“Felt like church without God.” ~ workshop participant

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Join us for a writing workshop & meetup at the Porch House — open to all writers in their twenties and thirties of any genre!

Each session, we’ll begin with drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic options available) and a short social hour before pivoting into our reading discussion for the week, lovingly dubbed our daily ‘liturgy.’ Through generative prompts and writing exercises, this workshop will serve as a time to meditate, reflect, heal, create, and hopefully inspire works that continue on long after the workshop has ended.

Writing can be a solitary thing, so why not take an hour out of the busy week to embark on the journey together? The term "writer" is expansive and warm and has the space to hold us all. And we’d be honored to write with you.

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“Good writing works from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone,

but in some sense a metaphor for everyone’s.”

~Dorianne Laux

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CJ [she, her] is a poet and writer living in Nashville, Tennessee with a degree in English and a double minor in creative writing and history. She's had work published in Herstry, Aurora: the Allegory Ridge Poetry Anthology, Novus Literary and Arts Journal, Salt Weekly, Sinew: Poetry in the Brew’s Poetry Anthology, and the Belmont Literary Journal and is the assistant editor to the forthcoming collection A Lighthouse: An Anthology of Immigrant Writing. When she’s not writing about women’s lives or taking moody walks in the cold, she’s working a myriad of jobs— from serving as a writer's assistant to a boss-turned-friend; assisting with Mirror House, a curated mixed media event, and writing workshops for The Porch; occasionally substitute teaching; to working front of house at the Belcourt Theater, a nonprofit film and education center she loves very much. She’s currently working on a hybrid collection of poems and essays centered on girlhood, family, sexuality, and the South while applying this fall for an MFA in poetry/ nonfiction with her fingers and toes crossed. Follow her on instagram @easy.breezycoversquirrel.

Randy Sue (They/Them) finds their most profound inspiration from their late Grandma, Rose Lourine. The family's matriarch let every child, no matter their age, sit upon her lap, sneak cookies from the cabinet, and run/yell/laugh in the house. She loved the noise of living. In their writing, Randy is pushed forward by the everlasting presence of Grandma Rose. Leaning into her soft hugs amid loud noise, hiding behind their grandma's leg, within the green couch cushions, or anywhere they could be close to the world, yet so far. Randy seeks to find the sacred spaces holding us all. The twenties and thirties workshop has been a space where Randy is reminded of the sacred amid the secular, not in any religious sense, not with any motive or value beyond noticing the breath that binds us all. This workshop has remembered Randy, the power of space, story, and Grandma, and wishes those attending can be reminded of the people in their stores, the space that heals, and the breath that binds writer and pen.

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