Step 1: Donate to Laila’s family here (suggested donation $60 USD).

Step 2: Register for “Gaza Kitchen: A Cooking Workshop” here.

In this workshop with renowned author and speaker Laila El Haddad, participants will learn how to make Rummaniya, an autumnal vegetarian stew of eggplant, pomegranate and lentis popular in the southwest of Palestine, including Gaza.

Laila will share her vast knowledge about the culinary heritage of Gaza and the impacts of Israel's occupation and genocide on local foodways.

Participants will also learn about the use of the Zibdiya, the multipurpose clay mortar that Gazans use to prep, eat, and cook with. They will be sent a list of ingredients to prepare beforehand, then guided through the steps to prepare the dish during the workshop.

Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian-American writer from Gaza and co-author of The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey, which showcases traditional Palestinian cuisine and culture while exploring the deep connections between the Israeli occupation and its impact on Gaza's foodways.

Through her work as a journalist, storyteller and documentarian, including her appearance on CNN's “Parts Unknown” with Anthony Bourdain in 2013, she provides much-needed insight into the human experience of the region, raising awareness and fostering understanding of the Palestinian experience. She lives in Maryland with her husband and their four children.

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $25 USD).

Step 2: Register for “A Benefit Reading for Gaza” here.

Join Workshops for Gaza for our first IN-PERSON reading at Yu and Me Books in New York City featuring writers Megan Fernandes, Jenny Xie and Kyle Lucia Wu! All proceeds will go to the Sameer Project’s Refaat Alareer Camp, which provides medical and educational support to children and adults in Gaza.

Megan Fernandes is the author of I Do Everything I’m Told (Tin House, 2023). Her work has been published in The New Yorker, POETRY, The Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, and Ploughshares, among others. She is an Associate Professor and Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College.

Jenny Xie is the author of Holding Pattern, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her short fiction has appeared in journals like Sewanee Review, AGNI, Ninth Letter, and Joyland, and she’s received support from organizations like MacDowell, Yaddo, and Bread Loaf.

Kyle Lucia Wu is the author of Win Me Something (Tin House Books, 2021). She is also the co-author with Cathy Linh Che of An Asian American A to Z: A Children's Guide to our History (Haymarket Books, 2023). Kyle is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute and a lecturer at the New School.

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $25 USD).

Step 2: Register for “A Poetry Reading for Gaza II” here.

Join Workshops4Gaza for our second online poetry reading featuring Indigenous poetic geniuses Natalie Diaz, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. The reading will be followed by a short moderated discussion.

Natalie Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community. She is the author of the poetry collections Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf, 2020), which won the Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, and When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). She teaches at Arizona State University.

Jamaica Heolimeleikalani is a Kanaka Maoli poet and the author of Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea (University of Minnesota Press, 2021). She is an associate professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian politics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer, musician, intellectual and member of Alderville First Nation. She is the author of eight previous books including the novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), and Rehearsals for Living, co-authored with Robyn Maynard (Haymarket Books, 2022).

Step 1: Donate to Othman here (suggested donation $60 USD).

Step 2: Register for “Past Continuous” here.

In this workshop led by award-winning poet Lena Tuffaha, participants will read and discuss Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness, which focuses on in his experience in Beirut during the Israeli invasion of 1982. A take-home writing prompt will be provided.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is an Arab American poet, essayist, and translator. She is the author of three books of poetry, including Kaan and Her Sisters (Trio House Press, 2023), Something About Living (University of Akron Press, 2023), and Water & Salt (Red Hen Press, 2017).

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $60 USD).

Step 2: Register for “How To Read, Honey” here.

In a world where an increasing amount of our lives are mediated through technology, understanding how to critically read media is more important than ever. In this interactive workshop, students will join Steven Thrasher, the (currently suspended) chair of social justice in reporting at the Medill School of Journalism and author of the "Journalism as a Front of War" column at LitHub, in learning how to read traditional and social media with a critical eye.

Breaking down such key concepts as Critical Theory, Hallin's Spheres of Consensus, the Overton Window and Chomsky and Herman's Propaganda Model (aka the Five Filters of Manufacturing Consent), participants will leave the workshop with concrete tools for more deeply reading literature, Twitter, Instagram, TV, holiday movies, Christmas music, and "news use can actually use.”

Steven W. Thrasher, PhD, holds the Daniel Renberg chair at Northwestern University, the first journalism professorship in the world to focus on LGBTQ Issues. He is also a faculty member of the Institute of Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing.

His debut book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll when Inequality and Disease Collide was an New York Times Paperback Editors Pick, named one of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2022 by Kirkus Reviews, was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Literature, and won the 2023 POZ Award for Best in Literature. He holds a PhD in American Studies from NYU and his new book The Overseer Class will be published by Amistad Book in 2026.

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $60USD).

Step 2: Register for “Directed by Desire” here.

In this multi-genre online workshop, Melissa Febos and Donika Kelly will lead participants in a series of generative writing exercises inspired by the poems of June Jordan, along themes of justice, embodiment, and the erotic. There will be opportunities to share, though no feedback will be given. The session will conclude with a Q&A.

Melissa Febos is the bestselling author of five books of nonfiction, including Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the forthcoming memoir, The Dry Season. She teaches at the University of Iowa.

Donika Kelly is the author of three poetry collections, including Bestiary, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; as well as the forthcoming The Natural Order of Things. She also teaches at the University of Iowa.

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $60USD).

Step 2: Register for “Finish Your Book” here.

Tearing your hair out, trying to finish your poetry manuscript? In "Finish Your Book," participants will come up with a writing plan to turn their pages of poetry into a publishable book. This workshop will give an overview of different organizational structures for your book, review strategies for generating new work and editing the old, and guide you through a plan of action for finishing your manuscript. It doesn't have to be a painful process!

Muriel Leung is the author of the novel How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster (W.W. Norton & Company), Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books) which won the Poetry Society of America’s 2022 Four Quartets Prize, Bone Confetti (Noemi Press), and Images Seen to Images Felt (Antenna) in collaboration with artist Kristine Thompson. She received her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from University of Southern California where she was an Andrew W. Mellon Humanities in a Digital World fellow. She is faculty at California Institute of the Arts.

Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (suggested donation $60 USD).

Step 2: Register for “How to Start Your Own Mobile Liberation Library” here.

In this workshop, volunteers from the Refaat Alareer mobile library in Atlanta will discuss how the collective came to be and what it has meant to volunteers and communities. You'll also receive practical advice on how to start and sustain a liberation library, from gathering volunteers to collaborating with bookstores and publishers, holding events and more.

The Refaat Alareer Mobile Library is a traveling, volunteer-operated, liberation library and mutual aid project based on Muscogee land (otherwise known as Atlanta, GA). The primary purpose is to promote and increase access to political education towards the liberation of Palestinians from Zionist occupation in this lifetime and to respond to the urgent needs of Palestinians most immediately affected by the genocidal siege on Gaza since October 2023.

Step 1: Donate to Lebanon Solidarity Collective here (suggested donation $60USD).

Step 2: Register for “Herbalism and the State” here.

Herbal medicine has long been used as a tool for self-determined, culturally-based, liberatory medicine. However, it has also been used for colonial and imperial gain. This workshop will explore the ways that fascist governments and people employ herbal medicine for public relations while committing atrocities.

Participants will have the opportunity to critically reflect on their lineages and connections to medicine to see how they either reinforce systems of domination or strengthen their relationship to land and liberation.

Shabina Lafleur-Gangji is an acupuncturist, Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner, and community herbalist living on occupied Dish With Many Spoons treaty land. Her work is rooted in the principles of self-determination and liberation. She tends to a half-acre medicine garden and is the co-director of Seed Soil Spirit, a grassroots Herb school run by and primarily for Black, Indigenous and other racialized people working to uplift traditional plant knowledge.

Step 1: Donate to the Sameer Project here (suggested donation $60 USD).

Step 2: Register for “Afropessimism 101” here.

There is an irreconcilable distinction between human beings and blacks, and this split structures the modern world. This is the base principle of afropessimism, a meta-critique of critical theory which argues that global civil society, the regime of human being, depends on anti-blackness to function.

After reading selected texts, we will gather to discuss the vast implications of this analytic - as thinkers, artists, and living people - and what it takes to nurture a culture of (world-ending) politics that remains unrealized.

Register ASAP to afford pre-reading time!

Jon Jon Moore Palacios is a writer and scholar of afropessimism, poetry, and the paranormal. He received his MA in African-American Studies from UC Berkeley and has received fellowships from the Community of Writers Workshop, the Center for African Studies at UC Berkeley, the San Francisco Public Library, and Harvard Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research. His criticism and poetry has been published in the Cleveland Review of Books, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Offing, Qui Parle, and more.

Step 1: Donate to Crips for Esims for Gaza here (suggested donation $80 CAD / $60 USD).

Step 2: Register for “Hard Femme Poetics” here.

What does it mean to be a revolutionary femme in 2024 in a time of genocide and yet survival? What are femme literary lineages and strategies, and what are the revolutionary femme poems and poetics this time demands we write?

Participants will read poetry and mixed media work by Cyree Jarelle Johnson, Trish Salah, Torrin Greathouse, Mark Aguilar, Danez Smith, Kai Cheng Thom and Stefani Echverria Fenn and consider femme traditions of rant, manifesto, rigorous lyric and discursive exploration of monstrous body in how we write to document, dream and femifest. We will also write our asses off.

Workshop will be in Zoom with CART, with a text based space to post work. ASL provided upon request. This workshop will be capped at 40 participants and center BIPOC and non-cisgender femmes.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is an old ass bitch who has seen some shit and done a lot of the rest. They are the author or co-editor of 10 books, including The Future Is Disabled, Care Work, Bodymap, Dirty River and Tonguebreaker.

A longtime disabled and transformative justice person and maker of QTBIPOC creation spaces, they won the Lambda, are a 5 times Publishing Triangle shortlister, a 2020-21 Disability Futures Fellowship winner and the winner of the 2021 Jeanne Cordova Award "in recognition of a lifetime of documenting the complexities of queer of color, femme and/or disabled existence."