elaby | Support a writing workshop

Mia McKenzie, writer of the blog Black Girl Dangerous and award-winning author, is raising money to organize a writing workshop for queer, trans, and gender-non-conforming writers of color. This is an incredibly worthy cause that I, as a lesbian and a writer and an ally examining my privilege, want to do as much as I can to promote. Besides that IT SOUNDS AWESOME. Part of the reason I'm putting this up here is because I need it to remind myself to donate when I get to a secure internet connection, but the larger part is because I want to spread the word. Here's some information about the project from the page.

I would like to offer 4-week intensive and 1-week super-intensive workshops, as well as monthly 1-day workshops, for queer, trans*, and gender-non-conforming writers of color in Oakland, Philadelphia, and Toronto, over the course of six months, beginning in July. We will workshop stories, novels, memoirs, essays, articles—whatever prose our writers are working on and need support for. Together, we will get our stories ready for the world! Each 4-week workshop will end with a reading salon where writers share some of the work they created in the workshop with our community.

Workshop is essential for writers. It provides both the structure a writer needs to get the work done, and the feedback and support a writer needs to make a story great. Black Girl Dangerous Workshops are about that and much more. I am working very hard to create an environment where queer, trans*, and gender-non-conforming writers of color can feel safe and nurtured, not only in terms of creating and sharing literary work, but also sharing ourselves, our experiences, our wounds, our truths.

This would be such a good thing for so many people. Spreading the word always helps even if you can't donate!