BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Find Local//findlocal.community//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 TZNAME:EDT DTSTART:19700308T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU END:DAYLIGHT BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST DTSTART:19701101T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:53d550bb-3d7b-472d-bef4-3e4f6429d428@findlocal.community DTSTAMP:20261015T130015Z DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20261025T130000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20261025T150000 SUMMARY:Listening to Our Elders: Stories and Objects DESCRIPTION:"Mami often says that when you hear the same story twice\, yo u are supposed to get something different from it." In this workshop\, P hiladelphia poet laureate\, Raina J. León invites you to bring the stori es and objects from your elders (and your elders\, if you want to!) to l earn ways of writing from the stories that you've heard over and over ag ain. We will learn strategies of eliciting details from our elders from oral historian and archivist\, L. Renée\, see the strategies models as R aina shares family photographs and interviews from her parents (guest sp eakers\, for this event!)\, and then delve deep into writing poems from those stories and objects. A partnership between the Academy of American Poets and Blue Stoop\, a fiscally sponsored organization of CultureTrus t Greater Philadelphia\, dedicated to nurturing an inclusive literary co mmunity by creating pathways to access writing education\, inspiration\, and professional support\, and celebrating Philadelphia’s rich writing tradition. RSVP Raina J. Leon\, PhD is Black\, Afro-Boricua\, and from P hiladelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is the 2026-2027 Poet La ureate of Philadelphia. She is a mother\, daughter\, sister\, madrina\, comadre\, partner\, poet\, writer\, and teacher educator. She believes i n collective action and community work\, the profound power of holding s pace for the telling of our stories\, and the liberatory practice of hum anizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective\, Cave Canem\ , CantoMundo\, Macondo. She is the author of black god mother this body\ , Canticle of Idols\, Boogeyman Dawn\, sombra: (dis)locate\, and the cha pbooks\,profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mothe r(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art\, poetry\, nonfict ion\, fiction\, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and res idencies and attended retreats with The Watering Hole\, the Obsidian Fou ndation\, VONA\, Community of Writers\, Montana Artists Refuge\, Macdowe ll\, Vermont Studio Center\, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig \, Ireland and Ragdale\, among others. She is a founding editor of The A centos Review\, an online quarterly\, international journal devoted to t he promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She co-founded the Wild Ind igo Poetry Reading Series (2024) in Germantown\, Philadelphia with Sarah Browning in deep partnership with Young American Cider and Reclaim Phil adelphia and now Deaf-Hearing Communication Centre and Hands Up Producti ons. She is a recipient of a National Association of Latino Arts and Cul tures Grant\, a Leeway Transformation Award (2025)\, Letras Boricuas Fel lowship (2025)\, a Velocity Fund Grant (2026)\, a Puffin Foundation gran t (2026)\, and an Academy of American Poets laureates fellowship (2026). She retired early as a full professor of education at Saint Mary’s Coll ege of California\, only the third Black person (all Black women) and th e first Afro-Latina to achieve that rank there\; she is professor emerit a there. She teaches poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA at the Univ ersity of Southern Maine and poetry at Bryn Mawr College as a visiting p rofessor. She is additionally a digital archivist\, emerging visual arti st\, writing coach\, and curriculum developer. She is an enrolled Higuay agua Taíno tribal member and (very slowly) learning Hiwatahia.\n\nMore i nfo: https://bluestoop.org/events/listening-to-our-elders\n\nhttps://fin dlocal.community/event/53d550bb-3d7b-472d-bef4-3e4f6429d428 LOCATION:Blue Stoop\, 1300 W Girard Ave\, Philadelphia\, PA 19123 URL:https://findlocal.community/event/53d550bb-3d7b-472d-bef4-3e4f6429d42 8 STATUS:CONFIRMED SEQUENCE:0 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR