When two long-time friends talk poems, writing, and promotion, you know it’s going to be a treat. Sarah and Cynthia first met more than 20 years ago in London, where they were both active in the open mic scene. In this In Conversation event they talk about both creativity and process: the structures of their respective collections as book-length “projects,” how their own journeys with OCD/anxiety have impacted their work; form and the relationship of form to writing in other genres (specifically how their recent collections opened the door for prose), and the benefits of joining forces this past year on book tour and book promotions.
What a joyful event! Dzvinia & María Luisa read poems and talked about multilingualism, translation, and poetry as church. While their relationship started as one of mentor and student, they now call one another cherished friends with a shared passion for exploring how primary languages shape identity and existence.
On January 28, 2025, poets Carolyn Oliver and Hannah Larrabee read from their respective collections and discussed both creativity and craft. Throughout the event, the two poets shared a reverence for science and deep wonder for–and curiosity in–the world (both seen and unseen).
As darkest day of the year approaches, we hope to bring you some light!
Happy holidays from The Notebooks Collective! We want to thank everyone who joined us to celebrate Saara Myrene Raappana in November and for joining us as we welcomed creatives in conversation throughout the year. 2024 also saw our first ever collective reading and the launch our first series of classes.
We appreciate our guests. We appreciate the teachers and students who trusted us to build them a space to learn together. We appreciate you. You can read a brief year in review here.
We have spent a lot of time behind the scenes reaching out to writers and creatives to build a amazing schedule for next year. Our line up for 2025 is so stupendous and amazing and we are very excited to announce our roster!
In Conversation: 2025!
Our (almost) monthly series is back! We love these intimate conversations between writers who love each other’s work. Join us as our guests share their writing, their creative process, and their love for the written word. Our conversations in January, February, and March are available for registration now. As always our In Conversation events are online, free, and open to everyone. Register to get the Zoom link and reminders.
We’ll not lie and say the election didn’t shake us to our core. We believe now more than ever, community and connection are important. That’s why we are hosting our first Community Hour! Drop in to hear what others are doing in terms of their art and share your own news! If you have suggestions on what you might like to see happen during on these hours — email us!
Join us for a two-hour class with past Notebooks Collective guest and editor at Tahoma Literary Review Jessica Cuello. Jess’s most recent book, Yours Creature, is composed of epistolary poems in the voice of Mary Shelley.
Jess will teach this generative course that will look attentively at poems by AI, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Patricia Smith among others. We’ll explore ways to enter persona and deepen the imaginative possibilities of writing outside ourselves.
Pauletta Hansel will return next year to teach two classes – one on epistolary writing and the other on how to give feedback.
We are also excited to welcome past Notebooks guests José Angel Araguz, Jessica Cuello, and Daniel Summerhill, and March 2025’s guest Cynthia Marie Hoffman, who will be offering classes in a variety of topics, including creating new work, managing the editing process, and submitting your work to journals!
We Love to Hear from You
Please feel free to reach out if you have ideas for our community hours, classes you would love to take or teach, and/or if you have good news to share.
Lisa and I have said before that one of the best aspects of creating The Notebooks Collective is that we are front and center to amazing conversations and creatives. Given that, I wanted to share with you some of the best moments or takeaways from this past year (or three).
2024 started with a brief hiatus. Lisa and I both work full-time and between work, home life, and travel, we didn’t kick off our events until April.
Reading for Palestine
However, we started with a first for us: a collective reading of all of our previous and upcoming guests. We had 15 readers in addition to Lisa and I. What made this event particularly special to us was that it was used to raise funds for Gaza. We picked three fundraisers to split amongst the donations we received. We were able to raise more than $600, thanks to our generous readers and guests.
Readers Pictured: Jessica E. Johnson, Rebecca Kirk Connors, Suzanne Frank, Karen Rigby, Anne-Marie Oomen, Jessica Cuello, Eileen Cleary, M. Soledad Cabellero, Sarah Ghazal Ali, Lisa Allen, Marcia Karp, Meg Kearney, Kathi Aguero, jason b. crawford, Quintin Collins, and Sara Moore Wagner. Plus Guests.
We hosted Leah Umansky and Melissa Fite Johnson in May and the two of them brought joy and levity when we really needed it. I loved how they both read each other’s poems or requested poems, demonstrating what it really means to fall in love with someone else’s art. Love of pop culture is something that resonates with them. While they discussed it, I thought about how Sweet Valley High, 90210 and Reality Bites impacted me more than I would have expected given what weight we usually assign to culture.
I was also reminded once again that writers use different tools. Leah talks into her phone all the time and takes notes whereas Melissa schedules one afternoon a week where she has dedicated writing time. The takeaway: you don’t have to write everyday or, if it works for you, you can write everyday; it’s the writing that’s important.
Memoir-Poets
Jessica E. Johnson and Tyler Mills
In June we hosted two memorist-poets: Jessica E. Johnson and Tyler Mills. What I took away from this conversation was how a poet’s observational skills, which they transform words into poetry, have the same power in memoir. In fact I think they both were able to make some really amazing connections between environmental destruction and family breakdowns between the lure of scientific discovery and what its impact can be. I loved learning that Jessica wrote her book length poem Metabolics within the writing phase of her memoir project: being constrained in one genre allowed her to burst forth in another.
Self Persona
Eugenia Leigh listens as Diannely Antigua explains the thinking behind her poem
Eugenia Leigh and Diannely Antigua visited us in July. I came away from that event with the euphoria of the first date that went well. Diannely uses her past diaries to create found poems. I was intrigued by the idea of exploring my own journal entries and diaries for language and emotional fodder for poems. I learned how difficult it is to be that vulnerable with oneself and how the creation of a second self can give you the tools to explore these areas of our lives with just enough distance.
Ekphrasis
Karn Rigby and Danika Stegeman
In August, Karen Rigby and Danika Stegeman blew us away because of their attention to detail and interest in art and their relationship: Karen was Danika’s mentor. It’s amazing how they have both grown in their writing careers. I also was reminded how we use art in all its forms (from Hieronymous Bosch to The Love Boat) to make meaning through our writing.
Narrative vs Speculative
Marcus Myers and Rivka Clifton discuss their partnership
In September, I came away from our conversation knowing the joy of creating a community and the wonder of long-term creative partnerships. Marcus and Rivka met in grad school, founded Bear Review together, and are still collaborating and sharing work with each other even while their work goes in very different directions; Marcus’ is more narrative style and Rivka’s is more lyrical and bodily speculative.
Celebrating Saara
And we closed 2024 with the celebration of late poet Saara Myrene Raappana. Her husband Eric Doise and poets Haley Cotton and Lauren K. Carlson read from Saara’s award-winning book Chamber after Chamber. Interspersed between poems were anecdotes about Saara and her impact on everyone who knew her. I still cry when I think about this event because our poems are our voices and to read Saara’s poems was to have her breath with us in spirit.
A screenshot from Sara Moore Wagner’s class on Folklore
We also branched out and offered a few classes this year taught by past Notebooks guests Jessica E. Johnson, Eileen Cleary, Sara Moore Wagner, and Pauletta Hansel. These classes brought students to learn about organic/inorganic forms with Jessica, creating our own folklore with Sara, all the wonderful tools for revision with Eileen, and two different workshops from Pauletta: finding the poems in family stories and how to put together a manuscript.
Coming soon
The past few years have been amazing, from the people I’ve met to the poets we’ve worked with to the classes we have put together and we can’t wait to bring you our 2025.
An evening of poetry and remembrance hosted by Eric Doise, husband of late poet Saara Myrene Raappana. Eric was joined by Lauren K. Carlson and Halley Cotton, all of whom read from Saara’s collected work, Chamber After Chamber, which was awarded the Juniper Prize for Poetry. Saara was also the author of the chapbooks A Story of America Goes Walking (Shechem Press) and Milk Tooth, Levee, Fever (Dancing Girl Press).
A gifted poet and teacher, Saara left a legacy of not only powerful and award-winning poetry, but also as an educator, mental health pioneer and animal lover. Her great warmth, intelligence and kindness was evident to all who knew her and will be celebrated in this one-of-a-kind reading.
Poets and co-founders of Bear Review, Marcus Myers & Rivka Clifton have grown together as poets, even as their own work is aesthetically different. As Marcus says, “This sharing and cheering each other on, discussing craft and aesthetics, swapping and giving books with and to each other has led, in some ways directly and in others indirectly, to our creating Bear Review.”
We welcomed poets Karen Rigby and Danika Stegeman to The Notebooks Collective for an evening of poetry and conversation. The discussion explored musings on second books, ars poetica, and more!
We welcomed poets Eugenia Leigh & Diannely Antigua to The Notebooks Collective for an evening of conversation about creativity and connection. We are thrilled to host this In Conversation, in which the poets discussed their newest books, Bianca and Good Monster respectively, among other things.
Writers Jessica Johnson & Tyler Mills join the Notebooks Collective to discuss their new memoirs, Mettlework and The Bomb Cloud, which both invoke their family history and how the personal and the politic intertwine.
“…The resulting journey encompasses Johnson’s early memories, the story of the earth told in the language of geology, bits of vivid correspondence, a mothering manual from the early twentieth century, and the daily challenges of personal and collective care in a lonesome-crowded Pacific wonderland. Mettlework traces intergenerational failures of homemaking, traveling toward presence and relationship amid the remains of extractive industry and unsustainable notions of family.”
“A shimmering memoir defined equally by its lyrical prose and profound historical implications, The Bomb Cloud untangles the intersecting strands of information running through a family mystery shaped by national secrets…Extending from the poems in Mills’ Hawk Parable, this memoir wrestles with her grandfather’s likely involvement in a top-secret bomb wing that trained in the New Mexico desert, taking the reader to the very edge of the unknowable.”
