Wednesdays On the Stoop, a series of free programming by Zoom every Wednesday from 4 pm - 5 pm. The sessions will range from sit-togethers to read a story or poem, writing quietly together, open mics, and more. The sessions are designed to be a constant structure--every Wednesday at 4 you can count on Blue Stoop to plug you into writing energy as well as being a chill and supportive space for those looking for community, prompts, or any engagement with writing craft in this tough time. Some of them are going to be run by Blue Stoop staff, and some by community partners or past teachers.

In the last six months, many of us have boiled our lives down to basics. We’ve become acutely aware of our surroundings, and they may not change much. While this might not seem like a good environment for creativity, how can we take advantage of this closeness in our work? What can we do with the oppressive moments of the day? Join Autumn McClintock as participants read together and examine a couple of poems that get wrapped up in the details, in closeness, and manage to turn them into ecstatic expressions. Then we’ll develop our own lists of details and free write together to create poems or prose that seeks to fall in love with the seemingly mundane, every-day-ness of 2020.

Autumn McClintock lives in Fishtown and works at the Free Library. She earned an MFA from Emerson College and poems of hers have recently appeared in The Account, Cimarron Review, Denver Quarterly, The Georgia Review, and others. Her chapbook, After the Creek, was published in 2016. She is a staff reader for Ploughshares and Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review, a new online mag that features work formerly published in now-defunct magazines (send us your stuff!). You can follow her on Twitter @avmcclintock.