Archive March 2019

Maryann DeLeo is a filmmaker and writer. She has been attending the Write Treatment Workshops at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York led by Emily Rubin for more than two years.

I was listening to a talk and the speaker said, “Are your days masterpieces? Make every day a masterpiece.” I thought of my days, and my first reaction was, No, my days are not masterpieces. Then I had a flash of Wednesdays at the writing workshop! Those days—they are masterpieces.

And it’s not just for the writing. It’s because of Emily Rubin, who leads the P&W–supported Write Treatment Workshops at Mount Sinai Cancer Centers. A fellow writer, Emily brings her love of literature, art, dance, theater, and music to the class. Her enthusiasm for the arts is evident with her weekly show-and-tell—holding up a catalogue from the latest exhibition she’s seen, or the playbill from a recent theater experience. She bursts into the room at Mount Sinai with so much to tell us about what’s happening in the world. I want to go to everything she tells us about. One student says to her, “You know about everything.”

Then Emily gets down to business: writing. She brings prompts that give us a way in to the writing or not. We can jump off from there, or we can go it alone writing about anything that comes up in our minds.

Each Wednesday she patiently unpacks our stories, one by one. She only looks slightly askance when a writer hems and haws about their “masterpiece” of the day. She wants each of us to stand tall and read with confidence.

I don’t know how she does it but she always finds something in the story that’s good storytelling, good writing. She takes the pages we write in our blue notebooks to heart. “You’re publishing your writing when you read it here,” she says. I breathe that in. If Emily says so, it is so. So we read, we publish, we get to be heard, by our own ears and by a dozen others.

We have created something, and Emily loves it into existence. It’s not that every piece will go on to loftier goals but for those minutes we read, we have Emily’s attention and all the other writers (although there is one writer who groans when he sees all I’ve written telling me, “You’ve written a novel!”). We have managed to get on our conference table soapbox and express who we are this day, this afternoon, these few hours. This is no small gift.

When I was in treatment for my cancer, I spent many afternoons lying on my bed, too weary to get myself up and out. Then I saw a flyer for one of Emily’s workshops. I didn’t go the first time I saw the flyer, but a seed was planted that maybe, someday, I could go. It was something to aspire to. When I get my energy back, I’m going, I told myself.

While still in treatment and fed up with lying about, there was that first Wednesday I got myself to the conference room at West Fifteenth Street. I was a bit shy but as soon as I saw Emily smiling, welcoming me into the room, the jitters went away. I became a regular. I’ve been attending the workshops for more than two years. I’m hooked. When I don’t go, I feel my day is not a masterpiece, something is missing from Wednesday.

I’ve filled many blue notebooks. I’m always startled at what comes out during the hours I’m writing. I didn’t know I thought that. Where did that come from? Some of my notebook writings move on, progress, and expand. And some I file away, to be continued.

I never just fling anything I write on Wednesday away. It’s all for something, even if it’s just for me to reflect on a part of my life I haven’t looked at before. It’s all part of my story.

There’s a quote Emily gave us by Natalie Goldberg that stays with me: “We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.... We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived.”

Support for the Readings & Workshops Program in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Frances Abbey Endowment, the Cowles Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Camryn Bruno is a nineteen-year-old Queens-born spoken-word poet and model who resided in Trinidad and Tobago but returned to New York in 2018. Currently a sophomore at York College in New York, she is the 2019 New York City Youth Poet Laureate, the 2017 Trinidad and Tobago First Citizens National Poetry Slam Champion, and the 2017 Ms. Tobago Heritage Personality Queen. Bruno is internationally recognized and has performed at various festivals in the Caribbean and is a two-time participant of the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival. Her poems explore social issues that affect youth and she is a passionate advocate for the rights of women, people of color, and other historically marginalized groups.

When I think of workshops, I think of them as discussions around a table a few hours every week until it’s time to showcase what we’ve learned. However, when I was asked to participate in New Settlement’s Silence Out Loud poetry workshop in the Bronx, I knew that the workshop would provide something more than just roundtable discussions. Poet and teacher Roya Marsh is no stranger to me. As the poet-in-residence at Urban Word NYC, she is the one responsible for bringing the female-identifying youths of the Bronx together to take part in these workshops.

Commuting from Queens wasn’t a problem for me on a Thursday afternoon because I knew that I was going to a place where I would feel welcomed and have fun with young women who were just like me—eagerly using the literary arts as a form of healthy therapy, using our pens to effectively express emotions. After ensuring we were all in a safe space, we spoke about our “roses and thorns” for the week.

The compelling stories that were told always led us to engaging conversations. Marsh provided us with weekly writing prompts that we shared at the end of each workshop. One of the prompts that stood out to me was: “What does safety mean to you?” As women, this question was something we all struggled with answering on the first go, but eventually we were able to write down some thoughtful responses.

The Poets & Writers–supported workshop at New Settlement has given me and other young women the opportunity to speak truths about the issues that affect us every day, by providing a safe space for us, and encouraging us to use our voice to stand up for ourselves and create revolutionary noise for all to hear.

Support for the Readings & Workshops Program in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Frances Abbey Endowment, the Cowles Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.

Curator and cohost of the Pen Parentis Literary Salons, Christina Chiu is the author of Troublemaker and Other Saints (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001), which was nominated for the Stephen Crane First Fiction Award, won the 2002 Asian American Literary Award in fiction, and was chosen for Alternate Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Her stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Tin House, the New Guard, Washington Square Review, Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home in the World (Penguin Books, 2004), and many others. Chiu received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. She is currently working on short stories and a memoir.

The mission of Pen Parentis is to provide critical resources for working writers to help them stay on creative track after starting a family. The salon reading series is a crucial part of this mission. Not only does it give our authors a platform, but it connects them with a community. Writing can be isolating without a community, and it can be challenging to stay connected when one becomes a parent.

Aside from the salons, Pen Parentis has a weekly meet-up every Friday morning. Often, first time authors come, love what we do, return to future salons, then decide to become title members. I curate the series by theme and authors choose which salon resonate with them and their work. There are three, sometimes four, authors at each event. Very often, these clusters form tight bonds; they become lasting and meaningful friendships, ones in which authors can support and help one another.

For the March 2018 Immigrant/Immigration salon, we featured authors Susan Muaddi Darraj, Marguerite Bouvard, and Sarah Gambito. I spoke with Marguerite recently, and she mentioned how fond she was of her fellow readers. She had just finished reading Susan’s short story collection A Curious Land: Stories From Home (University of Massachusetts Press, 2015). “The book was superb and I bought copies for friends,” Marguerite said. “It gives a wonderful new perspective on Palestine and women. The author is truly gifted.”

Pen Parentis builds a family, and like with any family, it’s important to be as inclusive as possible. One of our core values is inclusion, and we strive for this in every possible way. We showcase a balance of men and women, people of color, gender nonconformity, and various family situations, while still maintaining an effortless grouping based on a theme that does not single out but rather includes these usual outliers into the general conversation, leading to a much richer dialogue for all.

The support from Poets & Writers has been a major part of the salon’s growth. Not only does it lend credibility to what we do, but it makes it possible to offer authors an honorarium. This helps to transform a regional reading series into a nationally-recognized literary organization. I have been able to offer something toward transportation and lodging for authors located outside of the metropolitan area, and more importantly, something rare in the literary world—acknowledgement. Authors are often expected to read for free, but the honorarium lets them know that their time and work is appreciated and valued. The success of the Pen Parentis salon is furthered by the support of Poets & Writers. Thank you!

Support for the Readings & Workshops Program in New York City is provided, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with additional support from the Frances Abbey Endowment, the Cowles Charitable Trust, and the Friends of Poets & Writers.