Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $40)

Step 2: Register for “Cryptids and Creatures” here

What role do cryptids and creatures like the Minotaur, the Mapinguari, or the Little Mermaid play in a poem? What do they allow writers to communicate about the myriad costs of being in this world characterized by colonial violence and slavery?

This workshop engages works by poets like Traci Brimhall, Natalie Diaz, and Summer Farah, whose mythical creatures unsettle understandings of loneliness, intimacy, sacrifice, and our relationships between past and present.

This will be an interactive space, where participants will write and share poems as cryptozoologists, architects, and memory workers. This workshop benefits the Sameer Project's North Gaza campaign.

Maya Salameh is the author of HOW TO MAKE AN ALGORITHM IN THE MICROWAVE (University of Arkansas Press, 2022), winner of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize, and the chapbook rooh (Paper Nautilus Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in The Offing, Poetry, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, AGNI, Mizna, and the LA Times, among others. She can be found at @mayaslmh or mayasalameh.com.