Calling all LGBTQIA+ Writers! Poets, playwrights, essayists, short story writers and all! Join the Q & T Community Writers’ group every Thursday at 6pm on Zoom. We work from prompts, workshop our on our ongoing pieces together, talk about what we’re reading and writing and more! Sessions will often include two 20-30 minute blocks of time to write in addition to sharing and other activities.
If you have any questions, please email Memphis at education@wordu
Join historian and author Claire Bellerjeau in a discussion about the incredible life of an enslaved Black woman from New York named Elizabeth, or Liss. Liss was enslaved by the Townsend family of Oyster Bay, Long Island, whose son, Robert Townsend (aka “Culper, Jr.”), was George Washington’s lead spy in Manhattan during the Revolutionary War. As the Culper Spy Ring used secret codes and invisible ink to smuggle vital information to Washington, evidence suggests Liss may also have engaged in intelligence gathering for the Patriot cause. Liss’ complex struggle for freedom sheds new light on the lives of thousands of other forgotten African Americans during the founding era.
Join us for a virtual celebration of award-winning poet Jasminne Mendez’s latest middle-school novel Aniana del Mar Jumps In, a powerful and expertly told novel-in-verse about a 12-year-old Dominican American swimmer who is diagnosed with Juvenile Arthritis by an award-winning poet. In conversation with Mendez will be Angela Abreu, founder of Dominican Writers Association.
Each copy of Aniana del Mar Jumps In purchased through WordUpBooks.com will come with a signed bookplate by Jasminne Mendez.
This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket. Please register in advance to receive the Zoom link.
Aniana del Mar belongs in the water like a dolphin belongs to the sea. But she and Papi keep her swim practices and meets hidden from Mami, who has never recovered from losing someone she loves to the water years ago. That is, until the day Ani’s stiffness and swollen joints mean she can no longer get out of bed, and Ani is forced to reveal just how important swimming is to her. Mami forbids her from returning to the water but Ani and her doctor believe that swimming along with medication will help Ani manage her disease. What follows is the journey of a girl who must grieve who she once was in order to rise like the tide and become the young woman she is meant to be. Aniana Del Mar Jumps In is a poignant story about chronic illness and disability, the secrets between mothers and daughters, the harm we do to the ones we love the most—and all the triumphs, big and small, that keep us afloat.
Jasminne Mendez is a best-selling Dominican-American poet, educator, translator, playwright and award winning author of several books for children and adults. She has had poetry and essays published in numerous journals and anthologies and she is the author of two multi-genre collections including Island of Dreams (Floricanto Press, 2013) which won an International Latino Book Award. Her debut poetry collection City Without Altar was a finalist for the Noemi Press poetry prize and was released in August 2022(Noemi Press) and her debut picture book Josefina’s Habichuelas (Arte Publico Press, 2021) was the Writer’s League of Texas Children’s Book Discovery Prize Winner. She has translated the work of NYT Best Selling authors Amanda Gorman, Nikole Hannah-Jones, René Watson and Calribel Ortega. She is an MFA graduate of the creative writing program at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University and a University of Houston alumni. She is the Program Director for the literary arts non-profit Tintero Projects and she lives and works in Houston, TX.
CANCELLATION POLICY: Word Up Community Bookshop reserves the right to cancel events for any reason, including but not limited to safety concerns.
CODE OF CONDUCT: Please note Word Up has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during any event, virtual or in-person. Please read our Safe Space Policy for more information. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from the event at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to events@wordupbooks.com immediately.
PHOTOS & RECORDING: Events may be recorded, and video and photos may be posted on our website, social media, and elsewhere. If you would prefer not to be visible, please let a Word Up team member know.
PRIVACY: Registrants will be added to the Word Up mailing list. Your contact information will never be shared or sold. You may unsubscribe or update your subscription at any time.
VIRTUAL ACCESSIBILITY: Word Up Community Bookshop/Librería Comunitaria public events are open to all and are presented on Zoom, and Facebook Live when possible. Computer-generated live captions are available on Zoom. Free live transcription and ASL interpretation are available for most programs upon request. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible, please don’t hesitate to reach out to events@wordupbooks.com. We are actively learning the best practices for this technology and we welcome your feedback as we begin this new way of connecting across distances.
Dr. Zaida Corniel and author Roberto Carlos García will intertwine conversation and reading from Garcia´s most recent book, What Can I Tell You? to discuss his literary work, addressing topics such as racial discourses, borders inside the nations, the African diaspora counternarratives, among others.
This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 30 max attendees. Please register in advance.
In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees for this event must wear a mask inside.
Word Up Community Bookshop is located at 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (& 165th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 168th St and the A/C train to 163rd or 168th St.
This event is sponsored by Dominican Writers Association.
Charting the personal and the political, the lyrical and the prosaic, with an intense interrogation of anti-Blackness that centers Trans-Atlantic and Latinx Blackness in all its vastness, beauty, and pride, this necessary book compiles the best of Garcia’s three poetry collections. These selected poems will introduce Garcia’s work to a broader audience. Like the poem it takes its title from, What Can I Tell You? conveys a poet wrestling with what it means to make poetry from the bread of life. At times formal and playful, and at others deadly serious, Garcia’s full range of themes and obsessions is on full display within its pages.
Roberto Carlos Garcia writes about the Afro-Latinx and Afro-Diasporic experience. His work has been published widely in places like Poetry, the Root, the BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT, Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3 and others. He is the author of five books, including four poetry collections—Melancolía (Cervena Barva Press, 2016); black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric (Willow Books, 2018); [Elegies] (FlowerSong Press, 2020); and the recently published What Can I Tell You: The Selected Poems of Roberto Carlos Garcia (Flowersong Press, 2022)—and one essay collection, Traveling Freely, forthcoming in 2024 from Northwestern University Press. Roberto is the founder of Get Fresh Books Publishing, a literary nonprofit.
Dr. Zaida Corniel is an academic, actor and writer. She is a lecturer at the Department of Hispanic Languages at Stony Brook University, and teaches also at the Department of Latin America and Latino Studies at Lehman College. Her work focuses on Latinx studies, touristic discourse, and representation of the Caribbean subjectivities in contemporary narratives. She is the author of the short story collection Para adolescentes, premenopáusicas y especialistas de la salud.
MASKING POLICY: All attendees ages 2 and older must wear a mask at all times when indoors at the store at Word Up and Recirculation.
CANCELLATION POLICY: Word Up Community Bookshop reserves the right to cancel events for any reason, including but not limited to safety concerns.
CODE OF CONDUCT: Please note Word Up has a zero-tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during any event, virtual or in-person. Please read our Safe Space Policy for more information. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from the event at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to events@wordupbooks.com immediately.
PHOTOS & RECORDING: Events may be recorded, and videos and photos may be posted on our website, social media, and elsewhere. If you would prefer not to be visible, please let a Word Up team member know.
PRIVACY: Registrants will be added to the Word Up mailing list. Your contact information will never be shared or sold. You may unsubscribe or update your subscription at any time.
PHYSICAL ACCESSIBILITY: Word Up Community Bookshop/Librería Comunitaria is a fully wheelchair-accessible space with one ADA-compliant ramp from the street level to the store. Some of our bookcases and tables are on wheels and can be moved to provide additional access. Our visitor bathroom is wheelchair-accessible and gender-neutral. Our events are mic’d for sound. Free ASL interpretation is available for most programs upon request; please email events@wordupbooks.com to request interpretation as early as possible. The space is not scent or chemical free but we do our best to minimize the use of chemicals and scents throughout the space and use nontoxic materials whenever possible. If you have specific questions about the space or how an event can be made more accessible to you, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@wordupbooks.com.
DEADLINE Sunday, April 2, 2023 11:59pm
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS / FREE APPLICATION FORM BELOW
AWARDS
$1,500 Grand Prize 1st place winner
$750 for 2nd place
$500 for 3rd place
HISTORY
The 21st Uptown Arts Stroll/Paseo de las Artes is a hybrid of in-person & virtual programming in June 2023 from West 135th to West 220th Street in West Harlem, Washington Heights & Inwood. The Uptown Arts Stroll started as a volunteer organized one-day event the Sunday before Thanksgiving 2003 and grew into a month-long festival celebrating northern Manhattan’s visual and performing artists. The Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NoMAA) has produced the Uptown Arts Stroll since 2008.
REQUIREMENTS
In June 2023 the Uptown Arts Stroll welcomes the Tony Awards to our home at the United Palace, and the image should reflect that special occasion.
ELIGIBILITY
Artists must be West Harlem, Washington Heights or Inwood residents (W135th to W155th St from Edgecombe Ave west to the Hudson River; W155th St to W220th St river-to-river)
WINNER SELECTION
