By Mary Blas Twas the third week of “lockdown” when all through the house, Surprises abounded—thank God, not a mouse! Julia sat wondering where the day went Mentally calculating if time’d been well spent. The U.S.A. jigsaw she’d found in a cupboard Lay halfway completed—‘cept for those states more inward. The cleared linen closet revealed massive […]
by MonaLisa Ortiz-Rosa When I was a kid I thought my Spanish Harlem cousins were rich because they lived in the projects. Their high rise building had an intercom, elevators and flat walls with doors on all the rooms with doorknobs. Our sixth floor floor tenement on the Lower East Side was a broken tiled […]
by Michele Klausner In the olden days we called them dungarees. They cost about five bucks and we wouldn’t be caught dead in them. Girls were required to wear skirts all through my school years even up to and including the first orientation week of college way back in 1965. Dungarees were heavy, in those […]
by JSmith She who cooks, eats, at least in my house. Though I enjoy good food, I am not a gourmet. I’m not interested in recipes that take hours to prepare or ones that require precise temperatures or fussy ingredients – a quarter teaspoon of a spice I may never use again, a particular kind […]
by Jenson Smith Elmira steers her Target cart around the woman with eight million children and races into the bathroom. She can hear the cart slamming against the concrete wall as she locks the stall door and yanks her pants down. “Uff da! That was a close one,” she thinks. Her timing has been off […]
Alisha Acquaye is a writer, artist and event organizer with a passion for mutual empowerment across POC communities, and self-imagination as an instrument for resistance. Her work—ranging from journalism, creative nonfiction and multi-media collaboration—explores the relationships between art, identity, culture and intersectionality. Alisha is particularly inspired by the creative and afrofuturistic methods Black people use […]
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane to a time far, far ago aka last year. We asked our wonderful NYWC staff, board members and workshop leaders to share their favorite thing(s) they’ve read this year.
You may already know that NY Writers Coalition’s community of writers comes from a wide range of backgrounds. But did you know that many of our workshop participants become leaders in the very same communities that inspired them to write in the first place? More than 20% of NYWC’s current workshop leaders are former workshop […]