Miami Book Fair is once again offering MDC students scholarship spots in their August creative writing workshops.
Apply for a Scholarship
Miami Book Fair is offering two full-tuition scholarships for MDC students in these creative writing workshops. Applicants must be currently-enrolled, (full time or part time) degree-seeking Miami Dade College students with a demonstrated financial need. Please send an email to Marci Cancio-Bello, Miami Book Fair programs coordinator at mcanciob@mdc.edu by the scholarship deadline, for the workshop you would like to attend. The message must include your contact information, the title of the workshop you’d like to take, a short statement of financial need, your MDC class schedule, and a writing sample. First-time writers who lack a writing sample should submit a statement explaining their interest in the workshop. Deadline to apply is Thurs, July 29.
Workshops:
Tuesdays, Aug 3, 10, 17, 24 (4 weeks)
Nonfiction Workshop with Joseph Earl Thomas
6:30 – 8:00 p.m. EST | Virtual
This creative nonfiction workshop will focus on reading the self, yourself, as a subject of inquiry. Of the myriad ways this could be done, we’ll spend most of our time talking about tense; perspective (1st, 2nd, 3rd); and the aesthetics of difference, for example race, sex, gender, class, etc. without limitation to politically, biologically, or medically differentiated or legible subject positions. We’ll focus on mining interiority alongside our relations to other living people, things, and objects towards both narrative and non-narrative exegesis of the self. Short readings from a variety of artists, and writing exercises will help us distinguish, find, and articulate our own worlds and voices.
Joseph Earl Thomas is a writer from Northeast Philly whose work has appeared in The Offing, Gulf Coast, and Kenyon Review magazines. His writing mostly concerns the relationships between fantasy, feelings, and possibility.
Thursdays, Aug 5, 12, 19, 26 (4 weeks)
Poetry Workshop with Gabriel Ramirez
7:00 – 8:30 p.m. EST | Virtual
A catalyst to choosing oneself through difficult times and practicing the importance of our truth, “I Am Here: Affirmation as a Form of Resistance” is a workshop where participants can speak back to that which has made us feel small, invisible and impossible throughout our lives. This workshop encourages participants to reclaim their bodies and histories. Whether it is a bully from your childhood, someone who told you that you can’t, or a country with systems that have shown they don’t care whether you are alive or not, it’s time to become bigger. It’s time to denounce the false truths others have given us about who we are and our worth. No previous workshop experience required.
Gabriel Ramirez is a queer Afro-Latinx poet, activist, and teaching artist who has received fellowships from The Conversation Literary Arts Festival, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Watering Hole, and CantoMundo. He has performed on Broadway in New York at the New Amsterdam Theatre, United Nations, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theater, and other venues and universities around the nation. Ramirez’s work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Vibe magazine, and on Remezcla.com, as well as in Bettering American Poetry Anthology (Bettering Books, 2017), What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (Northwestern University Press, 2019), and The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Press, 2020).