living on the unceded territory of the Eno-Occaneechi band of the Saponi Nation (Durham, NC). She is co-editor of Poetry as Spellcasting (North Atlantic Books 2023) and the author of the poetry collection motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life (Action Books, 2023).

Maryam Ivette Parhizkar is a poet, educator, and scholar. She is a member of the U.S. Central American collective Tierra Narrative, and the author of three chapbooks, including Somewhere Else the Sun is Falling into Someone’s Eyes (Belladonna*, 2019).

mallika singh is a poet, farmer, and cook living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. their debut chapbook, Retrieval, was published in 2020 by Wendy's Subway. this season they are growing okra, marigolds, hibiscus, and more with their coworkers at Ashokra Farm. find them out in the field or by the river.

Jesús I. Valles (they/them) is a queer Mexican immigrant writer-performer from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua/El Paso, Texas. Their poems have been featured in the anthologies Here to Stay, Somewhere We Are Human, and The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, as well as The New Republic, Tin House, [PANK], The Adroit Journal, The Slowdown, and Code Switch. Here, Valles wishes to echo Rasha Abdulhadi's call to “you, dear reader, to refuse and resist the genocide of Palestinian people. Wherever you are, whatever sand you can throw on the gears of genocide, do it now. The elimination of the Palestinian people is not inevitable. We can refuse with our every breath and action. We must." In solidarity with the people of Palestine, of Congo, of Sudan, of Cuba, with every political prisoner here and everywhere empire threatens life, with every student movement rebelling against the state everywhere.

mónica teresa ortiz is a poet, critic, and memory worker born, raised, and based in Texas. They are the author of Book of Provocations (Host Publications, 2024) and invite you to commit to the liberation of Palestine.

View Event →
Poetry Edits
May
1
to Aug 30

Poetry Edits

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Poetry Edits” here.

Stuck on a first draft and wondering where to take it? Wishing you had a second opinion on a piece you've had stewing for months? Marissa will provide detailed, personalized written feedback on your poetry.

After registering, you will be instructed to send up to four pages of poetry to Marissa, after which she will read you work and then send you detailed, written feedback on the material you have submitted.

Marissa Davis is a poet and translator from Paducah, Kentucky. Her chapbook, My Name & Other Languages I Am Learning How to Speak (Jai-­Alai Books, 2020), was selected for Cave Canem’s 2019 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. Her full-length debut, End of Empire, is forthcoming from Penguin Books in 2025. She earned her MFA at New York University, and she is currently pursuing a master’s in Editorial, Economic, and Technical Translation at the Sorbonne Nouvelle.˜

View Event →
Birdwalk for Gaza
May
4

Birdwalk for Gaza

To register, venmo @baum-kirshenhan in advance or when you arrive with description “birds.” All proceeds will be donated to the Sameer Project. Cash also accepted!

NYC Queer Birders is excited to make our annual birding and social gathering event a benefit for Palestinian mutual aid! As ecocide and genocide continue to intensify in Gaza, we’ll pledge our resources to support Palestinian life while appreciating the natural world around us.

We will meet at McCarren Park at 11:30am for a delightful bird walk around the park. We'll end the walk at Sprtizenhaus33, where we'll gather at the long tables and share drinks, snacks, and a beautiful time getting to know each other.

All are welcome regardless of prior birdwatching experience. We’re expecting to see bluejays, robins, mourning doves, and nesting red-tailed hawks!

Accessibility Info: McCarren Park’s Driggs/Lorimer entrance is located 0.5 miles from the Bedford Ave and Lorimer Ave L train stations. It is 0.2 miles from the Nassau Ave G station. We will be walking for about 0.5 miles for the duration of the walk and it will take about 1.5 hours. There are 2 public restrooms in the park (903 Lorimer, and McCarren Pool & Play Center). The entrance to Spritzenhaus33 has a staircase of 5 steps to enter.

NYC Queer Birders started in February 2020 as a way to cultivate community and explore the natural world of New York City with LGBTQA+ bird-lovers. Queer Birders hosts birding events all year round, in all 5 boroughs. If you love birds, meeting new people, and spending afternoons outside in a queer-friendly setting, we would love to have you join us! We welcome all bird enthusiasts, regardless of experience.

Find out more about our past and upcoming events on Instagram @queerbirders or send us an email and be added to our list: queerbirders@gmail.com.

View Event →
Written in Blood and Ink
May
9

Written in Blood and Ink

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Written in Blood and Ink” here.

In this interactive workshop, participants will close-read letters and poetry from political prisoners across the globe—from Palestine to Congo to the U.S.—to explore the profound moral and political clarity of their writing and scholarship.

We’ll discuss why our political prisoners deserve our love and solidarity, and why they are the north star of our struggle.

A letter has both a sender and a receiver: what is our political duty as the inheritors of these political missives and directives? We will end by leaving time at the end for participants to (voluntarily) write a letter to a political prisoner of their choice.

Sarah Hassouneh is a mother, doula, writer, educator, philosopher, and cultural worker who theorizes around birth, death, gentrification and colonialism, and synthesis-building. Descended from Palestinian and Egyptian lineages but raised in NE Portland, her work is rooted in transnational solidarity. She is the co-founder of Hurriyyah Collective, an anti-imperialist Muslim organization based in Portland.

Jamila Osman is a Somali writer, multimedia artist, and educator. She has taught creative writing from Portland to Palestine, from summer camps to juvenile detention facilities. She is the winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and is the author of the chapbook A Girl is a Sovereign State (Akashic 2020).

View Event →
Palestine 1492: A Report Back - The Making of an Autonomous Book
May
10

Palestine 1492: A Report Back - The Making of an Autonomous Book

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Palestine 1492: A Report Back - The Making of an Autonomous Book” here.

Join Linda Quiquivix, author of Palestine 1492: A Report Back, to learn about the making of the book from start to finish, including the writing process, working with an autonomous press, as well as the design and visual messaging. Palestine 1492 is a book of history, geography, theory, memoir, and art that provides a “report-back” on 500 years of global struggle through words, maps, and images. It is written for a world in which all worlds fit, sharing the lessons Linda has learned from the teachings of Palestinians, Zapatistas, Panthers and jaguars.   

Linda Quiquivix is a geographer and popular educator of Maya-Mam roots raised by Palestinians, Zapatistas, Panthers, and jaguars. She has a BS and MA from California State University Northridge, a Ph.D. in Geography from UNC Chapel Hill, and a Certificate in Middle East Studies from Duke University. She also held the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Critical Global Humanities at Brown University. Learn more about her and her work at https://quiqui.org/

View Event →
Guidance for New Growers: 8 Steps to Starting a Small Farm or Large Garden
May
11

Guidance for New Growers: 8 Steps to Starting a Small Farm or Large Garden

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Guidance for New Growers” here.

In this workshop, the lead farmer of SisterLand Farms will teach participants how to create the foundations of a sustainable farm, garden, or homestead. Jenson (they/them) will break the process into eight steps that will inform vegetable and herb growers of most scales and answer questions like: "What can be grown on rented land?", "What tools do I need to start?", "What are the most common setbacks and pitfalls?"

By the end of the workshop, you will have a general idea of how to prepare growing spaces, how to crop plan, how to sow and transplant, how to mitigate organics waste, what you do (and do not) need to have on hand for success, the basics of harvesting and storage, and how to prepare your space for the following growing season. This workshop is ideal for new gardeners, those curious about starting market farms, community gardeners, and homesteaders.

Jenson (they/them) is a farmer and educator working on the Olympic Peninsula. With over a decade of organic farming experience, Jenson now manages SisterLand Farms, which has won three Farm of the Year awards since its founding in 2018. They specialize in small-scale farming, regenerative agricultural practices, and diverse crop planning. They passionately advocate for dignity in farming and manual labor, and believe that strong communities will always require strong food systems.

View Event →
Theories and Practices of Childhood Liberation
May
12

Theories and Practices of Childhood Liberation

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Theories and Practices of Child Liberation” here.

"This is a genocide of children," said the sociologist Heba Gowayed about Gaza in 2024. And just as children in the West have long resisted settler-colonial, patriarchal, familial, cissexist, racial, and adult-supremacist domination - sometimes via explicitly Youth Liberationist platforms, sometimes not - Palestinian children today are not exclusively victims of annihilation.

As Mira Mattar contends, they are agents of anti-Zionist resistance, too; "the authors, carriers, and distributors of collective memory." In this workshop, we will explore scholarship on Palestinian children's theorization of their oppression as Palestinians and as children, drawing connections between their struggles and the buried histories of child liberationism in the West.

Sophie Lewis is an ex-academic independent scholar living in Philadelphia, working on a book called The Liberation of Children. She is also the author of Full Surrogacy Now, Abolish the Family, and Enemy Feminisms.

She teaches short courses on critical theory online for the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and her articles appear everywhere from the London Review of Books to Harper's magazine. You can find all essays and speaking future events listed at http://lasophielle.org and support Sophie's free-lance writing, if you wish, at http://patreon.com/reproutopia.

View Event →
The Workers Love Palestine
May
15

The Workers Love Palestine

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “The Workers Love Palestine” here.

In this workshop we will read and discuss the poem “The Workers Love Palestine” by Zaina Alsous together with an excerpt from Blood in My Eye by George Jackson to consider language and labor as tools of struggle against imperial and colonial power.

We will grapple with what these texts clarify and complicate about the relationships between capitalism and imperialism, poetry and politics, revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice.

Following our discussion, we will engage in a short somatic activity and collective writing exercise, a collaborative “fumbling toward an otherwise” as an experiment in cultural production that engages many voices and our whole bodies.

The Daybreak Poets Collective are poets committed to anti-imperialism. The collective is named after June Jordan’s INTIFADA INCANTATION: POEM #8 FOR b.b.L., and the line—NOBODY TAKE AWAY DAYBREAK! The Daybreak facilitators for this workshop will be Jody Chan and Furqan Mohamed.

View Event →
Against these Walls: Disrupting the War Machine from Sonora to Gaza
May
17

Against these Walls: Disrupting the War Machine from Sonora to Gaza

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Against these Walls” here

The world’s deadliest land migration route--the Sonoran Desert--is a land of open graves. Shared between Palestine and the Sonoran Desert are patterns of social ordering and othering, circuits and flows of surveillance, the siphoning of pasts and the denial of futures by settler colonial thieves.

Against the constellation of violences of the US/Mexico border, it is necessary to untangle the coded language of slaughter, technologies and intricate web of stakeholders, as lifeblood of the border-military-industrial complex.

Ultimately, the security regimes operate in the interest of ceaseless shareholder profits; the Nakba is always ongoing. In this workshop, we will work to better understand this imperial insatiability, and, co-conspire forms of resistance to the war machine.

Danika Cooper is Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, where the core of her research centers on the geopolitics of scarcity, alternative water ontologies, and designs for resiliency in the global aridlands. She earned an MA in Design Studies and Master of Landscape Studies from Harvard University.

Taylor Miller is a researcher and writer based in Tucson, Arizona. She earned her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Arizona and is a university lecturer and a research fellow with the London-based Corruption Tracker/Shadow World Investigations, documenting the violence of the global arms trade.

View Event →
On the Memory of Water
May
18

On the Memory of Water

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “On the Memory of Water” here.

This workshop explores the profound connections between water, memory, and resistance from the perspectives of poets of color. Water serves not only as sustenance but as a repository of our collective memory and cultural survival, witnessing and recording histories of colonization, resistance, and renewal across generations.

We will analyze the craft of those the water remembers, including poets such as Ariana Benson, Banah el Ghadbanah, Camonghne Felix, and Nizar Qabbani. From the protection of Indigenous Filipino reservoirs to the militarized borders of the Mediterranean, this workshop invites you to listen to the stories that water has to tell.

Maya Salameh is the author of HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in The Offing, Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, Mizna, and the LA Times, among others. She can be found at @mayaslmh or mayasalameh.com.

View Event →
Writing to Remember: Intro to Flash Prose
May
25

Writing to Remember: Intro to Flash Prose

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Writing to Remember: An Introduction to Flash Prose” here.

Flash prose, whether fictional or non-fictional, is characterized by its capacity to tell an unforgettable story in very few words. In this workshop, we will approach flash prose as a self-contained window onto socio-historical processes that emerge from our most specific lived experiences and in particular, memories. We will gather tools from poetry, political organizing, and how memory itself works to write a flash prose piece that sheds critical light on systemic forces through autobiographical examples.

Tala Khanmalek (all pronouns) is a queer writer, editor, and scholar of Iranian descent. They hold a PhD in ethnic studies from UC Berkeley, where they were a student activist in SJP.

View Event →
Reading Against Empire: A Reading Group
Jun
7

Reading Against Empire: A Reading Group

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $35).

Step 2: Register for “Reading Against Empire: A Reading Group” here.

How has our world been narrated to us by empire, and how can we speak back against those narratives? What anticolonial strategies for reading, writing, and being do these works cultivate in their attention to British, American, and Japanese imperial projects?

Join scholars Sam Ikehara and Nozomi Nakaganeku to read and discuss Christina Sharpe's Ordinary Notes (April 5), Dionne Brand's Salvage: Readings from the Wreck (June 7), Crystal Myun-hye Baik's Re-encounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory Critique (Sept. 6), and Wendy Matsumura's Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan’s Empire (Dec. 6).

Participants will meet online across four sessions to discuss these books with one another, though there is no requirement to join every session. They are also encouraged to purchase copies of the texts from the Workshops4Gaza bookstore, where all proceeds are donated to a different Gaza initiative each month.

Sam Ikehara was born and raised in Oʻahu. Her research and activism emerge from her family's histories and experiences across multiple wars and empires in the Pacific Ocean, particularly the U.S. military occupations of Hawaiʻi and Okinawa.

Nozomi Nakaganeku-Saito is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies at Amherst College. Her research focuses on the impacts of US militarism and Japanese settler colonialism on Okinawa and the role of literature and storytelling in (re)shaping relations to land/air/sea by centering Indigenous perspectives.

View Event →

Getting Started in Literary Translation
Apr
13

Getting Started in Literary Translation

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Getting Started in Literary Translation” here.

In this workshop, Spanish to English literary translator Rosalind Harvey will offer participants practical advice on how to break into and survive the profession of literary translation, including choosing a project, pitching to publishers, negotiating contracts, and other tips you can use right away.

Rosalind Harvey is a literary translator from Spanish to English, an educator, and co-founder of the Emerging Translators Network (UK), which supports early-career translators worldwide, working primarily into English. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Royal Literary Fund fellow, and was a runner up for the 2024 Valle-Inclán Prize.

View Event →
Let's Make Beni-Imo Tart! Lessons in Community Care from the Ryukyus
Apr
12

Let's Make Beni-Imo Tart! Lessons in Community Care from the Ryukyus

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Let’s Make Beni-Imo Tart” here.

In this workshop, Nozomi and alice will teach participants how to make Beni-imo Tart, an Okinawan dessert featuring Beni-imo, or Okinawan sweet potato. Together, we’ll learn about the cultural significance of Beni-imo, and the importance of community in Okinawan foodways. By the end of the workshop you'll have made yourself a Beni-imo tart and have learned more about the Ryukyu islands as well as the lessons its foodways give us.

Participants will need to acquire the following ingredients before the workshop:

- 4-5 medium-sized Beni-Imo*
- 1 can sweetened condensed milk
- 1 egg (optional)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- pinch of salt
- 1 premade pie shell (flaky or graham cracker crust) OR make your own!

*Some grocery stores sell benimo as "Hawaiian sweet potatoes." Benimo are tannish-white on the outside with small flecks, and purple on the inside. If not available in your local grocery, you can also substitute with regular sweet potatoes or Japanese sweet potatoes.

Nozomi Nakaganeku-Saito is Assistant Professor at Amherst College in English and Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies. Her research focuses on the impacts of US militarism and Japanese settler colonialism on Okinawan ecologies.

alice’s research is rooted in understanding community resilience. Her work centers on themes of care, food, education, and survivance, exploring the lessons embedded in foodways and the insights they offer us. alice is currently pursuing a PhD in Anthropology at UT Austin.

View Event →
Anticolonial Resistance from Puerto Rico to Palestine
Apr
10

Anticolonial Resistance from Puerto Rico to Palestine

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Anticolonial Resistance from Puerto Rico to Palestine” here.

This workshop will explore the connections between anticolonial struggle in Puerto Rico and Palestine. Participants will learn about the history of U.S. colonization in Puerto Rico and how that has led Puerto Ricans to understand themselves as part of a shared struggle against colonial and military violence alongside Palestinians.

Marisol LeBrón is an Associate Professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico (University of California Press, 2019) and Against Muerto Rico: Lessons from the Verano Boricua (Editora Educación Emergente, 2021). Along with Yarimar Bonilla, she is the co-editor of Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm (Haymarket Books, 2019). She is also one of the co-creators and project leaders for the Puerto Rico Syllabus, a digital resource for understanding the Puerto Rican debt crisis. 

View Event →
The Palestine Research Center, Beirut: Selected Publications and Contemporary Relevance
Apr
6

The Palestine Research Center, Beirut: Selected Publications and Contemporary Relevance

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “The Palestine Research Center, Beirut” here.

In this workshop, Louis Allday will discuss the history of the PLO's Palestine Research Center which operated in Beirut from 1965 to 1983, focusing in particular on Fayez Sayegh’s Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965), Ghassan Kanafani’s On Zionist Literature (1967) and Faris Yahya Glubb’s Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany (1978).

He will also discuss his current project, an English-language translation of A History of Zionism by Sabri Jiryis, who previously ran the Palestine Research Center, and which is forthcoming from Ebb Books in 2025. Participants will have a chance to ask questions and participate in discussion.

Louis Allday is a writer, historian and editor. He is the founding editor of Liberated Texts, a book reviewing and publishing project dedicated to reviewing and (re)publishing works that have been neglected, overlooked or suppressed in the mainstream since their publication.

View Event →
Trauma-Informed Reporting
Apr
5

Trauma-Informed Reporting

Step 1: Donate to Tia’s family here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Trauma-Informed Reporting” here.

In this workshop, Marah Abdel Jaber will provide a practical guide on documenting community stories, utilizing oral history collection tools, and exploring journalism’s role in generating personal histories.

Organizers and aspiring writers interested in storytelling as impactful action will learn how to approach individuals and subjects sensitively throughout the pitching, interviewing, and writing process while being mindful of their own trauma consumption.

Drawing on examples from the Institute for Palestine Studies’ blog coverage of the genocide in Gaza, this workshop seeks to equip writers with the skills needed to amplify marginalized narratives and highlight local movements.

Marah Abdel Jaber is a Palestinian writer, researcher, and creative. Her work focuses on constructions of the Palestinian nation, fragmented identities, environmental development, creative movements, and imagined space. She holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Texas at El Paso.

View Event →
Maroon Resistance, Past and Present
Apr
3

Maroon Resistance, Past and Present

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Maroon Resistance, Past and Present” here.

In this workshop, scholar and activist Robert Connell will discuss the history and legacy of Maroon societies in the Caribbean as powerful forms of resistance to slavery in the Americas. Maroons were enslaved Africans and their descendents who escaped their captivity, either fleeing to places where slavery had been abolished or forming their own free societies. 

He will then draw on his own research and fieldwork to discuss how Caribbean Maroon societies in the 21st century continue their freedom struggle by fighting corporate resource extraction on their lands and state encroachment on their sovereignty. Toward the end of the workshop, participants will be invited to discuss the legacies of Maroon struggle and make connections to other present-day forms of Black and Indigenous struggles for autonomy and self-governance.

Robert Connell is a lecturer in Historical Studies at the University of Toronto and co-founder/producer of the End of Isolation Initiative. His publications can be found in the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology and Against the Current.

View Event →
Perfect Victims: A Reading Group
Apr
1

Perfect Victims: A Reading Group

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $35).

Step 2: Register for “Perfect Victims: A Reading Group” here.

Join Timantha Goff for a reading group on Mohammed El Kurd’s timely new book, Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal. We will discuss the book’s themes of Palestinian resistance, resilience, and who is deserving of being seen as a worthy victim.

Participants are encouraged to purchase the book from the Workshops4Gaza bookstore, where all proceeds from books are donated to a different Gaza initiative each month.

Timantha Goff (she/her) is a writer, editor, and policy advocate. She has been heavily involved in community-centered journalism and writing delving on environmental justice, housing inequity, police accountability, and Black maternal health.

View Event →
Autonomies From Below and to the Left
Mar
30

Autonomies From Below and to the Left

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Autonomies from Below and to the Left” here. (Please indicate on the form whether you will be attending in-person or online)

We have always been non-state peoples. As the civilizational crisis in the west intensifies, many peoples around the world deepen their commitments to their own histories and ways of life by declaring their autonomy.

In this workshop, we will examine the ways that communities continue to turn inward and out to build autonomies otherwise. While many of the cases will come from across the Americas, we will also discuss some historical practices of shared or communal tenure, such as the Palestinian Masha'a. We will look at what place-based autonomy means, how peoples or pueblos use it to preserve and protect life, and what lessons we can draw for our own liberation.

George Quispe is a popular educator, militant researcher and interlocutor of critical theory between abiayala and turtle island. His main areas of research are extractivism, critical thought, biopower and popular power. He recently translated Raul Zibechi’s Constructing Worlds Otherwise (Ak press, 2024), and served as a co-editor for NACLA’s Viva Palestina Libre (2024) volume on the connections between Latin America and Palestine.

View Event →
Animal Poetics
Mar
23

Animal Poetics

Step 1: Donate to Wesam’s family here (sugg. donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “Animal Poetics” here.

What happens when an animal enters a poem? This one-session generative workshop features close reading exercises and prompts that encourage poems to transform into habitats where animals can roam. We will read poems by Natalie Diaz, Alycia Pirmohamed, and Gregory Orr among others and pay particular attention to enlivening animals beyond iconography in writing towards faith.

Amogha is a poet and lyric essayist. Her work has recently appeared in Poetry Northwest, Split Lip Magazine, Stanchion Zine and Fahmidan Journal. She was a finalist for the 2024 Sewanee Review poetry contest. She lives and writes on the unceded land of the Lək̓wəŋən peoples in Victoria, BC. Find her on Twitter @amocalypse and on Bluesky at @oracleatdelphi.bsky.social.

View Event →
Tip of the Spear: A Reading Group
Mar
22

Tip of the Spear: A Reading Group

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $35).

Step 2: Register for “Tip of the Spear: A Reading Group” here.

Join Medievalists for Palestine for a reading group on Orisanmi Burton’s Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt during their conference, Open Access Medieval Studies: Liberation, which will run counter to the Centennial Meeting of the Medieval Academy.

We will discuss Burton’s approach to the archives, which he calls “archival war,” and think critically about the ethical obligations of medieval and historical research practices. We will also discuss how counterinsurgent strategies of the state are replicated in academia — including but not limited to medieval studies.

This will also be a space where participants can think together about what practices can effectively fight these regimes of repression.

Participants are encouraged to purchase Orisanmi Burton’s Tip of the Spear from the Workshops4Gaza bookstore, where all proceeds from books are donated to a different Gaza initiative each month.

Medievalists for Palestine (MfP) is a non-hierarchical, leaderless collective of early period scholars advocating for Palestinian liberation. MfP supports the call for BDS and to end Israel’s occupation and colonization of Palestine. It rejects the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism and amplifies the work of groups struggling for and supporting Palestinian liberation.

View Event →
Editing Yourself and Others
Mar
16

Editing Yourself and Others

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $30).

Step 2: Register for “Editing Yourself and Others” here.

In this fun and informative workshop, writer and translator Jen Calleja will lead participants in a discussion and series of exercises around the editing process. How do we approach re-drafting and editing our work? What are important things to remember when editing other people's work? How can we edit translations, including and especially when we can't read the original language? 

Jen Calleja is an author, publisher and literary translator from German. Her books include the memoir-essay collection Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode  (Rough Trade Books, 2024), the novel Vehicle (Prototype, 2022), and the long-form poem Dust Sucker (Makina Books, 2023). She was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Marion Poschmann's The Pine Islands. She is co-publisher at Praspar Press, which supports Maltese literature in English and English translation. Her latest translation is Milk Teeth by Helene Bukowski from MTO Press.

View Event →
How to Talk to Kids About Palestine
Mar
15

How to Talk to Kids About Palestine

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $30).

Step 2: Register for “How to Talk to Kids About Palestine” here.

In this workshop, illustrator Nathi Ngubane will discuss art as a tool for education and communication, and how adults can talk to children about Palestinian liberation. Nathi will then lead us in an all-ages drawing exercise open to parents, kids, and everyone in between.

Nathi Ngubane is a South African-based writer and illustrator. His most recent work is From the River to the Sea: A Colouring Book (Social Bandit Media, 2024), which features illustrations that teach children about the injustice of the Nakba, the history and culture of the land, as well as key concepts driving and sustaining the Palestinian resistance.

View Event →
Tatreez 101 (In-Person)
Mar
8

Tatreez 101 (In-Person)

Sold out!

This workshop will provide a historical overview of Tatreez as a Palestinian cultural practice and art, discussing the historical, cultural, social, and political importance of Tatreez for Palestine and Palestinians. Hala and Sabrene will then instruct workshop attendees on the basics of Tatreez and provide materials and patterns for their first Tatreez project.

Please note this is an IN-PERSON workshop that will take place at Open Books in Seattle, Washington.

Hala Saleh is a Tatreez practitioner who lives in the Seattle area. Hala practices the art of Tatreez both as a way to connect to her Palestinian heritage and culture, but also as a way to resist the erasure of Palestinian identity. Hala runs a local Tatreez circle for Palestinians (Seattle Resistance Tatreez), and teaches Tatreez with her good friend Sabrene Odeh.

Sabrene Odeh is the co-director of Baladna, an organization that hosts Palestinian events for the Pacific Northwest community. She is also a Tatreez instructor, community advocate, and proud Palestinian.

View Event →
A Poetry Reading for Gaza III
Mar
7

A Poetry Reading for Gaza III

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $25).

Step 2: Register for “A Poetry Reading for Gaza III” here.

Join Workshops4Gaza for our third online poetry reading featuring Sarah Ghazal Ali, George Abraham, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Cindy Juyoung Ok. The reading will be followed by a short moderated discussion and Q and A.

Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Sarah is the poetry editor for West Branch and an Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College.

George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet, essayist, critic, performance artist. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket, 2026) and Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), which won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They are the executive editor of Mizna, and co-editor of HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket, 2025). They are a graduate of Northwestern’s Litowitz MFA+MA program, and teach at Amherst College as a Writer-in-Residence.

Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian-American poet and author of Sitti’s Secrets, Habibi, 19 Varieties of Gazelle, The Turtle of Oman, Grace Notes, The Tiny Journalist, and many other books.

Cindy Juyoung Ok is the author of Ward Toward (Yale UP, 2024), the translator of Kim Hyesoon’s The Hell of That Star, and an assistant English professor at UC Davis.

View Event →
Settler Militarism: World War II in Hawaii and the Making of U.S. Empire
Feb
28

Settler Militarism: World War II in Hawaii and the Making of U.S. Empire

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $30).

Step 2: Register for “Settler Militarism” here.

In this workshop, Juliet Nebolon will discuss how settler colonialism and militarization simultaneously perpetuated, legitimated, and concealed one another in wartime Hawaiʻi for the purposes of U.S. empire-building across Asia and the Pacific Islands. Participants will then be invited to make connections between this historical period and the present and ongoing colonization of Hawaii by the U.S. military through issues such as RIMPAC, Red Hill, and more.

Juliet Nebolon is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at Trinity College. Her research and teaching bring a transnational perspective to the study of race, indigeneity, and gender in the United States. She is the author of Settler Militarism: World War II in Hawai‘i and the Making of U.S. Empire (Duke UP, 2024).

View Event →
Manuscript Therapy
Feb
23
to Feb 24

Manuscript Therapy

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here ($100 USD).

Step 2: Register for “Manuscript Therapy” here.

Join writer and translator Anton Hur for a small-group workshop where participants will give and receive feedback on a fiction or translation manuscript of up to 1500 words in conversation with other participants.

Participation will be capped at 6, and registration fee is set at $100USD/participant. Additional masterclasses will follow if interest exceeds this cap.

Anton Hur is the author of TOWARD ETERNITY. He was double-longlisted and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award for his translation of Bora Chung's CURSED BUNNY. He lives in Seoul.

View Event →
Witnessing, Tourism, Solidarity
Feb
22

Witnessing, Tourism, Solidarity

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $50).

Step 2: Register for “Witnessing, Tourism, Solidarity” here.

In this workshop, Jenny Kelly will discuss the history of virtual tourism in Gaza as a form of resistance to the ongoing siege of the Strip. Participants will learn about the labor of Palestinian guides in organizing these tours, as well as how they creatively resist the severing of Gaza from the rest of Palestine by teaching life amidst cycles of genocidal bombardment. Prof. Kelly will then invite participants to reflect on the limitations and possibilities of virtual forms of solidarity, and what it might mean for Palestinians to one day fully control their own borders.

Jenny Kelly is an Associate Professor of feminist studies, critical race studies, and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz. Her first book, Invited to Witness: Solidarity Tourism Across Occupied Palestine (Duke UP, 2023) is a multi-site, interdisciplinary study of solidarity tourism in Palestine that shows how it emerged as an organizing strategy both embedded in and working against histories of displacement. Prof. Kelly is a founding member of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism and UC Santa Cruz’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine. She is also a member of Eyewitness Palestine’s Board of Directors.

View Event →
Memory for Forgetfulness: A Reading Group
Feb
15

Memory for Forgetfulness: A Reading Group

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $45USD).

Step 2: Register for “Memory for Forgetfulness: A Reading Group” here.

Join Bhakti Shringarpure and Suchitra Vijayan of the Radical Books Collective to read and discuss Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness, a book of prose poetry about the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. This reading group will provide an accessible entrypoint for first-time readers of Darwish as well as poetry in general, while giving participants an opportunity to reflect on the current catastrophe in both Palestine and Lebanon.

Participants will have the option of meeting either online or in-person. In-person participation will be limited to 25, and the NYC address will be shared upon registration. All proceeds will go to the Sameer Project, and participants will be asked to purchase a copy of Memory for Forgetfulness from the W4G x Open Books site, where all proceeds are being donated to a different Gaza initiative each month.

Bhakti Shringarpure is the creative director of the Radical Books Collective, a community and solidarity building project that creates alternative approaches to reading by organizing book clubs, events, podcasts and immersive seminars.

Suchitra Vijayan is the author of Midnight’s Borders: A People’s History of Modern India (Melville House, 2021) and the founder of the Polis Project.

View Event →
Poetics of Incantation
Feb
9

Poetics of Incantation

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $60).

Step 2: Register for “Poetics of Incantation” here.

Incantations have the power to cast spells and conjure other worlds. In this workshop, we'll look at the poetry of Etel Adnan, Inger Christensen, and Fred Moten to better understand how rhythm, repetition and ritual can be harnessed to their full power to build a poetics of incantation. This is a generative poetry writing course which will include in-class writing exercises and resources to write & exchange work after the workshop.

Tracy Fuad's second poetry collection, PORTAL, won the Phoenix Emerging Poets' Prize and was published in 2024 by the University of Chicago Press. A 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, she lives in Berlin, where she directs the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.

View Event →
Confronting Reproductive Imperialism
Jan
29

Confronting Reproductive Imperialism

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $50).

Step 2: Register for “Confronting Reproductive Imperialism” here.

This workshop will situate pregnancy criminalization, political attacks on abortion access, and the proliferation of "Cop Cities" within the context of biopolitical and necropolitical control of colonized peoples. We will define and discuss reproductive imperialism as policies and technologies which undermine self-determination that the U.S. imposes on its citizens at home, and exports internationally.

Participants will then consider the malleability of U.S. constitutional law, the limits of the UN Human Rights framework, and critically reflect on the strategies and tactics deployed by the U.S. reproductive justice movement. How can we reimagine reproductive justice as a global, interconnected movement that resists both local and transnational forms of reproductive oppression? What does a decolonial reproductive justice praxis look like? In this workshop, we will explore those answers together.

Jalessah T. Jackson is a Black queer (m)other based in Atlanta. They are a cultural worker, reproductive justice practitioner, community-based educator, and the founder of the Decolonial Feminist Collective (DFC), a political project utilizing decolonial Black feminist frameworks in political education, mutual aid, and international solidarity-building.

View Event →
MUSE: A Chapbook Launch and Reading
Jan
26

MUSE: A Chapbook Launch and Reading

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $40).

Step 2: Register for “MUSE: A Chapbook Launch and Reading” here.

Join Kelsey L. Smoot for a launch and reading of their new chapbook, MUSE—a collection of poems that invoke both “muses” and “musing,” about the people Kelsey loves, reveres, and reviles, poems that are decidedly southern, melancholic, and together comprise a discordant freedom song. Kelsey will be joined by fellow poets and performers Muhammad Khaerisman, Kiera “Ashlee Haze” Nelson, Nadia Said, and Paula Turcotte.

Kelsey L. Smoot (They/Them/He/Him) is a poet, advocate, frequent writer of critical analysis as well as a full-time PhD student in the interdisciplinary social sciences and humanities. They are the winner of the 2021 Sad Girls Club Literary Contest, the 2023 The Good Life Review Honeybee Prize, the Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Button Poetry Video Contest, a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, as well as the author of a chapbook titled WE WAS BOIS TOGETHER (Mouthfeel Press).

Muhammad Khaerisman (he/him) is a Muslim Indonesian-born, Alief, Houston-raised poet, actor and multidisciplinary storyteller. Co-Founder of FACES, an artist network and creative incubator for visionary performance and visual arts, Khaerisman travels the world building communities and collaborations.

Kiera “Ashlee Haze” Nelson (she/her) is a poet and spoken word artist from Atlanta by way of Chicago. She has been a part of the Atlanta Poetry circuit for over a decade and has been writing for over 15 years. Her sophomore book SMOKE was released in 2020.

Nadia Said is a Palestinian poet living in the diaspora. She will be published in the upcoming poetry anthology Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket Books, 2025) and Sapiens Magazine

Paula Turcotte lives in Moh'kins'stis (colonially known as Calgary, Alberta). She is the author of the chapbook Permutations (Baseline Press, 2024). Paula serves as a poetry editor at MAYDAY, where she first had the pleasure of reading Kelsey's work.

View Event →
Verses of the Watched: Poetry Under/Against Surveillance
Jan
25

Verses of the Watched: Poetry Under/Against Surveillance

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $60).

Step 2: Register for “Verses of the Watched” here.

This workshop examines the rich lineage of poetry that interrogates how surveillance shapes issues of national security, personal privacy, and the visibility of Arab and other marginalized communities. We will analyze the craft of those under watch, studying how they write about, against, and under surveillance.

We will explore the work of poets including Solmaz Sharif, Claudia Rankine, Tariq Dobbs, Maricela Guerrero, and Khadijah Queen, paying attention to poems that both mask and reveal, encode and declare. From the stark halls of military bases to the intimate corners of private life, these poets challenge the boundaries of visibility and silence. Bring your eyes & your watching back. 

Maya Salameh is the author of HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, The Offing, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, ANMLY, and the LA Times, among others. She can be found @mayaslmh or mayasalameh.com. She dreams of a free Palestine.

View Event →
Collaging Possibility and Futurity
Jan
23

Collaging Possibility and Futurity

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $60).

Step 2: Register for “Collaging Possibility and Futurity” here.

We arrive at collage art as a way of building anew out of the existing, as world-building practice. In this workshop, we’ll collage together as a method of insisting on futurity, of questioning who we are at our most free, and what elements need tearing apart, reorienting, layering, shifting, and/or re-rooting to arrive there.

Through generative art-making prompts and discussion around existing collage artworks that embody anti-colonialism and radical imagination, we will create collages that activate mixed media for protest, perspective-shifting, and beyond.

Ayling Zulema Dominguez is a poet, educator, and community artist who writes and creates against borders, toward land rematriation, and the embodiment of abolitionist futurisms. Their storytelling is rooted ancestrally in the lands of Puebla, Mexico (Nahua) and the island of Quisqueya.

Motyko Morales is a first generation Honduran-Cuban multi-disciplinary artist and organizer from Seminole-Tequesta land, Miami, Florida. Her work is rooted in imagining a world free of borders and carceral systems.

View Event →
The Criminalization of Student Activism in the History of Modern Genocide
Jan
20

The Criminalization of Student Activism in the History of Modern Genocide

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $60).

Step 2: Register for “The Criminalization of Student Protest” here.

This workshop turns to the history of the targeting of civilian populations in 20th century wars as a means of deterrence and subjugation. Historically, student protests have been ways to acknowledge and decry modern war’s pursuit of those populations. We will discuss how the criminalization of student protests has been a response to that acknowledgment and denunciation.

Roderick A. Ferguson is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of One-Dimensional Queer (Polity Books, 2018), We Demand: The University and Student Protests (UC Press, 2017),  The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference (U of Minnesota, 2012), and Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (U of Minnesota, 2004).

View Event →
Sashiko 101
Jan
17

Sashiko 101

Registration for this workshop is now full!

Want to learn to reinforce worn clothes, patch tears, stitch a wall hanging, or decorate your own small half-moon pouch? In “Sashiko 101,” participants will learn the basics of sashiko, a type of traditional Japanese embroidery used to reinforce cloth, and will leave the workshop with their own decorated small half-moon zippered pouch.

Sarah will provide all participants with a starter kit consisting of pre-cut indigo fabric, black zipper, white sashiko thread, needle, needle threader, pins, and assorted extra patches of fabric for future decoration and mending, and will teach the basics of sashiko step-by-step. Participants will have time to decorate their fabric or patch their clothes, and enjoy learning a new craft in community.

Note: This is an IN-PERSON workshop. Registration is limited to 20 participants.

Sarah Matsui is an interdisciplinary writer and the winner of the Sewanee Review Nonfiction Contest, the Fractured Lit Contest, and the Bread Loaf Katharine Bakeless Nason Award. Her first book, Learning From Counternarratives in Teach For America, was featured in NPR Code Switch, Jacobin Magazine, and Rethinking Schools Magazine’s “Our Picks for Books for Social Justice Teaching: Policy.” Her poems and essays have appeared in the San Francisco Asian Art Museum, The Southern Review, The Seventh Wave, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Pleiades. She is currently a 2024-2025 resident with the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

View Event →
On Subversion and Cooptation
Jan
16

On Subversion and Cooptation

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $60).

Step 2: Register for “On Subversion and Cooptation” here.

In this workshop, Shellyne Rodriguez will discuss ideas of subversion and cooptation in relation to anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggle, as framed through her drawing practice as an artist. The talk will be followed by a Q and A and discussion.

Shellyne Rodriguez is an artist, educator, writer, and community organizer based in the Bronx. Her practice utilizes text, drawing, painting, collage and sculpture to depict spaces and subjects engaged in strategies of survival against erasure and subjugation.

View Event →
The Third Event: Reading Sylvia Wynter
Jan
15

The Third Event: Reading Sylvia Wynter

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $45).

Step 2: Register for “The Third Event” here.

In this workshop, participants will explore key reading methodologies for engaging the ideas and writings of Sylvia Wynter.

Sylvia Wynter is a Jamaican writer and performer whose work combines the insights of Black expressive traditions and practices with natural sciences, the humanities, and anti-colonial struggles to consider how Black life holds the keys to understanding both our current predicaments and the practices / ways of life that might allow us to break from these predicaments.

Both avid readers of Wynter’s writings and those new to her work will familiarize themselves with her key interlocutors and methodological insights. The goal of the workshop is to offer a supportive environment to those who feel drawn to Wynter’s writing and would like to better engage her work on its own terms.

Bedour Alagraa is Assistant Professor of Political and Social Thought in the Department of African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is interested in Black radical genealogies in political theory, history/ies of political concepts, Caribbean thought, African anti-colonial thought, and Black Marxisms, among other topics.

She has also studied and written extensively on the works of Jamaican writer Sylvia Wynter, and is a member of the editorial team currently editing Wynter’s monograph, Black Metamorphosis.

Her book manuscript, The Interminable Catastrophe (forthcoming from Duke University Press) charts a conceptual history of catastrophe as a political category / concept (rather than Event) via its inauguration in early modern natural science and empiricist debates, and subsequent crystallization as a concept on the plantation. It also considers how we might interrupt the “Bad Infinity” of the catastrophic, via the works of Sylvia Wynter, Kamau Brathwaite, Clyde Woods, Derek Walcott, and others.

View Event →
Literary Sportswriting
Jan
13

Literary Sportswriting

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $45USD).

Step 2: Register for “Literary Sportswriting” here.

Whether you're a current or former athlete yourself or just love watching the game, humans are fascinated by the ways our bodies can move. But how do we write about sports so readers feel like they're experiencing the magic themselves?

In this literary sportswriting workshop, you'll be inspired to start crafting an essay that captures the fun, excitement, and edge-of-your-seat thrill of your favorite sport. Whether you love team sports, action sports, or individual physical pursuits like running or yoga, you'll deep dive into memory to recall the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures that bring sports to life. You’ll also engage with writing prompts that will help you find the story behind the story––the social, political, and personal aspects that make sports more than the sum of their parts and keep readers coming back for more.

Mandy Shunnarah (they/them) is an Alabama-born Appalachian and Palestinian-American writer who calls Columbus, Ohio, home. Their essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in The New York Times, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and others. Their first book, Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland was released in 2024 from Belt Publishing, and their second book, a poetry collection titled We Had Mansions, is forthcoming from Diode Editions in 2025. Read more at mandyshunnarah.com.

View Event →
Reimagining Space: Against Settler Colonial Space Futures
Jan
11
to Jan 12

Reimagining Space: Against Settler Colonial Space Futures

Step 1: Donate to the Abu Al-Kombuz family here (suggested donation $75USD).

Step 2: Register for “Reimagining Space” here.

This workshop is a two-part lecture and discussion series addressing urgent issues in space and how they relate to Earth. What does ethics mean in the context of space? Is it possible to explore space ethically? How do military interests drive Mars exploration? Led by multi-disciplinary researchers and organizers Dr. C. Adeene Denton and Dr. Divya M. Persaud, this series will provide an overview of how space is grounded in real-world oppression, colonialism, and genocide and a chance to discuss together how this could be changed.

Dr. C. Adeene Denton is a scientist and historian who studies the evolution of ocean worlds and the history of space exploration. She is an avid astrohumanist focused on approaching future planetary exploration from a scientific and humanistic perspective, and is the co-founder of the Ethics and Human Rights in the Space Sector project group for the Space Generation Advisory Council. 

Dr. Divya M. Persaud is a planetary geologist, multi-disciplinary researcher, writer, and artist. Her research focuses both on using planetary imaging to study sediments in the solar system, and the political economy of the space industry and its relationship with the arms trade. She has spoken internationally about colonialism and space, and her work was recently published with the Palestine Space Institute.

View Event →
Grief Rage and Healing: A Songwriting Workshop
Jan
10

Grief Rage and Healing: A Songwriting Workshop

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $45).

Step 2: Register for “Grief, Rage and Healing” here.

In this workshop, participants will learn the fundamentals of songwriting and will write a song together to collectively grieve the losses caused by the genocide of the Palestinian people. This will be a space to channel rage and sorrow into a healing song of our making. Participants will leave the workshop with a song that they can return to when they are feeling hopeless, reminding them they are not the only one wanting Palestinian liberation and land back now.

Anais Azul (they/them) is a Peruvian-born, California-grown composer, vocalist, and Charango player. Today their music transports us to a dreamy realm where Andean sounds and experimental electronic production are tied together through stories and lyrics as well as migration, healing and resilience in English, Spanish and Quechua.

View Event →