CityLit Studio VIII: Writers on Craft, Creativity, & Community was created and is presented as part of Free Fall Baltimore. The Studio is a unique opportunity for writers to experience lectures by two authors in different genres. 

Denise Kumani Gantt will lead How Digital Storytelling Can Amplify and Shift Your Writing, a two-part workshop that will take place both online and in person over separate sessions.

10/3 - Part One (Zoom):

Participants will explore the ways digital storytelling—the art of adding moving images to personal stories and poetry—can inform and amplify one’s literary practice. Writers will create a digital story using a short poem or a prose work. Participants will be guided through the condensed process, and instructed on how to place images with voice for a meaningful reflection of their personal story.

Attendees are required to have already selected:

• one to three photos, visual art, or video clip uploaded to their own computers in a digital format as a jpeg, 
• a poem no more than one page OR a prose piece no more than 300 words

This first intense, two-hour part allows participants to gain a larger understanding of what it takes to create a digital story for brevity and impact and the creative process of planning and working with We Video.

Participants will have access to the recording on the CityLit YouTube Channel upon completion of Part One and will have two weeks to work on or complete a digital story.

10/24 - Part Two (In-Person):

Participants can expect to review, share, and complete their digital stories at the in-person. 

This session will take place on October 24, 2023 in-person at The Lyric (140 W. Mount Royal Avenue, Baltimore MD 21202)

All attendees must pre-register. Seats are limited.

With support from the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts, CityLit Studio is designed to center writers by engaging in a two-hour, craft intensive with these award-winning authors. 

The signature event exemplifies CityLit’s ongoing commitment to attract premier literary talent, offer free events, elevate inclusive voices, provide access to superior instruction on craft while bridging a community of emerging and established literary talent. The writer-to-writer exchange includes a reading, key aspects of craft instruction to improve writing, an open Q & A session with handouts available to attendees, and the importance of finding artistic communities.

Past Studio artists include: Ada Calhoun, Remica Bingham-Risher, Leslie Pietrzyk, Cherie Jones, Sheri Booker, Jen Grow, Derrick Weston Brown, Jocquelyn Downs, Danielle Evans, Donna Hemans, Eugenia Kim, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, David Yezzi, and 2019 National Book Award finalist Carmen Giminez Smith.