Co-led by Franciszka Voeltz and Jennifer Morales, "Plant the Seed" is a workshop designed to break writers through barriers that keep them from creating the work they are meant to write.
Together we will practice moving forward in our writing—without apology. Writers of all levels and genres are welcome (including those who don't call themselves writers) to join in the work and play of cracking open our writer-hearts, busting out of our stuck practices, and harnessing the power of what emerges. After working through a series of generative exercises designed to help you create fresh work and break you out of habitual patterns, we will close the session by naming new commitments to our writing—planting the seed for future work.
The workshop session will be followed by a reading featuring our facilitators, Franciszka Voletz & Jennifer Morales, as well as an open mic. The reading and open mic are free and open to the public—if your inspired to read brand new writing from the workshop or something finished you brought along, we'd love to hear you!
Sharing your work and reading at the open mic is always optional. Facilitation will be in English, but you should feel free to write in any language.
This event is supported in part by Poets & Writers.
Schedule
3 pm- 6 pm
Plant the Seed Generative Workshop
7 pm - 8.30 pm
Reading & Open-Mic
featuring Franciszka Voeltz & Jennifer Morales
Open to the public
Parking Information:
The Black Labrador has a few parking spots in front of the entrance. Plenty of additional parking is available in a covered lot directly behind the building accessible from Colquitt Street, and will be validated for workshop attendees. Street parking is also available.
About Failure to Identify
Since May 2012, Failure to Identify has been an experiment in creating spaces for innovative, interdisciplinary & risk-taking writers & artists to perform in Houston. Usually these events feature writers from out-of-town, often in conjunction with locally-based folk. The series has no fixed schedule and is super-occasional and super-dependent on happy coincidences and friendly participants. Events have sometimes been held on the back patio of Kaboom Books or at other times in conjunction with local organizations like Art League, Project Row Houses, Fotofest and more.
Participants: 12
Cost: $45
Facilitators
Franciszka Voeltz
From the crossroads of writing and social practice, Franciszka Voeltz writes poems-to-go on a portable typewriter for magnificent strangers in public places, curates a collective poem to the entire planet, and has two decades’ experience facilitating community writing workshops and readings in living rooms, at universities, and everywhere in between. Writing together is her favorite way to be with people. Voeltz’s chapbook POETXTS is available from Imaginary Friend Press, and her work has appeared in journals including Dark Mountain, Analecta Literary Journal, and Adrienne. Voeltz is the recipient of various poetry fellowships including those granted by the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Art Farm. She earned an MFA in Writing from the University of California, San Diego.
photo credit: Meredith Riggs
Jennifer Morales
Jennifer Morales is a queer Latina poet, fiction writer, and performance artist whose work across genres wrestles with questions of gender, identity, complicity, and harm. She has led writing workshops for all ages—1st-graders through adults—and has been called (by the adults, not the 1st-graders) “a natural-born teacher.” She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University-Los Angeles in 2011. Jennifer’s first book, Meet Me Halfway (UW Press, 2015), a short story collection about life in hyper-segregated Milwaukee, was Wisconsin Center for the Book’s 2016 “Book of the Year.” Reviewers called it “a compelling debut” (Booklist) and Jennifer “an impressively gifted writer” (Midwest Book Review). Excerpts of her unpublished novel, Junction, appeared in The Account (spring 2017) and in Happy Hours: Our Lives in the Gay Bars (Flashpoint, 2017), edited by S. Renée Bess and Lee Lynch. Recent publications also include poems in MAYDAY and in "Pulsamos," a special issue of Glass Poetry dedicated to the Pulse nightclub victims. She’s the president of the board of the Driftless Writing Center, building literary community in rural Southwestern Wisconsin. www.moraleswrites.com