Guided Writing Workshop & Open Mic: Love Letters to Baltimore + the DMV
Schedule
Wed May 29 2024 at 07:00 pm to 09:00 pm
Location
16 W North Ave, Baltimore, MD 21201-5904, United States | Baltimore, MD
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Guided Writing Workshop & Open MicLove Letters to Baltimore + the DMV
Wednesday, May 29, 7-9 pm
16 W. North Ave.
Participants will engage with each other and themselves by way of a guided writing workshop, during which we will explore easy conversations with each other and ourselves. The aim of the evening is to engage with and generate dialogue around what we consider to be our homes, as a way of understanding our individual and collective power to change our homes into what we desire them to be. Directed by Ryan Jafar Artes and Mohammad Rohaizad Suaidi. The writing workshop will be followed by an open mic, during which audience members will have the opportunity to share their just-written work.
Ryan Jafar Artes (he/she/they) is an activist, memoirist, and poet. Ryan’s work calls for a re-imagination of culture via cultural renaissance from their perspective and lived experience as a transracial transnational South Asian Indian American adoptee. Ryan is the host of The Adoptee Open Mic, and hosts virtual writing classes to support their activism and creative work, most of which is self-published, including their debut poetry chapbook After Midnight.
Ryan’s work appears in Panorama: The Journal of Travel Place and Nature, and anthologies published by Querencia Press, Moonstone Arts Center, and Capturing Fire Press. Ryan’s poem “8,049 Miles,” was a finalist in the 2021 Prometheus Unbound Competition and is featured in the accompanying anthology published by Prometheus Dreaming. Ryan participated in a DIY MFA program of their own design and implementation, and hosts letter writing workshops to support their creative work and activism.
Mohammad Rohaizad Suaidi (he/him/his) is a Queer theatre-maker and performer who has directed and conceptualized new devised works in Honolulu, Kuala Lumpur, Micronesia, New York, Singapore, and Baltimore. Rohaizad has taught at institutions of higher learning since 2002 and is currently Adjunct Professor at Towson University and UMBC, where he teaches courses in Acting, Theatre Ensemble, Cultural Diversity in Contemporary Theatre, and Queer BIPOC Theatre. He is also a trained ESL teacher who has been teaching at the Adult Learning Center in Baltimore since 2016, working with adult learners who are refugees and recent immigrants.
In 2018, Rohaizad co-founded the Asian Pasifika Arts Collective (https://baltimoreapac.org/), a non-profit organization that uses art to advocate for more diverse representation of Asian and Pacific Indigenous Americans. As an immigrant, Muslim, brown Southeast Asian, and gay cisgender man, Rohaizad is committed to creating platforms and opportunities for AAPI artists to make and present works that explore intersectionality and the community’s complex diversity.
Asia North 2024 partners and sponsors include TU Asian Arts & Culture Center, Central Baltimore Partnership, Station North Arts District, Motor House, Maryland State Arts Council, William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, Citizens of Baltimore County, TU-BTU Presidential Priority, Baltimore Changwon-Sister City Committee, Korean American Foundation – Greater Washington, Barangay Baltimore, Baltimore-Xiamen Sister City Committee, NAAAP Baltimore, and Baltimore Improv Group.
Image: Asia North 2024 graphic by Mika Nakano.
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Where is it happening?
16 W North Ave, Baltimore, MD 21201-5904, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays: