We Bring the Story With Us: Letters to the Bay, From Everywhere We've Been, a writing workshop w/ Maya Chinchilla

Calling all secret journal scribblers, open mic truth-tellers, eloquent list makers, kitchen table chismosas, daydreamers, and hopeful writers of all kinds. This is a space for soft hearts in hard times—for those who carry stories in multiple languages, in their bodies, in their silence, and in their laughter. 

Whether you crossed a literal border or inherited the weight of movement and memory, you bring stories with you—and we’re here to write it down. Together, we’ll craft love letters to the places we’ve come from and the places we now call home. From spoken word to unsent letters, from sharp protest to tender poems, this workshop holds space for every kind of storyteller.

No writing experience needed. Come as you are. Come ready to write and trust the process.

Maya Chinchilla, author of The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética, is a writer, educator, and media maker. She teaches as a lecturer in Latino/a/x Studies and Writing at San Francisco State University and Laney College. She is a recipient of the Mellon Foundation's US Latino Digital Humanities (USLDH) Grant and also hosted Live and Queer, an interview-based talk show produced by the Queer Cultural Center and funded by California Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and Fresh Meat Productions. Maya co-hosted three seasons of Trek Table, a women-of-color-centered sci-fi podcast; wrote, curated and edited the multimedia science fiction odyssey: Central American Unicorns in Space; and serves on the board of the Association for Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship (AJAAS) as the artistic liaison and incoming co-chair. She was recently published in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, edited by Rigoberto González, which features more than 180 poets, spanning from the 17th century to today.