Welcome to Sowing the Seeds!

What's New?

Mujeres Writing Conference - June 11, 2011

The Mujeres Writers Conference, “Our Spirit, Our Reality: celebrating our stories,” offers four workshops from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the YWCA. Registration fee is $65.

The luncheon keynote speaker is Franciso X. Alarcón, author of From the Other Side of Night: Selected and New Poems, Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation and Ce-Uno-One: Poems for the New Sun.

Flute, drum, and poetry entertainment by Nancy Green, author of Crucified River/Rio Crucificado.

The conference is co-sponsored by Sowing the Seeds and the YWCA. The event is supported by the University of Arizona’s Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW).

Workshop Presentations:

“Our Spirit, Our Reality: celebrating our stories” Panel Discussion/Reading by Comadres of Sowing the Seeds: Dr. Rosi Andrade, Co-Editor of Sowing the Seeds, una cosecha de recuerdos, Elena Díaz Bjorkquist, author of Suffer Smoke and Water from the Moon, and Co-Editor of Sowing the Seeds, una cosecha de recuerdos,.

“Real Stories, the Fabric of Creative Work” Stella Pope Duarte, author of Fragile Night, Let Their Spirits Dance, and If I Die in Juarez.

“Manifesting the Muse” Odilia Galván Rodríguez, author of Migratory Birds: New and Noted Poems, Crossroads: Poems, Platica y Paraisos.

Sharing Our Writing Participants will have the opportunity to share writing developed throughout the conference workshops at a Floricanto open mic event.

A registration form can be obtained by emailing sowing@comcast.net.

Old News:

Mujeres Writing Workshop Series

This year instead of our popular annual Mujeres Writing Conference, we're offering two writing workshops to the community. Because of the economy, we decided that individual workshops for women interested in writing would be more affordable than a conference .

The first writing workshop on May 9^th will focus on writing poetry. Local poet and author of Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, & My Mother, Rita Marie Magdaleno will facilitate the workshop“The Tapestry of a Poem.” Participants will use the metaphor of threading-things-together to explore the ways that everyday experiences can be used in poetry. The concept of our life as a tapestry can become a rich venue for writing poems. Rita's poem "Embroidering" and "Kindness" by Naomi S. Nye will offer ideas for entering one's own writing. The outcome will be two-fold: To find a metaphor that surprises one and to write a narrative-based poem.

The second workshop on July 11^th will focus on “Writing Unforgettable Stories.” Author of If I Die in Juarez, and Let Their Spirits Dance, Stella Pope Duarte is the presenter.

“The Tapestry of a Poem” will be held Saturday, May 9^th from 9 AM to 12 PM in the Mujer Sana Office Building at 811 S. 6^th Avenue in Tucson. The registration fee is $20. Attendance is limited so please register early.

For more information or to register email sowing@comcast.net.

Meetings

Our regular meetings are held at Mujer Sana 811 S. 6th Ave. Tucson on the 2nd Saturday of each month from 9 to 12 PM. We start off with a continental breakfast, followed by a freewriting activity to a prompt, then sharing our writing. This is followed by a reading of work in progress by individual Comadres and critiquing by the others. This year we are focusing on poems, essays, and memoir to fit the theme of our next anthology, Our Spirit, Our Reality. We also share information on author readings, contests, workshops, conferences, and anything related to writing. We end our meetings with a potluck lunch and social sharing.