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Celebrate Women and Writing with the Inner Loop

A Reading Series Featuring Local Authors

Join us for an evening celebrating women and writing! The Inner Loop will present nine local writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction who will read their original work aloud.

Celebrate Women's History Month with The Inner Loop and nine local writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction who will read their original work aloud! Whether you're a bookworm, an inspiring writer, or just enjoy listening to stories, The Inner Loop readings have something for everyone.

The program will occur in the New Books area on the first floor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. Registration is encouraged but not required. 

This program is a part of Our City, Our Stories, a series that features informative programs about local government and governance and educate residents on how they can be involved in the process, while also presenting cultural programs featuring authors, artists, and subject matter experts from Washington, DC.
   

About the Inner Loop

The Inner Loop is a nonprofit organization that cultivates and promotes the distinctive literary culture of Washington, DC by connecting both emerging and established writers to each other and to their community. We believe in the power of transforming the written word into a shared experience, and we believe that everyone should have access to the same stage, from first-time storytellers to published authors.
   

About the Writers
   

Amanda Borquaye is a Pushcart prize-nominated writer. You can find her words in Roxane Gay’s “The Audacity” and Longleaf Review and nowhere else because she is bad at submitting her work. Her current writing fixation is on children of immigrants grappling with how to demonstrate love and care for their previous generations in a country that prides itself on capitalistic achievement and individual acclaim.

Nikki Frias is the author of "Damn, you STILL Single?" and "Does this Divorce Make Me Look Fat?" She is also an improv teacher at the Washington Improv Theater and a full-time writer helping people find their voice on the stage or the page.

Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the collections Her Dark Everything; Her Whole Bright Life;  Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart; and Beautiful & Full of Monsters. She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Find her online at www.courtneyleblanc.com.

Tanya Olson lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. She is the author of Boyishly, Stay, and Born Backwards, all out from YesYes Books. She has received a Discovery/Boston Review prize and an American Book Award and was been named a Lambda Fellow by the Lambda Literary Foundation. Her poem 54 Prince was chosen for inclusion in Best American Poems. 

Diana Rojas' debut fiction Litany of Saints: A Triptych was published by Arte Público Press in April 2024. A graduate of NYU, she has written in everything from large daily newspapers to niche newsletters. Diana grew up in Connecticut and New Jersey, has lived in five different countries and currently lives, taxed and unrepresented, in Washington, DC.

Bernardine (Dine) Watson is a nonfiction writer and poet who lives in Washington, DC.  Dine's memoir "Transplant" won the Washington Writers' Publishing Houses' 2023 nonfiction prize. Transplant was selected by National Public Radio as one of the 2023 " books we love" and featured in Poets and Writers' Magazine.  Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals.

Anisa Rahim is the author of the hybrid memoir American Meo: A Tale of Remembering and Forgetting published by Sputyen Duyvil Publishing.  You can find more of her poetry, prose and photographs on anisarahim.com. 

Kat Reyes Colvert was the Alan Cheuse International Writer's Center Fellow for 2021 and received her MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. 

Carol Mitchell is the author of What Start Bad a Mornin' and 19 books for children. She lives and teaches writing in northern Virginia.

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