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History isn’t just about dates and facts—it’s full of people, choices, resistance, survival, and change. In this workshop, writers will dive into the art of historical fiction, exploring how to bring the past to life.

Through guided exercises, research, and group discussions, writers will learn how to create rich settings and compelling characters, navigate sensitive topics, and explore themes that still resonate today. Whether you’re fascinated by ancient Egypt, the Harlem Renaissance, WWII, the Mongol empire, or even the more recent 1980s, this workshop will help you transport the reader to another time and place. We’ll also explore speculative fiction, where we ask “what if” history had turned out differently. Historical fiction isn’t just about the past -- it’s about understanding how we got here, who we are today, and who we might become.

Do you want to be wild and break out of the limitations that are always being set? Poetry is the answer. We’re strapping on our shoes, grabbing our pens, and meeting at the P.S. 187 school yard to go on a poet’s adventure! Poetry is a way of seeing things outside the boxes they are always being put in. We'll be rejuvenated by the nature of Ft. Tryon park and emboldened by our resilient neighborhood. We'll explore the wilds of language out in the world, allowing a stream of poetry to flow from the river of possibility.

Lift your words off the page, and breathe life into them through rhythm, rhyme, and improvisation. In Spoken Word, everything you are is all that you need. Want to dance? Make your poetry move. Love to rap or write songs? Use your musical impulse. Your body, your voice, your beat — they are the story. 

Guided by poets past and present, we’ll find inspiration in the words of Mahogany L. Brown, Elizabeth Acevedo, Rudy Francisco, and many more. By combining the thoughtfulness of writing with the freedom of performance, after 12 weeks, you’ll know just how to bring your story to life on the mic. Join us!