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It’s almost summer time in Miami, and you know what that means: another summer camp session of writing, reading, and creativity! This year we’re doing things a bit different and we’ll be having one session instead of 2 in an effort to build a deeper sense of community. Interested in applying? CLICK HERE.
We look forward to hosting our best summer camp yet. Slay on!
PageSlayers is participating in #GiveMiamiDay again this year! On Thursday, November 15th, you have the opportunity to make an impact and we’d love to have your support. As an added bonus, a percentage of your donation is matched by the The Miami Foundation, which means your contribution goes even further to ensure that PageSlayers can offer free creative writing summer camps to kids in Opa-Locka and foster the next generation of writers-of-color.
Your donation ensures that we can provide the following for our talented up-and-coming writers:
-Small and personal workshops with award-winning writers and artists such as Edwidge Danticat, Roger Reeves, Elia Khalaf, and Najja Moon;
-Quality, interactive, and imaginative creative writing instruction taught by local poets, fiction writers, and novelists of color;
-Opportunities to create zines, mail art, and broadsides;
-Classes in yoga, meditation, and mindfulness;
-Books for the PageSlayers’ library and PageSlayers T-shirts for all campers!
Thank you in advance for your support, it means the world!
The bittersweet truth: PageSlayers' second summer has come to a close...but this year’s campers slayed all day, every day! This summer was all about experimentation and playing with different forms, writing processes, and modes of creativity. The campers delved into found poetry, ekphrasis, mail art, yoga, zine making, screenwriting, and even made their own broadsides and postage stamps! Read on for our summer recap and fun pics from our end-of-the-summer show!
PageSlayers' last day of camp!
A found poem, by a camper who wishes to remain anonymous:
Arizona blooms the holidays to get natural instinct.
“Think, the fortress won’t charm kingdoms,” the secret girl explained.
“Dream, stronger, sleep best,” the King said.
“Drift for pure art and feeling,” the guard said.
“Dares of sympathetic heads of dead kings,” the native war spider stated.
“Pay your God, you’re not welcome. Pay him with your life,” the spider said.
The spider ate the girl.
An example of a broadside based on the theme of "my shadow" by PageSlayer, Jazzie.
A multitude of guest artists visited this summer from different professional fields within creative writing and art. We had the chance to learn about reverse lithographic poetry from author Roger Reeves, film and screenwriting from local filmmaker April Dobbins, mail art and zine making from visual artist Elia Khalaf, broadside creation from artist Najja Moon, and the integration of yoga and poetry from writer and meditation instructor, Becca Medevin.
Najja Moon and Bianca Garcia work with Slayers on their broadsides!
The students enjoyed acting out their own screenplays, writing pen pals in Little Haiti, practicing meditation, and doing awesome collaborative work with one another during workshop. It was so exciting to see them open up, visualize the reality of creative professions, and consider how they themselves can become working artists.
A pre-meditation to calm nerves before the summer show!
Our students’ ability to create in a professional sense was underscored this summer by the release of one of our PageSlayers' first book! Javan Allison, a student at Norwood Elementary who attended our inaugural session and this year’s second session, co-authored the children’s book The Adventures of Javan and the 3 A’s.
Javan, our first published Slayer, receives his certificate!
This summer also brought along the Maroon Poetry Festival, a special event rooted in empowering and uplifting Miami through literature, especially within Liberty City. One of our past students, Avery, was able to perform his poetry in front of a large audience, and it was beautiful to see his confidence bloom on stage. While this summer went by quickly, we are so happy with how everything came together and we feel extremely grateful to be running a program that fosters a community of young writers of color.
Art in progress!
And of course, we could never have accomplished so much without the incredible support we’ve received from the Knight Foundation, the Opa-Locka Community Development Corporation, Thrive Innovation District, the Miami Foundation, Locust Projects, Miami Dade County, the Miami Foundation, EXILE Books, our students, and all of amazing our instructors and guest artists.
Great advice from a Slayer: "stop thinking and do some writing"!
In next few months, we'll be taking a "break" (preparing for next year’s program!) and launching our collaborative SIDEXSIDE project with EXILE books. Watch out for news about both, join our newsletter for updates, and stay slaying. Scroll through for highlights from our end-of-the-summer Open Mic!
Welcome to PageSlayers' 2018 showcase!
A packed house of family and friends!
Slayers taking a bow!
Family reading through their campers' writing.
A proud parent reads through VIVA! The Golden Summer, the PageSlayers 2018 anthology.
PageSlayers Anthology + pizza = magic.
Last year, local screenwriter, filmmaker, and photographer April Dobbins joined us as one of our visiting artists. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Miami, and was chosen to be a 2017 Sundance Institute Knight Fellow. April’s films have screened across the United States, and she is an alumna of the prestigious Rittenhouse Writers Group. She is also the recipient of the S.J. Weiler Fund Award, and was awarded the Cannonball Miami 2016 WaveMaker Grant. Her current project, a documentary film entitled Alabamaland, is an ongoing exploration of African-American culture in the rural South.
This year, April came back and it was a huge success!
Students discussed film terms such as scenes, dialogue, conflict, characters, motivation, and the importance of titles before starting their very own movie scripts! Afterwards, they got to use an authentic slate, and had the opportunity to act out their works-in-progress!
Once again, we're so honored and excited to have had such a talented, impressive, and engaging artist join us, and look out for possible PageSlayer Hollywood hits!
We’re currently in the midst of week two of our second session and so far our campers have been thriving! As our slayers are busy creating literary works of art, we thought we’d (re) introduce our second instructor for this session, long-time Miamian and writer, Miguel Pichardo. Pichardo is an MFA candidate at Florida International University, where he specializes in work that experiments with elements of poetry, non-fiction, and fiction. This is his second year teaching with PageSlayers, and he’s excited to see what our students have in store this time around.
What kind of work do you do? What are you working on right now?
Aside from working on completing my Master of Fine Arts degree, I work as a youth mentor with South Florida CARES. This non-profit teaches wellness and coping skills to our community's most underserved children.
This is your second year as an instructor. What are you looking forward to most in your time with PageSlayers?
I'm excited about all the wonderful work our students will produce. It's always such a nice surprise when the kids express themselves on the page and show more of who they are and [who they] want to be.
What lesson are you most excited to share with the campers?
I'm excited to expose students to more experimental forms of poetry. Maybe they've never heard of a “found poem” or an “erasure poem,” but it will be so much fun to introduce these forms to them and have them create their own [versions].
Why do you think it is important for students in Miami to be exposed to art and creative writing at a young age?
Being a kid can be a confusing time, and I feel that creative writing helps shed light on all the chaos of growing up. When kids learn to express themselves early on, they can continue to do so [in the future], no matter what passions they follow, and they will do so as their full authentic selves.
Where can we read some of your work?
My poetry and prose can be found in publications such as Duende, Literary Orphans, Fjords Review, and Luna Luna.
With the first week of our second session wrapped, we wanted to take a moment to introduce one of our new instructors, Bianca Garcia. Bianca is a Miami-based teacher and writer with experience in musical composition and musical theater. This is her first summer teaching with PageSlayers and we couldn’t be more excited to have her. You can find a Q&A with Bianca below.
What kind of work do you do? What are you working on right now?
Right now, I’m teaching and writing. I’m working on a musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and my own debut collection.
What lesson are you most excited to share with the campers?
Resilience is everything. Writers have to persevere! I want them to trust their instincts and impulses and watch that journey unfold.
Why do you think it is important for students in Miami to be exposed to art and creative writing at a young age?
Creativity is a lifelong quest. There are so many ways to learn and explore human experience. The arts are such a vital part of that exploration.
What do you hope campers take away from spending their summer with PageSlayers?
I love that moment when a student realizes that their everyday story matters and that they can use their voice, just as it is, to tell it.
Writing a letter to his new pen pal; photo credit: Alex Delbeau-Charles
Over the last three weeks, so many wonderful things have happened in Opa-Locka with our PageSlayers. Read on for highlights, cute pics, and awe-inspiring words!
During our first week, we had the amazing Elia Khalaf come in and lead our students in zine-making, as well as workshops on mail art. As part of our collaboration with EXILE Books, he, along with founder PageSlayers Dana De Greff, led our campers in the art of writing letters, the epistolary form (poetry in the form of letters), and they even designed the VERY FIRST OPA-LOCKA STAMP! Our PageSlayers wrote letters to kids in Little Haiti in collaboration with Gang Alternative, and the results were magical...
PageSlayers' letters and stamps; photo credit: Alex Delbeau-Charles
Ms. Shameka reads a letter with camper, Kourtney; photo credit: Alex Delbeau-Charles
Mr. Elia leads campers in the art of stamps; photo credit: Alex Delbeau-Charles
Old Opa-Locka City Hall, colored in by a student, then transformed into a stamp; photo credit: Alex Delbeau-Charles
Combining an element from each individual's stamp, our PageSlayers colellectively created the very first Opa-Locka stamp!
“Poetry is different from a story, or a movie.” During our second week of camp we had renowned poet Roger Reeves as a guest artist; he started the morning discussing the question many of us ask ourselves all the time: what is poetry? Our kids came up with great responses like “sometimes it rhymes, and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it talks about what it’s doing.”
PageSlayer Jalahn thinking hard with Mr. Reeves
Then they came up with a list of “a” words to form a reverse lipograph: instead of omitting letters or words, they were challenfed to include words with the letter “a” to make their “A” poems.
Class pic with Mr. Reeves!
Here’s a sample of what they came up with:
Asia Brennen
Jalahn Panda aloud and crazy,
alive as a crab
Outlasts a shark
that laughs in the water
sassy and mean
all around that land
Awesome water and crazy
Thanks, Samantha.
Jalahn Hudson
A car and a flag
apple dancing and I am
as small as an apple
and a baby that’s leaping
imagine a sassy baby
imagine a cat that has feathers
laying candy
that has parents and a dragon
Yoga burrito? Photo credit: Maria Esquinca
Merging poetry, yoga, and mediation, our last week included a visit from poet and yogi, Becca Medevin, who said "yoga, meditation, and writing offer us life-changing tools. It is a gift to be able to share these tools with the PageSlayers students."
Slayers do the downward dog!
Our Slayers listened to their breathing, stretched, moved, wrote, and shared from the heart, coming up with some wonderful words and physical expressions of poetry.
Keep in touch, Session One Slayers! Photo credit: Alex Delbeau-Charles
And of course, many thanks to our partners at the OLCDC, Thrive Innovation District, The Knight Foundation, Miami Dade Community Grants, the WaveMaker Grants, Locust Projects and Andy Warhol Foundation, and EXILE Books! We love you!
Happy to be reading, writing, and making new friends photo credit: Alex Delbeau-Charles
It’s hard to believe that Session One is almost over!
In three weeks we’ve experimented with writing to pen pals, zine making, and “A” poetry with the help of our talented visiting artists Elia Khalaf and Roger Reeves. This week, we were joined by Becca Medvin, our last visiting artists for Session One. Medvin is a Yoga and Meditation instructor who has been practicing for 11 years. She studied literature at the University of California Berkeley, where she developed a passion for writing. Medvin sees yoga and writing as intertwined—with each pose overflowing into metaphor. She will be moving to New Hampshire in the fall to pursue her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of New Hampshire. Below, you can find a Q&A with Medvin, where she explains her view on the intersection between poetry and yoga, plus pics from our yoga + poetry with PageSlayers!
PageSlayers yoga!
What kind of work do you do? What are you working on right now? I write poetry that explores what is invisible, irrational, and uncertain. My poems attempt to integrate these aspects of myself and the world into a wholeness that can hold it all. I'm currently working on writing more poems to eventually publish a book. I'm also preparing to move up north to begin my MFA in creative writing at the University of New Hampshire.
What are you most looking forward to in your time with PageSlayers? Yoga, meditation, and writing offer us life-changing tools. It is a gift to be able to share these tools with the PageSlayers students.
What topics will you be focusing on during your time with PageSlayers? Why? My personal yoga and meditation practices are not separate from my writing. My yoga practice helps me tap into my heart and then I write from that space. I try not to over-analyze my words and I let them spill out of my heart in a stream-of-consciousness flow. I edit afterwards, but I find that my poems need to be written in this way for them to really be cathartic and feel alive. I want my poems to have a heartbeat. So the class will focus on tapping into the heart center and then writing from that space.
PageSlayers meditating; photo credit: Maria Esquinca
How does yoga effect poetry and vice versa? The questions I explore in my writing become lived experiences in my yoga practice. Everything in yoga is a metaphor! I love to share my insights with my students and guide them through their own discoveries. Yoga, meditation, and writing have all taught me that every moment is a choice, that I can transform myself if I am willing to see beyond my self-defeating thoughts, if I am willing to listen more deeply, to expand from the inside out.
What lesson are you most excited to share with the campers? Too often in my life I have been held back by my perfectionism. I allowed fear to keep me small, to mute me. Over the years I've learned how to walk into fear and allow things to sometimes be uncomfortable. I've also learned that I must allow myself to make as many mistakes as I need to without self-judgement. Mistakes are a necessary part of the journey. All of these modalities are called practices for a reason. When we take ourselves (or our writing) too seriously, we miss out on all the fun.
PageSlayers in the poetry zone; photo credit: Maria Esquinca
Why do you think it is important for students in Miami to be exposed to art, yoga, and creative writing at a young age? Creative expression of any kind helps us move through our emotions, embrace our joy, and open to the freedom that is available when we attempt what is uncertain. Art, yoga, and creative writing allow us to see ourselves more clearly and understand that our life itself is of our own creation.
PageSlayers burrito; photo credit: Maria Esquinca
Where can students and parents find your work? Below!
HURRICANE
The touch of things—
coated breeze—
carried dust of fallen trees—
as if the senses you have lost
belong to me now.
In sideways trunks—
cracked open,
I am emptied
space to fill the roots with you,
settled dust leaves traces
you are every bird
and sound
however senseless it may seem.
I am filled with your loss,
your velvet cups.
I am filled by your quarter-lived life.
I am fissured—I am bigger—
I am stiller—I am softer—
I am slower to speak and quicker
to hear: a sense you've lost is mine now.
Our first session of camp has been so rewarding—from writing to pen pals to creating new worlds on the page, we couldn’t have asked for a better start. We're also very grateful for the opportunity to work with many talented visiting artists: Last week, Elia Khalaf visited our students and introduced them to the magic of correspondence art; this week, we'll be joined by acclaimed poet Roger Reeves, author of King Me, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2013. Reeves has been the recipient of several prestigious awards, including a Whiting Award, Hodder Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, and Cave Canem Fellowships. His work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, and more, and his second collection of poetry, On Paradise, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.
Originally from southern New Jersey, Reeves earned a B.A. in English from Morehouse College. From there, he went on to earn his M.A. in English from Texas A&M University, an MFA from the James A. Michener Center for Creative Writing, and a Ph.D from the University of Texas Austin. Currently, he works as an Associate Professor of Poetry at UT Austin. He'll be leading our students through a poetry workshop entitled "Uncertain / Times" which you can find a description of below:
We are living in a moment when the news tells us that we are heading to certain catastrophe. The country seems undone. We are detaining children in camps. School is no longer a place of safety, refuge. How do we write in the midst of that uncertainty? What can we, young people, offer creatively that will allow us to not only breathe but possibly speak back to the impossibility, speak back to the void and chaos? Through looking at several poetry modes like documentary poetics, poetry of witness, and procedural poetry, we will write our resistance, we will write our lives, we will write our future. We will look at poems by Muriel Rukeyser, Solmaz Sharif, and M. NourbeSe Philips as a way into our poems, looking for what can be stolen from in their poems and used in the ones we will create in this workshop.
Stay tuned to hear more about Reeves' visit with our PageSlayers!
Last summer, Javan Allison, a student at Norwood Elementary, attended the inaugural session of PageSlayers Summer Camp. Less than a year later, he’s the published co-author of a new children’s book series: The Adventures of Javan and the 3 A’s. Javan and his mother, Monique Cooper, co-wrote the first book, #AsthmaSucks, which was released this past March. Since then, Javan has performed at readings and held book signings, taking the idea of Slaying to new levels!
Can you tell us a little bit about The Adventures of Javan & The 3 A’s? The Adventures of Javan and the 3 A's is about a boy named Javan who describes how he feels with his disabilities through imaginary adventures. The 3 A's stand for Asthma, ADHD and Anxiety. Javan was diagnosed with all 3 and has been tackling these illnesses on a day to day basis.
What kind of book is it? The book is an informative yet educational children's book to help children understand their disabilities so they can better communicate how they are feeling, and for parents to understand them from a child's perspective.
What inspired Javan to write his own book? Javan had an opportunity to meet a young writer on a school field trip and knew then [that] it was possible to be a writer but didnt know how to go about it until [he] attended camp last summer with PageSlayers.
When did Javan first start writing creatively? Javan started writing creatively at [PageSlayers’] writing camp when he wrote about his dad's red junky car. It was a unique passage about his dad's car and he was very detailed and he brought humor to it as well.
How do you think PageSlayers may have affected Javan’s writing process? PageSlayers played a great impact on Javan's writing; [the camp] was his push to start writing and they made it fun [and he realized that it’s] also a great thing to be a Writer/Author.
Do you think Javan will keep writing more books? Yes, the first book that was published on March 30th, 2018 was #AsthmaSucks, which is the first book in the 3 book series. This is where Javan describes how he feels and ways to prevent severe attacks [within his] imaginary adventures. The next two books to be released will focus on the topics of ADHD and Anxiety.
Where can other students, parents, and supporters find the book? You can find the books on Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com.
