
We Are Urban Haiku
Welcome.
We are so happy you are here!
We’re thrilled to welcome you to our vibrant community of writers, dreamers, and storytellers, where we have created a space to decolonize and re-indigenize ourstorytelling ways, voices, and culture.
A space that actively decenters whiteness.
A space for us.
The idea behind We Are Urban Haiku was born out of a passion for fostering a writing environment that truly reflects the global majority - a platform where every marginalized writer, regardless of their background, feels seen, heard, and valued. Our mission is not just about teaching the craft of storytelling, it's about dismantling barriers, increasing accessibility, challenging assumptions, and nurturing a community that thrives on the richness of varied perspectives and what happens when we dare to “dance in the cracks.” *
In establishing this emergent space, we envision and continue to dream a rich and magical expanse that encourages exploration, innovation, and the unapologetic embrace of one's unique narrative. Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting on your creative journey, we’re here to inspire, guide, and empower you.
*From Bayo Akomolafe, post-humanist, trickster philosopher and curator of the Emergence Network
At We Are Urban Haiku, we believe in the transformative power of storytelling.
We offer a wide range of workshops that foster and nurture the development of BIPOC/femme/marginalized writers through creating an access point to high quality training outside of the MFA system, a sense of community, potent with the reclamation of our voices, our stories, and our worlds.
You will find workshops featuring incredible special guests, different modes of storytelling, and opportunities to engage your voice and hone your craft.
Current Classes
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Science Fiction & Society with A.D. Boynton II
Begins 7/2/25
This is an introductory course of the genre of “science fiction”, literature that pushes the bounds of both the human imagination and the laws of natural, biological, astrological, and temporal sciences. Science and speculative fiction are at the heart of many literary, artist, and expressive cultures all around the world; across human history, people have told stories about the alien, the ghost, the vampire, outerspace, and the supernatural to understand the real world around them and articulate new future-places yet to come. Through the study of an assortment of novels, short fiction and other media, students in this course will explore how science fiction and its sibling-genres (fantasy, horror, dystopian, post-apocalyptic, gothic, magical realism) unveil truths about human societies, politics, and philosophies.
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Documentary Poetics: Living, Thinking, and Feeling as a Way of Encounter the Past and Present with Diana Khoi Nguyen
Begins 7/24
In this intentional weekly space, we will consider what it means to document in the practice of composing poetry, and study the various ways that contemporary writers and literary artists draw upon source materials to create forms exigent to their subject matter.
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How to Get Unstuck with Katharine Coldiron
7/12 at 12pm PST
A workshop for the lost, the doldrum-mired, the mojo-deficient.
Using innovative exercises and delicate extraction, Katharine will find wordcraft (prose, poetry, whatnot) hiding, muffled, or cloaked in your mind. Jump-start your writing practice!
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From Page to Stage: A Playwriting Workshop for Writers & Actors with Anya Pearson
Begins Summer 2025
You have stories to tell—now it’s time to bring them to life on stage. Whether you're a writer exploring playwriting for the first time or an actor ready to create your own work, this workshop will guide you through the process of crafting dynamic, layered plays.
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Embodied Narratives - Seedlings
Begins Fall 2025
with Anya Pearson and Lex Macnab
Affectionately called “Embers” - this new expansion of Embodied Narratives Program is geared toward generation. This thirteen week workshop meets weekly on Wednesday nights, beginning with a week of introductions and co-working, followed by two people bringing in seven pages of new material each week for four rounds. The goal is to write as much as you can over the course of our time together.
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Embodied Narratives
Begins Fall 2025
Embodied Narratives fuses the core ethos of Where We Come From: Ethnoautobiography - decolonized, anti-racist approaches to writing in community and applies it to an anti-MFA/anti-traditional workshop and critique model of how feedback is given while working on book-length works in progress.
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Where We Come From: Writing Your Ethnoautobiography with Ella deCastro Baron, G. Ravyn Stanfield, and Anya Pearson
Beginning Fall 2025
We have to co-create a better, fuller story of who we are. When we speak or write the stories of how our ancestors were harmed or harmed others, we clear the way for justice in the present. When we tell the truth about the past, we move towards the possibility for healing and repair.
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To Exist is to Flare: Labor-Less with Ella deCastro Baron and Anya Pearson
9/7 at 1pm EST/10am PST
Fall is the essence of liminality: ripening, change, preservation, protection, comfort, balance, letting go. With less daylight, we are invited into more mystery. Leaves change color; so, too, we shapeshift to adapt to our physiological needs. Less planting, more harvest. Less distress, more rest. Less toil, more joy-l. :)
As Brontë Velez invokes, “How can I be useless to capitalism?” Could Fall be an invitation to labor less?
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To Exist Is To Flare: Howl-Daze
12/7 at 1pm EST/10am PST
The Holiday season can be stressful even at the best of times. For many of us, the holiday season also brings a swell of grief, isolation, anxiety, and depression. But ESPECIALLY for those of us who live with chronic illness.
After Turkey Day and before the big nexus of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, come write, vent, get loved on, and feel seen and heard in the Holiday Edition of To Exist is To Flare.
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Poet Spirit with Rebecca S'manga Frank
Begins Fall 2025
This class bridges concepts of a Sangha (spiritual community) and a writing circle. The collective holds what we need not hold alone, while we birth what we need not birth alone. We will practice writing, releasing, and catching poems in conversation with the spirit beneath the words, the spirit of things, and the divine energy all around us.
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Stories of Our Hearts: Fictional Retellings with Chris Baron
Dates Coming Soon
Using our deepest experiences to tell compelling stories of hope and wholeness for young people. In this workshop, we will explore how we can write fictional stories for young people that come from the most authentic places in our lives. Through discussion, writing exercises, and collaboration, we will learn about how Middle Grade and YA fiction can make an impact in the world, and why your story is one worth telling.
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Building A Writer's Habit With Zahra Noorbakhsh
Dates Coming Soon
We love to write except when we hate it, right? Sometimes writing can feel uniquely depleting. Well, guess what? Habit science says it is! It’s not just you.
Find out how to set yourself up for success, avoid burnout, and get it done. We’ll myth bust, establish tools and terminology for reliable self-assessments, and get diagrams and trackers that reveal the machinery of our existing writing habits as we rework them. Chuck that “all or nothing” thinking for a process you can count on.
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Breaks, Rhyme & Reason: Coolness in Theatre of the African Diaspora with Nsangou Njikam
Dates Coming Soon
In this course, you'll be introduced to the understanding of Coolness from this perspective, as you create short scenes, characters, as well as engage in games designed to make the creation process enjoyable, light, and effective. The class meets in four 2-hour sessions virtually. By the end, the goal is for participants to have a new or renewed sense of "rhyme and reason" for their own creative works and journeys.
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Under These Circumstances: A Choreopoem Workshop
Email to get on interest list for next round.
In this workshop, Monica Prince, choreopoem scholar and creator, will lead participants through a series of exercises to write their own choreopoems. In addition to learning the choreopoem's historical context and contemporary uses, participants will discover principles of Black theatre, performance theory, and poetic forms to inform their work.
