Weekly at 7:30 PM

A community writing workshop in which participants are asked to bring 2-3 pages of fiction to read and receive feedback. Facilitated by Raquel Baker via Zoom. Registration required.

Raquel Baker earned a PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of Iowa, specializing in Postcolonial Studies and 20th- and 21st-century African literatures in English, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Raquel is currently an Assistant Professor of Postcolonial and Transnational Literatures at California State University Channel Islands, teaching courses on creative writing and contemporary African literatures. Raquel has published poetry in Africology and The Arrow; fiction in Enculturation, The Daily Palette, The Womanist, and Crux; and non-fiction in Little Village; and has done readings with the Ventura County Poetry project. Raquel lives for talking all things about the craft and social meanings of literature! 

Weekly at 8:00 PM

The West Coast’s longest-running free poetry workshop welcomes new and seasoned poets to share new work and provide feedback. Please be prepared to share one poem.

This workshop will be hosted via Zoom. Please sign up for each workshop session at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting, and you will be contacted with instructions on how to join the meeting. Each week's new sign up page will be shared via our mailing list and linked below. Sign up on Eventbrite.

Facilitators are rotated quarterly. Current Facilitator: Rooja Mohassessy

Rooja Mohassessy is an Iranian-born poet and educator. She is a MacDowell Fellow and an MFA graduate of Pacific University, Oregon. Her ekphrastic debut collection When Your Sky Runs Into Mine (Feb 2023) was the winner of the 22nd Annual Elixir Poetry Award. Rooja has been featured on NPR, The Hive Poetry Collective, and other poetry podcasts and radio stations. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Nimrod, Poet Lore, RHINO Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, CALYX Journal, Ninth Letter, Cream City Review, The Adroit Journal, New Letters, The Rumpus, The Journal, Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Her work is also anthologized in California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology, and Colossus: Body, a compilation of writings by Californians writing on the themes of bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. Rooja is an editorial assistant at the journal Prairie Schooner.