Wednesdays On the Stoop, a series of free programming by Zoom every Wednesday from 4 pm - 5 pm. The sessions are designed to be a constant structure--every Wednesday at 4 you can count on Blue Stoop to plug you into your writing energy with an informal and supportive space.

March marks one year since a significant portion of the country went into lockdown and we have just crossed the 500K deaths mark. How do we write authentically about our corner of the national and global experience of the pandemic? We may feel the pressure to write a large-scope perspective that captures the immense gravity, but there are also powerful elements of the experience inside the smaller details--changed routines, a different-looking house from the number of times one has rearranged it, maybe even a different life after a larger-scale rearrangement. In the session I hope to encourage folks to feel confident writing from a unique and individual perspective in order to illuminate the current moment.

Michelle Chikaonda is a narrative nonfiction writer and essayist from Blantyre, Malawi, currently living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has been published at Al Jazeera, the Globe and Mail, Catapult, the Kalahari Review, and Electric Literature, among others.