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Tuesday Oct 13 to Dec 15 // 6:30-8:30 p.m.
8 weeks with Aris Kian
(Excluding the week of Thanksgiving)
Natasha Tretheway. Rickey (Riis) Laurentiis. Ariana Benson. With contemporary poets encapsulating the mundane and the macabre of the American South, this literature has long since expanded beyond the confines of its 20th century canon. In 2026, the essence of our southern landscape is very much present in our daily lives in a way that CALLS for the lyric.
If your poems are drawn to the eerie and uncanny, if they are weighed down by the deep-rooted histories and haunts of your city, or if you’re simply thrilled by rich and rotting imagery, this 2-hour, 8-week workshop is for you! We'll be reading poems and passages from writers adding depth and expanding the edges of the Southern Gothic genre, while also generating and workshopping pieces of our own.
Aris Kian (she/her) is a Houston-born and -based writer, poet, and spoken word artist. Her poems have been published in West Branch, Obsidian Lit, The West Review, Huizache, Button Poetry and elsewhere. As an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow, she received her MFA from the University of Houston and received the 2022 Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing. With the team Smoke Slam coached by Ebony Stewart, she ranked first in the 2025 Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam, and first in the 2024 Southern Fried Poetry Slam. She previously served as the 2023-2025 Houston Poet Laureate and was chosen as a 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. Her debut poetry collection is forthcoming in 2027. Kian is a student of abolition and believes in the liberation of all oppressed people by any means necessary.
GRACKLE ART BY: Manuel Borbolla
Tuesday Oct 13 to Dec 15 // 6:30-8:30 p.m.
8 weeks with Aris Kian
(Excluding the week of Thanksgiving)
Natasha Tretheway. Rickey (Riis) Laurentiis. Ariana Benson. With contemporary poets encapsulating the mundane and the macabre of the American South, this literature has long since expanded beyond the confines of its 20th century canon. In 2026, the essence of our southern landscape is very much present in our daily lives in a way that CALLS for the lyric.
If your poems are drawn to the eerie and uncanny, if they are weighed down by the deep-rooted histories and haunts of your city, or if you’re simply thrilled by rich and rotting imagery, this 2-hour, 8-week workshop is for you! We'll be reading poems and passages from writers adding depth and expanding the edges of the Southern Gothic genre, while also generating and workshopping pieces of our own.
Aris Kian (she/her) is a Houston-born and -based writer, poet, and spoken word artist. Her poems have been published in West Branch, Obsidian Lit, The West Review, Huizache, Button Poetry and elsewhere. As an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow, she received her MFA from the University of Houston and received the 2022 Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing. With the team Smoke Slam coached by Ebony Stewart, she ranked first in the 2025 Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam, and first in the 2024 Southern Fried Poetry Slam. She previously served as the 2023-2025 Houston Poet Laureate and was chosen as a 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. Her debut poetry collection is forthcoming in 2027. Kian is a student of abolition and believes in the liberation of all oppressed people by any means necessary.
GRACKLE ART BY: Manuel Borbolla