PSNY Virtual Workshop: Writing for Resilience & Reclamation

With poet Naima Yael Tokunow!

In this workshop, we’ll explore how poetry can serve as a powerful tool for healing, resilience, and reclaiming personal narratives. Poetry has long been a means of processing trauma, reclaiming silenced stories, and finding strength in vulnerability. Together, we’ll engage in writing exercises that explore themes like survival, reclamation, and transformation. You’ll learn techniques for using imagery, metaphor, and voice to articulate your experiences, drawing inspiration from poets who write at the intersection of personal and political healing. Towards liberation!

About the Instructor: Naima Yael Tokunow (she/her) is a communications professional, educator, writer, artist, and editor. Her work (and life) explores Black femme identity, kinship, and futurity. She is the author of three chapbooks, MAKE WITNESS, published in 2016 by Zoo Cake Press, Planetary Bodies, out from Black Warrior Review in 2019, and Shadow Black, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner, Jericho Brown for the Frontier Digital Chapbook Prize in 2020.

She is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a TENT Residency Fellow & has attended The Home School workshop in Miami. Currently, she is the 2022 - 2024 Nightboat Editorial Fellow and edits for Tupelo Quarterly.

She lives in unceded Tiwa land (also known as Albuquerque) with her husband and children. She is blessed to be Black and alive.

* *This workshop will take place on Zoom.**