The Letters Festival
Fri, 14 Nov 2025, 7:00 PM - Sat, 15 Nov 2025, 8:00 PM EST
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The Letters Festival is a two-day creative writing event with live readings, generative writing workshops, performances, and dialogues, featuring some of the country’s most exciting contemporary authors and artists.
All event tickets are sliding scale, $10 - $50.
All event tickets are sliding scale, $10 - $50.
Friday, Nov 14:
7–9PM
Readings by Emrys Donaldson, Zefyr Lisowski, Victoria Chang, and a performance by T. Lang (full bios below)
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Readings by Emrys Donaldson, Zefyr Lisowski, Victoria Chang, and a performance by T. Lang (full bios below)
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Saturday, Nov 15:
1:30–3:30PM:
Poetics of Dread poetry workshop with Zefyr Lisowski
So much poetry is concerned with capturing transformative, epiphanic moments—think of the famous command concluding Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Achilles" that "you must change your life." But what do we do with the feelings of dread, discomfort, or fear that are similarly destabilizing? What effects do poems in more negative, eerie, or uncanny registers have on us? Through generative prompts, discussions, and close readings of a range of poets from Hiromi Ito to Frank Bidart to Ai Ogawa, this workshop looks at the ways incorporating more uneasy feelings and images in your work can help usher in transformations—poetically and personally—too.
So much poetry is concerned with capturing transformative, epiphanic moments—think of the famous command concluding Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Achilles" that "you must change your life." But what do we do with the feelings of dread, discomfort, or fear that are similarly destabilizing? What effects do poems in more negative, eerie, or uncanny registers have on us? Through generative prompts, discussions, and close readings of a range of poets from Hiromi Ito to Frank Bidart to Ai Ogawa, this workshop looks at the ways incorporating more uneasy feelings and images in your work can help usher in transformations—poetically and personally—too.
1:30–3:30PM:
Play[writing]: Playing on the Page workshop with Dana Stringer
What do we do if we find ourselves uninspired and unmotivated to write, or we dread returning to that rough draft to make revisions? And then a sequence of rejection letters tanks our confidence. Even the thought of embarking on new work feels daunting, especially as we navigate constant demands for our time and attention. Well, what if we prioritized writing as mandatory playtime–a time to abandon expectations, to relinquish the rules, to rid ourselves from the responsibility of having results, and just release all the pressure to produce something? Imagine play as the plan, the pursuit, and the purpose of writing. In this workshop, we’ll discuss overcoming barriers to writing before diving into writing prompts to generate new ideas, and reengage with the joy of writing and the creative process. Although playwriting will be the focus, participants will experiment with crossing genres, blending forms, and rediscovering their poetic license as writers.
What do we do if we find ourselves uninspired and unmotivated to write, or we dread returning to that rough draft to make revisions? And then a sequence of rejection letters tanks our confidence. Even the thought of embarking on new work feels daunting, especially as we navigate constant demands for our time and attention. Well, what if we prioritized writing as mandatory playtime–a time to abandon expectations, to relinquish the rules, to rid ourselves from the responsibility of having results, and just release all the pressure to produce something? Imagine play as the plan, the pursuit, and the purpose of writing. In this workshop, we’ll discuss overcoming barriers to writing before diving into writing prompts to generate new ideas, and reengage with the joy of writing and the creative process. Although playwriting will be the focus, participants will experiment with crossing genres, blending forms, and rediscovering their poetic license as writers.
4–6PM:
Opening Movements fiction workshop with Doug Jones
The opening of a book or short story is its most critical element. It is the writer’s, inviting the reader to begin an imaginative journey spanning the next few hundred pages. In this workshop we will consider the opening pages of Morrison’s Song of Solomon and a story from Randall Kenan’s collection Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. We will analyze how the author uses pacing, rhythm, descriptions, introductions of characters, voice, the setting, the weather, and other elements to create the symphonic tone in which the entirety of the story is set. We will analyze how each author’s decisions contribute to the atmosphere of their story, driving the reader’s interest forward. Participants are asked to read at least the first nine pages of the Song of Solomon and the first five pages of “Clarence and the Dead” in Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. Participants will be given an opportunity to present their own work.
The opening of a book or short story is its most critical element. It is the writer’s, inviting the reader to begin an imaginative journey spanning the next few hundred pages. In this workshop we will consider the opening pages of Morrison’s Song of Solomon and a story from Randall Kenan’s collection Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. We will analyze how the author uses pacing, rhythm, descriptions, introductions of characters, voice, the setting, the weather, and other elements to create the symphonic tone in which the entirety of the story is set. We will analyze how each author’s decisions contribute to the atmosphere of their story, driving the reader’s interest forward. Participants are asked to read at least the first nine pages of the Song of Solomon and the first five pages of “Clarence and the Dead” in Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. Participants will be given an opportunity to present their own work.
6:30–8:30PM:
Readings by Sommer Browning, Danika Stegeman, Doug Jones, and a dramatic monologue by Dana Stringer (full bios below)
Author & Artist Bios
Dana L. Stringer is an Atlanta-based playwright, poet, teaching artist, and writing instructor with an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She is a Cave Canem fellow and an associate artist at Out of Hand Theater. Her plays, staged readings, and dramatic monologues have been produced by True Colors Theatre, Theatrical Outfit, The Billie Holiday Theatre, Out of Hand Theater, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Vanguard Repertory Company, Fade to Black Play Festival, and other organizations. Dana is the author of the chapbook In Between Faith. Her poems are published in anthologies and literary journals like the African American Review and Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.
Danika Stegeman is the author of Ablation (11:11 Press, 2023) and Pilot (Spork Press, 2020). She received a 2023 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant. Her video poem, “Then Betelgeuse Reappears” was an official selection for the 2021 Midwest Video Poetry Fest. She’s an assistant editor for Conduit and serves as board treasurer for Fonograf Editions. Along with Jace Brittain, she co-curates the online collaborative reading series It’s Copperhead Season. Stegeman received her MFA in creative writing from George Mason University where she was awarded the Heritage Fellowship. She lives in St. Paul, MN. Her website is danikastegeman.com.
Doug Jones, an alumnus of Morehouse College, received his MFA from Columbia University. His debut novel, The Fantasies of Future Things (Simon & Schuster) has been longlisted for the 2025 First Novel Prize. His work has been anthologized in Black Love Letters (Zando Projects), Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press) and Sojourner: Black Gay Voices (Other Countries Press). Doug has written for LitHub.com, Black Issues Book Review and Venus Magazine. An inaugural fellow of the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, Doug lives in Atlanta.
Emrys Donaldson is the author of the short story collection The Iridescents (Texas Review Press). His stories have recently been anthologized in Queer Little Nightmares (Arsenal Pulp Press) and published in venues such as LitHub and Electric Literature. He is an Assistant Professor of English at SUNY Geneseo.
Sommer Browning is a poet, writer, and artist. Her latest book is Good Actors (Birds, LLC; 2022). She’s the author of two other collections of poetry, Backup Singers and Either Way I’m Celebrating, as well as the artist book, The Circle Book (Cuneiform Press), the joke book, You’re On My Period (Counterpath), and others. Her poetry, art writing, and visual art have appeared in Brooklyn Rail Lit Hub, Bomb, Artforum, Chicago Review, The American Poetry Review, The Comics Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.
T. Lang is a shape-shifting architect of embodied Black futurism. Her work merges contemporary modern dance with immersive technology, poetic storytelling, and radical pedagogy to illuminate narratives rooted in identity, history, and community. With a choreographic language that is physically evocative and emotionally resonant, Lang invites audiences into powerful, subjective experiences shaped by cultural memory and collective inquiry as the Artistic Director of T. Lang Dance. Lang was the Inaugural Chair of the Dance Performance and Choreography Department at Spelman College, and reimagined dance education through a decolonial lens; developing curricula that frame embodiment as a 21st-century intellectual, artistic, and civic practice. Her courses interrogate the movement of Black bodies through historical, political, and liberatory frameworks, positioning the classroom as both studio and site of social reckoning.
Victoria Chang's most recent book of poems is With My Back to the World, published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the U.S. and Corsair/Little Brown in the U.K. It received the Forward Prize in Poetry for Best Collection and was named a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the PEN Jean Stein Book Award. OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN/Voelcker Award. It was also a finalist for the Griffin International Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as longlisted for the National Book Award. Other recent books include The Trees Witness Everything and her nonfiction book, Dear Memory. She has written several children’s books as well and Eureka is forthcoming from FSG Books for Young Readers in 2026. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Chowdhury International Prize in Literature, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and Director of Poetry@Tech.
Zefyr Lisowski is the author of the forthcoming Uncanny Valley Girls, an essay collection about horror movies, exes, and intimacy (Harper Perennial 2025). A 2023 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Nonfiction and 2023 Queer|Art Fellow, she’s also the author of two poetry collections, Girl Work (Noemi Press 2024) and Blood Box (Black Lawrence 2019). Raised in the Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina, Zefyr lives in Brooklyn and has seen grave robbers twice.
Zen Cohen received her MFA in Art Studio at the University of California at Davis and BFA in Film, Video and Performance at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the deYoung Museum (CA), SFMOMA (CA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (CA), Vanity Projects (NY), The Momentary (AR), and internationally at the Museo de Arte Moderno (CDMX, Mexico), Ex Teresa Arte Actual (CDMX, Mexico) and Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (Canary Islands, Spain). Her photographs have been published in Hyperallergic, Art Practical, Artnet, Routledge and Southern Illinois University Press. She is the founder, director and curator of the Open Air Media Festival. This outdoor media arts program received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support the 2024 festival.
Author & Artist Bios
Dana L. Stringer is an Atlanta-based playwright, poet, teaching artist, and writing instructor with an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She is a Cave Canem fellow and an associate artist at Out of Hand Theater. Her plays, staged readings, and dramatic monologues have been produced by True Colors Theatre, Theatrical Outfit, The Billie Holiday Theatre, Out of Hand Theater, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Vanguard Repertory Company, Fade to Black Play Festival, and other organizations. Dana is the author of the chapbook In Between Faith. Her poems are published in anthologies and literary journals like the African American Review and Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora.
Danika Stegeman is the author of Ablation (11:11 Press, 2023) and Pilot (Spork Press, 2020). She received a 2023 Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant. Her video poem, “Then Betelgeuse Reappears” was an official selection for the 2021 Midwest Video Poetry Fest. She’s an assistant editor for Conduit and serves as board treasurer for Fonograf Editions. Along with Jace Brittain, she co-curates the online collaborative reading series It’s Copperhead Season. Stegeman received her MFA in creative writing from George Mason University where she was awarded the Heritage Fellowship. She lives in St. Paul, MN. Her website is danikastegeman.com.
Doug Jones, an alumnus of Morehouse College, received his MFA from Columbia University. His debut novel, The Fantasies of Future Things (Simon & Schuster) has been longlisted for the 2025 First Novel Prize. His work has been anthologized in Black Love Letters (Zando Projects), Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press) and Sojourner: Black Gay Voices (Other Countries Press). Doug has written for LitHub.com, Black Issues Book Review and Venus Magazine. An inaugural fellow of the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, Doug lives in Atlanta.
Emrys Donaldson is the author of the short story collection The Iridescents (Texas Review Press). His stories have recently been anthologized in Queer Little Nightmares (Arsenal Pulp Press) and published in venues such as LitHub and Electric Literature. He is an Assistant Professor of English at SUNY Geneseo.
Sommer Browning is a poet, writer, and artist. Her latest book is Good Actors (Birds, LLC; 2022). She’s the author of two other collections of poetry, Backup Singers and Either Way I’m Celebrating, as well as the artist book, The Circle Book (Cuneiform Press), the joke book, You’re On My Period (Counterpath), and others. Her poetry, art writing, and visual art have appeared in Brooklyn Rail Lit Hub, Bomb, Artforum, Chicago Review, The American Poetry Review, The Comics Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.
T. Lang is a shape-shifting architect of embodied Black futurism. Her work merges contemporary modern dance with immersive technology, poetic storytelling, and radical pedagogy to illuminate narratives rooted in identity, history, and community. With a choreographic language that is physically evocative and emotionally resonant, Lang invites audiences into powerful, subjective experiences shaped by cultural memory and collective inquiry as the Artistic Director of T. Lang Dance. Lang was the Inaugural Chair of the Dance Performance and Choreography Department at Spelman College, and reimagined dance education through a decolonial lens; developing curricula that frame embodiment as a 21st-century intellectual, artistic, and civic practice. Her courses interrogate the movement of Black bodies through historical, political, and liberatory frameworks, positioning the classroom as both studio and site of social reckoning.
Victoria Chang's most recent book of poems is With My Back to the World, published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the U.S. and Corsair/Little Brown in the U.K. It received the Forward Prize in Poetry for Best Collection and was named a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the PEN Jean Stein Book Award. OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the PEN/Voelcker Award. It was also a finalist for the Griffin International Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as longlisted for the National Book Award. Other recent books include The Trees Witness Everything and her nonfiction book, Dear Memory. She has written several children’s books as well and Eureka is forthcoming from FSG Books for Young Readers in 2026. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Chowdhury International Prize in Literature, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and Director of Poetry@Tech.
Zefyr Lisowski is the author of the forthcoming Uncanny Valley Girls, an essay collection about horror movies, exes, and intimacy (Harper Perennial 2025). A 2023 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Nonfiction and 2023 Queer|Art Fellow, she’s also the author of two poetry collections, Girl Work (Noemi Press 2024) and Blood Box (Black Lawrence 2019). Raised in the Great Dismal Swamp, North Carolina, Zefyr lives in Brooklyn and has seen grave robbers twice.
Zen Cohen received her MFA in Art Studio at the University of California at Davis and BFA in Film, Video and Performance at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the deYoung Museum (CA), SFMOMA (CA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (CA), Vanity Projects (NY), The Momentary (AR), and internationally at the Museo de Arte Moderno (CDMX, Mexico), Ex Teresa Arte Actual (CDMX, Mexico) and Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (Canary Islands, Spain). Her photographs have been published in Hyperallergic, Art Practical, Artnet, Routledge and Southern Illinois University Press. She is the founder, director and curator of the Open Air Media Festival. This outdoor media arts program received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support the 2024 festival.