A society thrives when it has a well-informed citizenry, and it is the job of journalists to keep the citizenry informed.

Journalism can spark change, and hold the powerful to account... But is it activism?

At this roundtable, investigative journalist Danny Cherry Jr and climate writer and author Mary Annaïse Heglar will discuss:

• Should journalism be considered activism?

• What role does journalism play in the larger social justice and activist space?

• What are the responsibilities of the journalist, and how to they differ from that of a fiction or creative non-fiction writer?

• How to break into journalism.

• And more.

About Danny Cherry Jr

By day, Danny Cherry Jr. is an MBA-havin', caffeine-addicted corporate drone. But at night, he is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Antigravity Magazine, and has written for: Buzzfeed News, Politico, and The Daily Beast; and published fiction for Apex Magazine, Fiyah Lit Mag, amongst others. 

His work has been acknowledged in Locus Magazine recommended reading list for 2022, as well as the Best American Sci-fi and Fantasy 2023 notable stories list. His recently released debut novel, The Pike Boys, is a historical crime drama based in 1920s NOLA, and can be purchased at Books2read.com/thepikeboys

Follow him on social media on Twitter (X), TikTok, Instagram, and BlueSky @DeeCherryWriter, where he posts pictures of his Teacup Poodle, Teddy! 

About Mary Annaïse Heglar

Mary Annaïse Heglar is the author of  Troubled Waters (Harper Muse, 2024) and  The World is Ours to Cherish (Random House Kids, 2024). She is also known for her essays that dissect and interrogate the climate crisis, drawing heavily on her personal experience as a Black woman with deep roots in the South.

Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, The Nation, The Boston Globe, Vox, Rolling Stone, and other outlets. Her work has also been featured in collections like All We Can Save, The World As We Knew It, The Black Agenda, Letters to the Earth, and Not Too Late.

Mary is from Birmingham, Alabama and Mississippi. After living in New York City and New Orleans, she recently relocated to Birmingham. 

Page to Stage is a guided program to help you turn a story from an idea to a complete work ready to be performed at a live reading. This period’s theme is Science Fiction! Sci-fi is a subgenre of speculative fiction that deals in futuristic concepts such as advanced technology and science, space, time travel, parallel universes, and more.

This month, we are revising our pieces of literature! In this workshop, we will use guided exercises that provide creative ways of approaching your revision.

Whether you are participating in the full Page to Stage program or have another project you would like to work on, come down and get some revising done.

This event is free and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

If your weekday evenings are full, join us during the day at our staple Get Lit to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Join our monthly Get Lit group to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

A workshop led by Lisa D’Amour.

Whether we are writing plays, novels or short stories, we strive to create characters who are vividly defined through action and speech.  We want our characters to be both memorable and legible - to pop out of our story lines and be clear and beguiling to our audience or reader.

We also what the characters in our stories to be distinct from one another — with clear desires that drive them on their quest.

In this brief workshop, we will focus on the way characters speak, and the rhythm of what drives them, exploring musicality, pace, silence, speed and more.

In the process, we will explore how using these more “external” character cues can draw our audiences and readers into our characters deepest desires.

This workshop will accept 12 attendees. RSVP will open on Friday, April 4.

About Lisa D’Amour

Lisa D’Amour is a playwright, educator and interdisciplinary collaborator from New Orleans. She came up in a world of ritual, activism, group spectacle and care, all of which continue to thrive in her work.  .  Recent work with her company PearlDamour includes Ocean Filibuster, a genre-crashing human-ocean showdown (ART Theater, currently touring), MILTON, a performance rooted in 5 U.S. towns named Milton, and How to Build a Forest, an 8-hour performance installation. Lisa's play Detroit was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. Her play Airline Highway ran in the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway in 2015. and she is the recipient of an Alpert Award for the Arts, a Steinberg Playwright Award and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. Lisa received her MFA in Playwriting from UT Austin, and her BA from Millsaps College.  She lives in New Orleans, where she is on the leadership team for Trinity City Comics.   

RSVP Closed

In partnership with Twelve Mile Limit, we are hosting a FIVE HOUR writing marathon open to all local writers.

Be there at noon to spend some time with your fellow writers and grab a coffee at the bar. At 12:30, we’ll start our silent writing. We’ll have one more 30 minute break halfway through to stretch our legs and some time at the end to share our experience. For those who make it all the way through, stay and celebrate with a drink at the bar!

This is a generative writing event meant to give us busy writers a few hours of focus free of our daily obligations. We hope you’ll join us and give yourself the writing time you deserve!

This event is free and open to all local writers. No RSVP necessary.

Page to Stage is a guided program to help you turn a story from an idea to a complete work ready to be performed at a live reading. Each quarter we release the theme of which all of our events for those three months will be centered.

This period’s theme is Science Fiction! Sci-fi is a subgenre of speculative fiction that deals in futuristic concepts such as advanced technology and science, space, time travel, parallel universes, and more. Sci-fi can take on hopeful, dystopian, or absurdist leanings. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is often credited as the first work of science fiction.

Famous works of science fiction include: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, 1985 by George Orwell, Kindred by Octavia Butler, and Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.

Over the next three months, we will work to get our pieces stage-ready. At this workshop, we will lead use prompts to jostle some science fiction story ideas out of your head and onto the page.

This event is free and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

In partnership with Tennessee Williams Festival & Beanlandia.

Join us and take a journey through time from the swingin' 60s to regency drama to ancient Roman sabotage, brought to you through new work by local writers.

A period piece is defined as a modern work of literature that is set in a past time period. Unlike historical fiction, period fiction does not have to take place against the backdrop of a historical event. For our event, any literary piece set on or before 1999 is considered period fiction.

This reading celebrates new and unpublished work by writers in our community.

This event is free and open to the community. No RSVP necessary.

If your weekday evenings are full, join us during the day at our staple Get Lit to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Join our monthly Get Lit group to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Live readings are an essential part of a writer’s career. Unfortunately, reading live in front of an audience can be daunting for many writers. That is why we have started this workshop series—happening quarterly. Learning these skills in a workshop setting before jumping into an open mic or live reading can help you work past paralyzing nerves.

Daphne Armbruster, our Director of Community Outreach and trained theatre actress, will be leading this workshop.

In the first hour of this workshop, you will learn:

• The basic mechanics of what you can expect from a reading, from the moment you are introduced until you walk off the stage and back to your seat.

• Grounding techniques to lessen the physical symptoms of nerves and stage fright.

• Techniques to project confidence as you read, whether or not you feel it. (Fake it ‘till you make it is a very real thing!)

• Practical acting techniques to bring your prose and dialogue to life.

• We will also dive briefly into how to pick the best cut of your piece to read live.

In the second hour, attendees will be encouraged to workshop their pieces with Daphne. Attendees are not required to get on the stage, but this activity is valuable to getting over stage fright.

Whether you’re a fledgling or seasoned author, learning and honing these skills will set you up for greater success in your field.

If you attend this event, please feel free to bring a 500-word cut of a piece you would like to work on. If you do not feel comfortable reading your own work, we will have sides from short stories available for you to read.

This workshop is free and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Join us to get your publishing and industry questions answered by experienced editors and a literary agent!  Our panelists will share their expertise and advice to demystify the process of getting your words out into the world, and we'll talk about what it takes to build a sustainable writing career. Note: this is NOT a pitch event but a chance to share general questions. 

This event is free. No RSVP necessary.

Panelists

 Colleen Rothman (Associate Series Editor for Wigleaf Top 50 and Founding Editor of Nurture: A Literary Journal)

Dan Fox (Editor in Chief of ANTIGRAVITY)

Sara Kachelman (Editor at Denver Quarterly)

Christopher Romaguera (Poetry Editor at Peauxdunque Review)

Katherine Fausset (Literary Agent / Vice President at Curtis Brown)

If your weekday evenings are full, join us during the day at our staple Get Lit to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Writing a novel is a long journey—tens of thousands of words, countless drafts, years of your time—and it is easy to get lost. This is why creating a story structure is such a fundamental first step when writing a novel.

Daphne Armbruster has turned even the most staunch pantsers into believers with this workshop. Whether you’re a genre or literary writer, plot or character-driven, this workshop will give you the tools you need to give your story shape.

In this workshop, we will:

• Break down the most common story structure into beats

• Discover why the midpoint is the most vital part of the story and not the climax

• Discuss how to tie your protagonist’s motivations and fatal flaw to the plot to create a dynamic and cathartic story

• Apply the roadmap to your novel in progress

This is a generative workshop and will be most helpful for those who are currently drafting or in the brainstorming phase of a novel. We ask participants to bring a computer or pen and paper to this workshop.

And just remember—outlining is not locking yourself into a story. It is your sandbox; a way for you to take a macro-look at your story and discover issues or plot holes before you’re 50,000 words in. We hope to see you there!

This workshop is free and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Join our monthly Get Lit group to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

We know how difficult it can be to find people who vibe with your writing and can give the feedback you need to make your work the best it can be.

To help you find feedback partners and critique circles, we're hosting an event just for that. So if you've been looking for beta readers, we've got you!

Every writer will get a chance to tell us what you write and what feedback you’re looking for. Should you choose, you can also read a page of your writing. From there, we'll hang out and get to know each other more.

You'll be able to have deeper conversations with people you think will be a good match, share information, and coordinate your first feedback exchange.

This event is free and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Page to Stage is a guided program to help you turn a story from an idea to a complete work ready to be performed at a live reading. Our winter 2025 theme is Period Fiction! A period piece is defined as a modern work of literature that is set in a past time period. Any piece set on or before 1999 is considered period fiction.

This month, we are revising our pieces of literature! In this workshop, we will use guided exercises that provide creative ways of approaching your revision.

Whether you are participating in the full Page to Stage program or have another project you would like to work on, come down and get some revising done.

This event is free and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

If your weekday evenings are full, join us during the day at our staple Get Lit to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Join our monthly Get Lit group to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Michelle Kelleher, our Director of Events, will lead an exercise-focused workshop on fantasy worldbuilding.

Beginning with a brief roundtable discussion about what we all find compelling in well-built fantasy worlds, we’ll touch on ideas like internal versus external logic, the structure of magic or sociopolitical systems in your new society, and how to choose the details that help make a world feel realistic without info-dumping.

We’ll then jump into a series of solo and group exercises pulled from several sources, including writing craft books, online author lectures, classes, and tabletop gaming to start building well-thought-out worlds to play in later. 

You don’t need to come with an existing idea (though it’s fine if you do), the prompts are designed to encourage you to think about how to write a world that holds together for the reader.

Setting and worldbuilding are important skills across genres, and while these exercises will have a strong SFF theme, we welcome all writers to this workshop.

This event is free and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Page to Stage is a guided program to help you turn a story from an idea to a complete work ready to be performed at a live reading. Each quarter we release the theme of which all of our events for those three months will be centered.

Our winter 2025 theme is Period Fiction! A period piece is defined as a modern work of literature that is set in a past time period. Any literary piece set on or before 1999 is considered period fiction.

Over the next three months, we will work to get our pieces stage-ready. Local author Allison Alsup will lead a generative writing workshop with prompts to help you develop story ideas in the genre of period fiction.

This event is free and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

About Allison Alsup

Allison Alsup is an award-winning writer, teacher, and editor. She holds an M.F.A. in fiction from Emerson College. Her debut novel, Foreign Seed was published by Keylight Books, a niche imprint of Turner Publishing reserved for works with significant screen potential.

A co-founder of the non-profit New Orleans Writers Workshop (NOWW) Allison currently serves as its Creative Director. She also oversees NOWW’s developmental editing services, working one on one with clients in multiple genres as well as teaching several craft-based workshops each year.

Previously Allison taught writing and literature full-time at the University of New Orleans, and creative writing through the Loyola Writing Institute at Loyola University, New Orleans. As a teacher, editor and mentor with over two decades of experience of working with writers, Allison has helped hundreds of students and clients hone their craft and achieve their creative goals, including publishing first stories, completing novels, and creating successful M.F.A. application portfolios.

If your weekday evenings are full, join us during the day at our staple Get Lit to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

In partnership with Twelve Mile Limit, we are hosting a FIVE HOUR writing marathon open to all local writers.

Be there at noon to spend some time with your fellow writers and grab a coffee at the bar. At 12:30, we’ll start our silent writing. We’ll have one more 30 minute break halfway through to stretch our legs and some time at the end to share our experience. For those who make it all the way through, stay and celebrate with a drink at the bar!

This is a generative writing event meant to give us busy writers a few hours of focus free of our daily obligations. We hope you’ll join us and give yourself the writing time you deserve!

This event is free and open to all local writers. No RSVP necessary.

Join our monthly Get Lit group to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

If your weekday evenings are full, join us during the day at our staple Get Lit to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

In partnership with Tennessee Williams Festival & Beanlandia.

Welcome, welcome to The Fiction Sessions, a quarterly themed reading series.

Join us for a night full of mind-bending speculative fiction written and read by local writers.

Speculative fiction is defined as a work that changes at least one irrevocable element of our reality. It encompasses most genres—sci-fi, supernatural, fantasy, and dystopian being the most popular.

This reading celebrates new and unpublished work by writers in our community.

This event is, as always, completely free and open to the community.

Live readings are an essential part of a writer’s career. Unfortunately, reading live in front of an audience can be daunting for many writers. That is why we have started this workshop series—happening quarterly. Learning these skills in a workshop setting before jumping into an open mic or live reading can help you work past paralyzing nerves.

Daphne Armbruster, our Director of Community Outreach and trained theatre actress, will be leading this workshop.

In the first hour of this workshop, you will learn:

• The basic mechanics of what you can expect from a reading, from the moment you are introduced until you walk off the stage and back to your seat.

• Grounding techniques to lessen the physical symptoms of nerves and stage fright.

• Techniques to project confidence as you read, whether or not you feel it. (Fake it ‘till you make it is a very real thing!)

• Practical acting techniques to bring your prose and dialogue to life.

• We will also dive briefly into how to pick the best cut of your piece to read live.

In the second hour, attendees will be encouraged to workshop their pieces with Daphne. Attendees are not required to get on the stage, but this activity is valuable to getting over stage fright.

Whether you’re a fledgling or seasoned author, learning and honing these skills will set you up for greater success in your field.

If you attend this event, please feel free to bring a 500-word cut of a piece you would like to work on. If you do not feel comfortable reading your own work, we will have sides from short stories available for you to read.

This workshop is free and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Tennessee Williams Coffee & Craft

Our Director of Community Outreach, Daphne Armbruster, will be leading a Tennessee Williams Festival Coffee & Craft session.

In this workshop, Daphne will teach emerging and published writers how to develop a sustainable social media strategy. Through a series of exercises, you will: write an Artist's Statement, identify your ideal reader, build an online persona, and create a content calendar.

Whether you're a novelist, journalist, poet, playwright, or so on, a healthy social media strategy that speaks to your ideal readers will set your career up for success. You will leave this workshop with the tools to enact a social media strategy tuned to your goals and comfort level. Find your readers, draw them in, and enjoy a community of people who are excited for the art that you create.

This event is free and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.

Join our monthly Get Lit group to hang out with your writing community and do some sprinting!

If you’ve never done writing sprints before, there’s only one rule: get as many words on the page as you can before 20 minutes are up. We’ll run three writing sprints—one full hour.

So come to our Get Lit with your work in progress and leave with words on the page!

This event is FREE and open to all writers. No RSVP necessary.