Line Break 3: Back to Basics

ABOUT LINE BREAK

The 2025 Line Break Writers Series, supported by Indiana Humanities, is a two-day poetry writing retreat open to local writers. The series will take place Saturday, September 20 - Sunday, September 21 at Indiana Humanities (1500 N. Delaware St., Indianapolis).

This year’s theme is Back to Basics with a focus on community and workshopping.  Writers who attend will grow together as artists, learning more about the creative and practical process of creating meaningful poems and sustaining oneself as a professional writer. Participants will take part in workshops led by accomplished local writers, develop new works, and conclude the retreat by sharing their works in an open mic celebration open to family and friends.

This year, we have a few new opportunities to deepen our time together. First off, we'll ask that you submit 1-2 poems (total of 1-3 pages long) you'd like to workshop to the instructors by September 5. This will give our instructors time to review work and plan workshop activities that best meet the needs of the community.

We'll also host a gathering a week before the workshop weekend where we will get to know each other, pick up pre-readings, and screen and discuss a film together over dinner. This pre-retreat meet-up will be held at Indiana Humanities on Sunday, September 14 from 3-6 p.m.

Supported by The National Bank of Indianapolis, Indiana Humanities’ Central Indiana Literary Partner. 

RETREAT SCHEDULE (All times Eastern.)

Saturday, September 20 | Indiana Humanities

10-10:30 am Welcome & Introductions

10:30 am - 12 pm Weeding Words with Katherine Higgs-Coulthard

Lunch provided

1-3 pm Discussion of Craft in the World by Matthew Salesses and Workshop

3-4 pm Check-in and wrap up

Sunday, September 21 | Indiana Humanities

10-10:30 am Wellness & Writing 

10:30 am - 12 pm Workshop

Lunch provided

1-3 pm Workshop 

3-4 pm End of day check-in

DINNER BREAK (Dinner on your own.)

6-8 pm Open Mic (Open to family & friends.)

PRESENTERS

Chantel Massey (she/her) is a storyteller, poet, author, teaching artist, editor, organizer, educator, practicing Afrofuturist, and avid anime lover from Indiana. Massey has received support from Brooklyn Poets, Hurston/Wright Foundation, and Tin House. She’s a Randolph College MFA graduate and 2023 Best of Net Award winner and 2020 Indiana Eugene and Marilyn Glick Author Awards Emerging Author finalist for her first collection of poetry, Bursting At The Seams (VK Press, 2018), a Midwest Black girl coming of age story. Massey founded the literary arts organization, UnLearn Arts, radically dedicated to amplifying and cultivating the craft and wellness of BIPOC writers in the Midwest and elsewhere.

Mitchell L. H. Douglas is the author of dying in the scarecrow’s arms, \blak\ \al-fə bet\, winner of the Persea Books Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award, and Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem, an NAACP Image Award and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee. His “Poem that Begins w/a Tweet About Gwendolyn Brooks” was featured in This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets edited by New York Times best-selling author Kwame Alexander. A 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, he is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University Indianapolis. His visual art has been published in The Adroit Journal, The Offing, and Callaloo. Universal Corner, his fourth poetry collection, will be published by Persea Books in 2026.

Katherine Higgs-Coulthard graduated from the University of Nebraska,  Omaha with a bachelor’s in education and earned a master’s from Indiana University, South Bend, before completing her doctorate in education through Northeastern University. She has taught kindergarten, third, and fifth grades. Now she trains teachers at Saint Mary’s College and offers writing camps and classes for children and teens through Michiana Writers’ Center. She lives in Michigan and loves spending time with her family.