S169.
Beyond Zoom: Building Vibrant Literary Communities in a New Hybrid Era
Saturday, February 10, 2024
12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Community is essential to a writer’s growth, but what do you do when spaces are inhospitable to your community? Build your own! These innovative authors share how they’ve built thriving programs for diverse NYC fiction writers, global Muslim writers, women/nonbinary writers, domestic workers, and BIPOC+ authors. We share strategies and tools to empower anyone eager to create a nurturing space that centers writers of color, language justice, disability justice, and voices at the intersections.
Participants
Karina Muñiz-Pagán is a queer Xicana memoir and fiction writer. She cofounded the writers' collective, Las Malcriadas, to center Latina immigrant storytelling. She is a community-based creative writing coach and teacher, and the strategic partnerships director for the Unicorn Authors Club.
Minal Hajratwala founded the Unicorn Authors Club to coach BIPOC and ally writers to finish books. She authored Leaving India (winner of four nonfiction awards), Bountiful Instructions for Enlightenment (poetry), Moon Fiji (travel), and edited Out! Stories from the New Queer India (anthology).
Randy Winston is the director of writing programs at The Center for Fiction and the former fiction editor at Slice Literary Mag. He sits on the board for WriteOn NYC and Orion Magazine. He holds a Bachelors from Kennesaw State where he was the first student to ever deliver a commencement address.
M. Nafisah Cabrera Estévez, is a cofounder of the Muslim Writers' Salon, a global membership community. She currently lives in Central Portugal and is a Muslim Cuban American writer, entrepreneur, and writing coach.
Juanita E. Mantz (JEM) is a writer & lawyer with two books, Portrait of a Deputy Public Defender: or, how I became a punk rock lawyer (Bamboo Dart Press, 2021) andTales of an Inland Empire Girl (Los Nietos Press, 2022). She produces the Life of JEM podcast where she interviews writers on writing.
