Live Events: May 7-10, 16, 31

Sonnet Comet is an exhibit by writer and visual artist Clare Jones which brings together a decade of her work in poetry, printmaking, and hand papermaking. “For many years I have been interested in the tension between traditional poetic forms like the sonnet and the evolutionary constraints of our over-four-billion-years-old planet. While creating the texts and textures featured in this exhibit, I was investigating how patterns in language might reflect and reconfigure the pollen, lichen, moons, and meteorites that I saw on my travels. What do we see written in tides and streams? How do they influence the rhymes we remember?  See the exhibit in 3D HERE . You can also see all Community Arts Partnership upcoming exhibits at ArtsPartner.org.
www.clarejonespoet.com

Calling all teen poets, writers, and lovers of literature! Join this Spring Writes teen open mic night – a Tompkins County Public Library event –  to share your work or work that you love!  This is a drop-in event, but you can register directly with the Library to get a reminder. (This library registration form is separate from the SpringWrites event registration form for all other May live events.)  Register HERE

Alongside their original work, and as a way to connect us to the broader communities of the world, seven Poet Laureates of Tompkins County, past and present, will read poems by Poet Laureates from other parts of the country and world. With nicole v. basta, Katharyn Howd Machan, Michelle Courtney Berry, Melissa Tuckey, Jack Hopper, Zee Zahava and Gail Holst-Warhaft.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Out-write, outplay, outlast! Join organizers Jennifer Savran Kelly and Melanie Greaver Cordova and game host Sir Kenneth (Ken Probst) McLaurin for this Survivor-themed event, where two genre-themed teams—Team Romance and Team Sci-Fi—will compete in a series of quirky literary challenges and vote contestants out, with help from the audience. Come grab your stickers and support the Ithaca writers on each team in their quest to be named the Sole Literary Survivor!
Team Sci-Fi: Melanie Conroy-Goldman, Benjamin Mumford-Zisk, Meredith Talusan
Team Romance: Jennifer Bokal, Ellen Hartman, Gabriela Medina Vásquez
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Four women poets and friends will sit next to each other, kitchen table style, to share texts about how we make, extend and receive nourishment in spite of oppressive conditions. The poems, chosen in fine attunement to each other, will also discuss how we metabolize the different conditions of oppression we are forced to ingest as women of color. At the intersection of desire and dreaming, this poetry reading is a prelude to future collaborations where we hope to stretch, expand and share our heartfelt questions. The reading is directly inspired by The Kitchen Table series, named in honor of Carrie Mae Weems, Barbara Smith (the Kitchen Table Women of Color Press), and Lois Weaver’s Long Table. This series began at the “Words Walking Without Masters:” Creative-Theoretical symposium and will evolve into the closing section of a print anthology containing multiple creative meditations by women of color. With Yessica Martinez, Jasmine Jay, Tierra Labrada, and Shacoya Kidwell.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

You’re invited to the quietest block party EVER, led by Clare Jones! Kickstart your writing this spring with fellow writers who are all turning over a new leaf. Bring whatever you write with: laptop, journal, typewriter, quill. We will check in for 10 minutes, write independently for 40 minutes, then wrap up for 10 minutes. The Writers’ Block Party is designed to move you past any creative barriers that may be plaguing you and forge ahead in the company of others. Have a cookie, build community, and hone your craft.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Event leaders Jen Pearcy-Edwards and Lesley Greene, co-directors of Story House Ithaca, will lead storytelling games to get everyone’s creative juices flowing. Then we’ll write stories as a group, using Exquisite Corpse, a collaborative, chance-based drawing or writing game invented by Surrealists around 1925, where participants secretly add to a composition on a folded paper. Each person in the group will have two minutes to write a few lines of a story. When the time is up, they will fold the paper down to cover all but the last line of the story and pass it to the person next to them. At the end, we will read all the stories!
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

The path to publishing is a difficult one, full of unforeseen obstacles, false summits, and unpredictable emotions along the journey. No one way is the right one and every writer must find the route that works for them. This panel discussion will explore the various tracks writers might follow to publish their manuscripts. We’ll be joined by writers who have published in different ways: an indie press, a university press, self-publishing their work, and a big 5 house. We’ll cover topics such as how each writer approached the submission process, what their goals were, the ups and downs they faced along the way, the financial obligations/rewards they experienced, and what the positives and negatives of working with their publisher turned out to be. We’ll also have plenty of time for audience questions.  With Amanda K. Jaros, Rob Costello, Susan Currie, and Janie E. Bibbie.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

The performance brings the voices of older women to Spring Writes through storytelling, poetry, and theatrical reading. The program features a play/reading about abortion written by Sue Perlgut and performed by Yvonne Fisher, Leigh Keeley, and Sue Perlgut, offering a powerful reflection on reproductive choice, memory, and resilience across generations. Yvonne Fisher also shares original stories and slam poems—both old and new—about navigating life and aging as an older, queer, Jewish woman. Leigh Keeley and Sue Perlgut read their own original works exploring love, loss, and the complexities of growing older. Together, these performances create a space where lived experience becomes art and testimony. The event invites audiences of all ages to listen, reflect, and learn from the wisdom of women who have lived through decades of social change. Through these readings, performers connect with the community, honor their journeys, and leave a legacy through story.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Four recent awardees of New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) direct “Support for Artists” grants, representing multiple fields (memoir, fiction, photography), discuss the NYSCA grant process, read from work-in-progress, and answer questions. With Sorayya Khan, Brian Arnold, Eleanor Henderson and Liz Arnold.
(NYSCA’s Support for Artists grant funds creative commissions to individual artists across New York state. This is a separate opportunity from the Community Arts Partnerships’ NYSCA grant programs and is for individual artists who apply directly to NYSCA with a not-for-profit sponsor. Grant awards are $10,000. NYSCA embraces the rich diversity of art making across New York, and applicants from all artistic practices and disciplines are encouraged to apply.  The deadline for 2027 awards is in June of 2026. Visit NYSCA.org)
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Come to this event featuring short plays or excerpts of plays by local playwrights, voiced by local actors. Featuring works by Lesley Greene, David Guaspari, Emily Rhoads Johnson, Rebecca Miller and Will Wallace. Actors: Meg Elliott, Erik Lucas, AJ Sage, Kristin Sad, Katie Spallone, Karen Veaner, Will Wallace, Jacob White and Sylvie Yntema.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Finding purpose, hope, and maybe even a little joy in a fractured world ain’t easy. Come listen to teen writers from LACS (Lehman Alternative Community School) share their poetry and prose about identity and resistance, rage and love, struggle and community. This event is not suitable for young children and curmudgeons of any age.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

A panel of local fantasy, YA, and romance authors discuss using the craft of writing to find joy, catharsis, and survival in difficult times, whether personal or larger-scale. With M. Stevenson, Sam Gellar, Erica Rose Eberhart, and Isabel Sterling.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Join us for a group reading with six writers reading a wonderful variety of work! Alida Dean (short story), Aurora Rey (excerpt from her novel It Happened One Semester), Lushima Lumumba (reading of his comic book Souls of Sithis), Finley Lynn Williams (creative non-fiction), Stephen St. Francis Decky (notes and sections from his novel Werewolf Movie) and Robert Isaacs (fiction, work in progress).
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Members of the Play It Again Senior Theatre Troupe of Lifelong will each read an original short piece of memoir on the theme of “Peak Experiences.”  Each true story will be supported with snippets of dialogue, gestures, sound effects, and song by the remainder of the group. The result is a well-rehearsed, entertaining choral performance! Directed by Susan Kaplan, with Dan Klein, John Buskin, Robin Rosner, Sam Swartz, Deirdre Silverman, Mark Silverman, Jean Senegas, Patricia Frazier, and Valerie Evans.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page.

Join us to hear six local writers reading a wide variety of work! Naomi Artemi (excerpt from her supernatural historical fiction novel), Michael Gray Bulla (excerpts from his young adult novels), Rozey Hill (nature and travel poetry), Stephen Paling (excerpt from his novel in progress Skinny’s Blues), Ruma Poudell (poems from Hypertrophy of Reason, manuscript in-progress) and Elle Tinnirella (fiction -one mothers fall down a TikTok rabbit hole).
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

For children ages 10+ with an adult caregiver. Writer, educator, and parent Lee Cotman (they/them) will lead participants in kid-friendly, partnered writing activities that celebrate storytelling and imagination as forms of care. Lee has taught public workshops for children and adults for over a decade, most recently teaching screenwriting to 4th-grade scholars at Beverly J. Martin Elementary. Participants in this workshop will work together (child and caregiver) to generate story ideas, explore narrative structure, and practice giving and receiving feedback. No writing experience is necessary, though it is helpful if either adult or child can read and write. ALL caregiver/child relationships are welcome and encouraged to attend! (Grandparent/grandchild, trans and queer families, siblings, Big/Little pairs, etc.)
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

We invite you to discover the innovative ways contemporary Xicanx writers (Chicano/a/x/e) wrestle with questions of belonging and continuance through speculative writing featured in the visionary anthology Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow. Get to meet publisher Brenda Vaca and Editor Scott Russell Duncan and writers featured in the anthology, Rocio Anica and Ernesto Mireles. The reading will be followed by a conversation about speculative literature as cultural resistance, reclamation, and renewal. 
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Leslie Daniels & E.C. Barrett’s Generative Writing Workshop is grounded in the belief that the best writing flows when the mind is flooded with ideas and the inner critic is stilled. Co-led by writer/teacher/editors Daniels and Barrett, the workshop has helped dozens of writers discover new projects within themselves, deepen existing work, and gain confidence in their voices and perspectives.  Now in its third year, we’re offering the workshop during Spring Writes. Through prompts designed to encourage playfulness, getting out of your own way, and digging down into the specificity that makes characters and stories come alive, participants will spend most of the workshop writing fresh work and/or exploring existing work. As in our popular 8-week workshops, there will be time for participants to voluntarily share some of what they have written in response to the prompts. Suitable for writers of all stripes, beginner through advanced.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

with Regi Carpenter. It’s a risky, risqué storytelling cabaret!  Haven’t you always wanted to tell a story about that crazy thing that happened in your life? Now is the time and place! Listen to some stories, get a brief coaching session that focuses on strong narrative, authentic dialogue, imagery, and vocal choices. Finally, you can share your tale at a timed open mic session.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

At this reading, motherhood is the mother of invention. Join writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry as they share their heartfelt, comical, and complicated experiences mothering and being mothered. And, audience members will be invited to help create a spontaneous community poem.  with Alison Fromme, Emily Hopkins, Jessica Bindel, Kate Frazer, and Melanie Lefkowitz.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Join us for a wonderful drop reading with six local writers. Shahirah Jadeed (poetry), Gordon Bonnet (excerpt from his historical novel Nightingale), Bridget Huh (poetry), Kathy Morris (memoir-in-progress), Ris Pareti (poetry), Jon Raimon (poetry)
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Come create science fictional and fantastical worlds! What constitutes the physical and social landscape of your imagined setting? Break out your creativity juices to learn how to build new universes alongside a local speculative fiction author. We will discuss geography, ecology, culture, society, history and magic and/or technology. We will use markers on balloons to generate fantastical globes for discussion, as well as write in notebooks and share our ideas. Then we’ll talk about publishing fiction, comics, RPG’s and other ways to release your setting out into the world. Express your literary vision and your unique worldview! Led by D.A. Xiaolin Spires.
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

Seven readers read  seven local writers’ work. A spin of the bottle matches that reader with one of seven musicians! Come to this amazing event with twenty-one local artists, organized and announced by Mary Brett Lorson. Stay tuned or a line up of all the participants!
Event Registration Requested: Just one form for all May events. Find at top of page. 

The Fifth Annual Ithaca Book and Zine Fair welcomes local and regional artists and publishers to show and sell their books, zines, and art. The community room at Buffalo Street Books and the hallways of DeWitt Mall will be filled with amazing writers, artists and their publications. Meet the artists!  Free and open to the public.  (No registration required – just go!)