@writingourwellness
🆓🇵🇸 Autistic, single mama, teaching artist, poet, memoir WIP, Octavia Butler Earthseed fellow, The Kenyon Review's Julia Alvarez scholarship winner, VCCA, Cal Arts Council, Periplus, Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow, repped by BookEnds Lit
It was also a joy to see both Camille and Nadia Owusu glowing on the Books are Magic book launch livestream! Both of their memoirs are 🔥 and they deeply inspire me, as I continue working on my own memoir. Let's get more of our stories into the world! 📚
Congrats to @camilleuadams.bsky.social on pub week for her debut memoir, How to Be Unmothered! We did a Roots Wounds Words creative nonfiction workshop together in 2023, where I witnessed her brilliance in action as she worked on this book. Read/gift/share it, esp for my fellow estranged BIPOC folks
Looking forward to reading alongside these amazing Abode Press fellows in a little bit! Come through!
Finding reminders that most Americans are immigrants not natives in the pieces by @melissalbennett.bsky.social, Lorinda Toledo, Ana Maria Mina Hernández, @mahopita.bsky.social & @riidgwayy.bsky.social from @writingourwellness.bsky.social’s Flash 405: “Otherworldly”: tinyurl.com/Otherworldly405.
I’m happy to be a 2025 Creative Nonfiction Fellow with Abode Press! I’ll be joining an amazing group of writers to study with the brilliant KB Brookins. Looking forward to writing in community and workshopping an excerpt from my memoir about being a first gen student and single mothering in poverty.
Los Angeles folks, join us for Palabras Literary Salon at Latinx With Plants on Sunday, May 18, 2-3:30PM! I’ll be sharing new poems + prose alongside a powerful lineup of BIPOC writers, honoring Carolyn Huynh’s new book, The Family Recipe. Thanks for Jen Cheng for organizing this amazing series!
Thank you so much for reading it, that means a lot!
Honored that my poem, "When I Was a Starseed," was nominated for Best New Poets, my first BNP nom! Grateful to Lucky Jefferson & guest editor Xochitl Alicia Frausto for including my poem in "Wildflower," a special issue by & for BIPOC autistic writers ♾️🌌✨ Read the issue for free via my linktree!
Congrats!!!
Thanks again to Women Who Submit for the regrant support, my friend Nicole & Ashton @tell-it-ashton.bsky.social for creating this post!
I saw Prince live in Oakland, just once. Words cannot describe the experience 💜😭
Thanks to Dr. Tran for having me speak to her Engaging Students of Color class at Cal State East Bay yesterday! We explored Ethnic Studies methodologies, writing as healing, Audre Lorde, living life as artists & more. I also read from my memoir-in-progress & poems. Grateful for the students & convo!
Amazing news!!
Join Permission to Write for this free virtual literary event on May 8 with these talented Black women writers! I'm incredibly proud to serve as a board member for this Black woman founded & led literary org for BIPOC writers, come through and support! Register here: bit.ly/wipmay25
The writing life can be difficult but I'm grateful for this reciprocal support because we need to keep writing, keep fighting.
Thank you Xochitl & Women Who Submit for this small regrant! Every dollar counts. I used the funds to apply to creative writing opportunities, including Hedgebrook (I submitted last night!). Also, big thanks to my amazing accountability partner & friend, Nicole, whose support also helped me submit.
Yes!!
Sheria’s leadership and dedication to collective storytelling has been a beacon for parenting folks of the Global Majority for a decade and counting.
Also, thanks again to Raising Mothers for publishing this poem back in 2020. If you’re not already, please follow and support Sherisa de Groot, the founder of Raising Mothers and Literary Liberation.
And for me, my growth as a creative writer has meant unlearning the type of writing that was expected at the doctoral level. It feels good to come home to my own words, myself, again.
My poetry often comes to me in a clear, direct voice, and that’s the way this poem wanted to be written too. Some may call it “too simple,” but in my humble opinion, it’s far more difficult to convey complex ideas, critiques, and experiences in just a few conversational words.
Big thanks to Prof. G, an English professor at ELAC 🐺, who taught my poem, “Policy,” in her class last week. I’m very happy to hear that it resonated with the exact people I wrote it for—working class, single mamas of color. We see, we know, we survive against all odds, in community college & beyond
And for me, my growth as a creative writer has meant unlearning the type of writing that was expected at the doctoral level. It feels good to come home to my own words, myself, again.
My poetry often comes to me in a clear, direct voice, and that’s the way this poem wanted to be written too. Some may call it “too simple,” but in my humble opinion, it’s far more difficult to convey complex ideas, critiques, and experiences in just a few conversational words.
3/3 As a teaching artist, Cecilia creates collective spaces of storytelling as a healing art for BIPOC folks. Cecilia’s latest writing appears in Lucky Jefferson, Witness Magazine, and Strange Horizons, and she is currently working on a memoir and a poetry collection. Her mentor is Dionne Ford.
2/3 received fellowships and grants from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Abolitionist Teaching Network, Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellowship, California Arts Council, Periplus, and she is the inaugural recipient of The Kenyon Review’s Julia Alvarez scholarship.
1/3 My Periplus bio: Based in LA, Cecilia is a single mother, poet, writer, teaching artist, adjunct professor, and co-editor of the bestselling book, The Chicana Motherwork Anthology. Cecilia earned a Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California and she has
I'm a 2025 Periplus fellow! And another thanks to my brilliant Periplus mentor, Dionne Ford. I had the fortune of meeting her in-person last week & we are both moms, writers in recovery, memoirists. When creative labor, libraries, education, books & imaginations are under attack, writers write back.