American University: Visiting Writers Series
American University hosts events with established and emerging authors for students, faculty, and the public as part of their Visiting Writers Series. All events are free and open to the public. Stay tuned for details!
The Artist’s Way: A Creative Circle
The Artist's Way: A Creative Circle
$220.00
A biweekly virtual workshop to nurture your creativity and remove creative blocks
In a time when artists and creative voices are increasingly under pressure, it’s easy to feel blocked, burned out, or disconnected from what inspires us. But creativity is a vital act of self-care, resistance, and renewal.
Just as Spring invites the world to bloom again, this season offers us a chance to reconnect with our creative roots. It's a natural time for planting seeds of intention, growth, and possibility.
This creative circle is a refreshing, supportive experience—designed to help you clear creative blocks, honor your artistic self, and show up fully in your life and your work.
Inspired by The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, this creative circle meets every other week for 2 hours of guided exploration, conversation, and practice. In each session we will move through the book’s themes, offering a grounded, nourishing structure for creative growth. Together, we’ll engage with prompts, reflective exercises, and time-tested tools like Morning Pages and Artist Dates.
To make the best of this workshop, participants are encouraged to work on one chapter per week of The Artist’s Way. No experience necessary. Just bring your curiosity and a journal.
Payment plans and scholarships available at info@patriciacoral.com
DATES: Thursdays, April 9 - June 18, 2026 (6 sessions meeting every other week)
TIME: 7:00-9:00pm EST
LOCATION: ZOOM
Fall For The Book: Memoirs of the Caribbean Panel
Fall for the Book: Memoirs of the Caribbean Panel
In their memoirs set in the Caribbean, Camille U. Adams and Patricia Coral detail their struggles growing up amidst patriarchy and fraught family dynamics. Adams’ How to be Unmothered details her troubled relationship with her mother, combining Trinidad’s violent colonial history with her own family’s legacy of abandonment. Author Jaquira Díaz says, it “is a work of art, an excavation of memory, a blend of fierce determination, vulnerability, and a journey toward liberation.” Coral’s Women Surrounded by Water depicts the writer’s complicated decision to leave Puerto Rico, only for Hurricane Maria to draw her back again. Author Glen Retief says, “Poetic, intelligent, formally and culturally hybrid, and emotionally powerful, Women Surrounded by Water offers an important meditation on gender, family, imperialism, and natural disasters, amplified by factors like anthropogenic climate change and official indifference.” Carol Mitchell, author of What Start Bad a Mornin’, will moderate this conversation.
Location: Fenwick Reading Room, Room 2001, Fenwick Library.
Inprint Memoir Workshop
Memoir Writing: Inspiration from the Tangible
In this generative memoir workshop, we will explore personal and ancestral memory as a fluid, nonlinear space—one that lives in the gaps between form, genre, what we remember, and what we don’t. Using writing, photography, personal objects, and other materials and techniques, we will push the boundaries of what memoir can be and the ways our stories can be told.
Through generative writing, creative exercises, and engagement with texts by Victoria Chang, Carmen Maria Machado, Sheila Heti, Claudia Rankine, Naja Marie Aidt, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, and others, we will embrace the page as a site of experimentation to create and share work that reimagines our narrative. In this workshop we will focus on generating material both during and outside of class time. We will be working primarily with hybrid forms—writers from all genres and experience levels are welcome.
Register Here
Panel: Identity & Belonging in Literature
Seeking and achieving both a sense of self as an individual and of a sense of belonging among others are two sides of the same coin. Our understanding and perception of these elements can have a profound effect on our lives, on our cultures, and on society as a whole. Writers often grapple with the nuances of the human condition, and indeed many of its mysteries can unfold in stories that explore identity and belonging. Tope Folarin engages with local authors Patricia Coral, Majda Gama, and Varun Gauri to discuss the challenges and triumphs of self-identification.
More information: https://politics-prose.com/inner-loop-panel2025
The Inner Loop May Reading
Celebrate the written word with us at Sonny's Pizza featuring Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Author’s Corner Spotlight Patricia Coral, and other local writers.
Virtual Craft Chat (FREE)
The Writer’s Center and The Inner Loop present a FREE virtual chat about the craft of nonfiction! We’re joined by Patricia Coral to discuss her celebrated memoir, Women Surrounded by Water. Patricia is in conversation with Chet’la Sebree, poet, essayist, and board member of both The Inner Loop and The Writer’s Center.
Women Surrounded by Water is The Inner Loop’s Author’s Corner spotlight. The Inner Loop cultivates and promotes the distinctive literary culture of Washington, DC. Author’s Corner supports local authors’ independently published books by spotlighting them in community programming and collaborations.
RSVP HERE to receive login information (our virtual events are held via Zoom). FREE and open to the public, all times Eastern
We encourage you to order a copy of the book from your local, independent bookseller or online from Bookshop.org
Patricia Coral is a bilingual Puerto Rican writer. She holds a BA in Hispanic Studies from the University of Puerto Rico, an MA in Spanish from the InterAmerican University of Puerto Rico, and an MFA in Creative Writing from American University, where she received the Myra Sklarew Award and where she was Editor-in-Chief of FOLIO. Patricia writes creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, but frequently her words find their home in-between. The former director of events for Politics and Prose Bookstore, she has contributed to numerous literary magazines and her work has been supported by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her memoir Women Surrounded by Water is her first book and it was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography.
Chet’la Sebree is the author Field Study, winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Mistress. Her third poetry collection Blue Opening and debut essay collection turn (w)here: essays on (be)longing are forthcoming in 2025 and 2026, respectively.
RSVP at https://writer.org/event/patricia-coral/ to receive login information.
Publish Now Conference
Learn the ins and outs of publishing, make connections, and build your writing career!
Publish Now is a one-day conference for writers interested in learning more about all the ways you can share and publish your work. You’ll attend up to 4 panels featuring experts in all aspects of the writing and publishing cycle. Topics will include broad overviews, preparing your work, querying agents, publishing short-form work, and more!
More than 25 panelists, including Kenneth D. Ackerman, Samuel Ashworth, Jessica Berg, Nicole Chung, Rachel Coonce, Patricia Coral, Elizabeth DeMeo, Ariel Felton, Tope Folarin, Amy Freeman, Varun Gauri, Hannah Grieco, Donna Hemans, Emily Holland, Kelsea Johnson, Angie Kim, Eugenia Kim, Steve Majors, Karen Outen, Bethanne Patrick, Zach Powers, Eman Quotah, David O. Stewart, Meera Trehan, Alonzo Vereen, and Vonetta Young. Learn more about our panelists at the links in the panel descriptions below.
Many of our panelists will be available between sessions, at lunch, and at the closing reception, so you can make personal connections. And you’re strongly encouraged to connect with your fellow attendees, too.
Morning coffee, lunch, and a post-conference reception are included.
Date:
Saturday, March 8
Day(s):
Saturday
Time:
8:30 AM EST - 5:30 PM EST
Cost:
$ 160.00 for members
$ 175.00 for non-members
Venue:
Lit 804 Salon
On January 18 we’ll be hearing from Nathan Leslie, Christina D'Antoni, Patricia Coral, Rhonda Zimlich, Patricia Davis-Muffett, and Edidiong Essien. The series will include some readings and question and answer sessions to follow alongside snacks and drinks.
To register for the event, please use the link below:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/804-lit-salon-tickets-1130874077809?aff=oddtdtcreator
Book Event: Taller Puertorriqueño- Philadelphia
Join Patricia Coral at Taller Puertorriqueño in Philadelphia.
Book Event: Brazos Bookstore- Houston
Join Patricia Coral at Brazos Bookstore in Houston.
Book Event: Cafe con Libros- Brooklyn
Join Patricia Coral at Cafe con Libros in Brooklyn.
Book Event: Books & Books Coral Gables- Miami
Join Patricia Coral at Books & Books Coral Gables.
Book Launch Event: Politics and Prose Union Market- DC
Join Patricia Coral to celebrate the book launch of Women Surrounded by Water at Politics and Prose Union Market. She will be in conversation with Susan Coll.
American Identity Through a Literary Lens
The Writer’s Center presents an informative and inspiring symposium addressing the subject of American identity in literature and popular culture, offering free creative writing workshops followed by a panel discussion. Featured writers include Patricia Coral, Steve Majors, Eman Quotah, and Melissa Scholes Young. The symposium concludes with a reception for all attendees.
Latine Heritage Through a Literary Lens
The Writer’s Center presents an informative and inspiring symposium addressing the subject of Latine heritage in literature and popular culture, offering free creative writing workshops followed by a panel discussion. Featured writers include Lupita Aquino, Patricia Coral, and Samuel “Sami” Miranda, moderated by Ofelia Montelongo. The symposium concludes with a reception for all attendees