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Find Your Story: A Day of Writing and Community

A Social Justice Themed Writers' Festival

Find Your Story will be a day of workshops, tabling, and author talks focused on DC’s writing community with an emphasis on social justice and community-building.

Join us at Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library on Saturday, June 11, from 10am-5pm for Find Your Story: A Day of Writing and Community. Find Your Story will be a day of workshops, tabling and author talks focused on DC’s writing community with an emphasis on social justice and community-building. The event will conclude with on the rooftop with an open mic where attendees can share their writing and/or stories. Find Your Story: A Day of Writing and Community will be held on the 4th and 5th floors.

Find Your Story will feature Marita Golden as the keynote speaker. Her keynote talk is titled: Telling Your Story True. In her keynote talk to be followed by questions from the audience, Marita Golden will discuss how her nearly 40-years as a published author created, enhanced and defined her life. In her novels, memoirs, essays, and as the editor of several anthologies, Marita Golden has explored the inner lives and perennial possibilities of Black women and Black families. Her book Saving Our Sons Raising Black Children in a Turbulent World and her novel A Woman's Place have both been reissued this year. Her work as co-founder of the Zora Neale Hurston Richard Wright Foundation created new opportunities and broadened the literary community for Black writers.

Registration for Find Your Story is recommended, but not required. Join us for what promises to be a great day of writing and community building! 

More information about sessions, organizations tabling, and the schedule is below. 

Schedule for Find Your Story: A Day of Writing and Community

10a.m.- Registration in the Event Space on the 5th floor and visit tables

11a.m. - Choice of the following 3 workshops:

Developing Character in Social Justice Fiction by Dr. Michele Simms-Burton 

Internalized Homophobia by C. Alexandria-Bernard Thomas - Poet, Orator, and Teaching Artist

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People Campaign: The Struggle Continues by Liz McNichol, Co-Chair of The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

12p.m. - Lunch on your own and visit tables

1p.m. - Keynote, Telling Your Story True, by Author and Educator Marita Golden 

2p.m. - Choice of the following 3 workshops:

Writer or Black Writer?: On Craft and Racial Consciousness by Kimbilio Fellowship Authors, Tara Campbell, Tope Folarin, and Melanie Hatter

Intro to Storytelling by Amy Saidman, Artistic Director for Story District 

Find Your Voice by Playwright Tom Minter of Mosaic Theater 

3p.m. - Choice of the following 3 workshops:

Google Suite for Writers by Natalya McNeal 

Money, Marketing & More for DC Authors by the DC Department of Small & Local Business Development (DSLBD)

HERstory: Black Girls Lost in the Margins by Gabrielle Martinez, Founder of The Black Girl Tribe

4p.m. - Open Mic on the rooftop (Attendees who want to participate in the open mic should plan to perform for a max of 3 minutes)

Tabling Organizations will include: 

DC Board of Elections

DC Creative Affairs Office

DC Office of Human Rights

Hurston/Wright Foundation 

Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

The Black Girl Tribe

The Inner Loop

The Writer's Center

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This project was also made possible in part by the Library of Congress Center for the Book.

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