June Events 📬

Our next upstate retreat & new events around the city

Hi friends,

We’ve just returned from our third upstate retreat, where Hannah Mode and I led writing and visual art exercises with a group of nine participants in the sun-lit hills outside Poughkeepsie.

Hannah added a new piece to our Sunday morning workshop where everyone built an enormous cyanotype tapestry together using found objects from inside the house and the surrounding forest. It felt like a perfect extension of the weekend’s central theme of exploring new ways to make your art practice a social one. We’re so grateful to all of our participants and can’t wait to do it again.

You can learn more about what we have planned for our next retreat in late September. Applications go live July 1st!

Hanging the completed group cyanotype in the yard

Next weekend I’ll also be returning to the Center for Fiction to lead Writing Without Thinking, a half-day course focused on looking at the effect conscious intent has on the writing process, and what happens when we disrupt or short-circuit our own impulse to edit while making. As always, no experience necessary and all genres welcome.

As for our one-night events we have five writing nights around the city, as well as a new creative prompt for paid subscribers (available at the bottom of this email).

Scroll for more info on each, and hope to see you soon!

—Josh

Drink 'N Drafts are a writing-version of the classic Drink 'N Draw, where instead of models and figure drawing, we project a series of images for you to use as creative writing prompts. Fiction, poetry, essay, screenplay—write whatever you want! Paper and pencils provided, no laptops allowed.

We're hosting five Drink 'N Drafts in June—

Book Club Bar, East Village
Wednesday, June 5th from 8-10pm (RSVP)

Center for Fiction, Fort Greene
Sunday, June 9th from 5-7pm (RSVP)

Ripped Bodice, Park Slope
Tuesday, June 11th from 7-9pm (RSVP)

P&T Knitwear, LES 
Sunday, June 23rd from 6-8pm (RSVP)

WORD Bookstore, Greenpoint
Thursday, June 27th from 7-9pm (RSVP)

How much time do you spend thinking about what you’re going to write, instead of writing it? What would it mean to write without thinking at all? How can you become, as Annie Dillard describes it, “transparent and hollow, a channel for the work”?

In this one-day class, we’ll experiment with auto-writing, blind contours, and different ways of writing without thinking, as we look at the effect that conscious intent has on our writing process. Together, we’ll explore new methods of observing, and how to use those methods to approach our writing with a greater emphasis on play and discovery.

Writing Without Thinking
Center for Fiction, Fort Greene ($125)
Saturday, June 8th from 12-4:30pm

Join us for our next creative retreat in Highland, New York!

For two days and nights (9/27-9/29) we’ll be writing, drawing, and exercising all those creative muscles we rarely have the time and space to activate in our everyday lives. 

Unlike other residencies, you don’t have to be a writer or an artist to join. You don’t need a portfolio or a writing sample. You don’t even need to have any experience writing or drawing. All you need is to want to spend a few days focused on your creative practice, and an interest in doing that work in a small community of 6-8 others. Learn more here!