Due to the ongoing pandemic, all our classes have now moved online. We think this is actually a good thing as we can now offer our classes to anyone interested across the globe.

The classes do not happen in real-time, so you can participate any time, day or night, but we strongly recommend finishing the weekly exercises as per schedule. This ensures a compact and regular completion of your course/workshop.

What do you bring to the table? An interest in creative writing is all we care about. We do not believe in selecting people on the basis of their publication history. We focus on the learning. That being said, successful completion of a course does open up possibilities for publication of your work in the industry.

All our instructors have had a higher education in Creative Writing / Literature. The majority of our students are based in the U.S. but we are actively working on increasing the reach and scope of our classes to other parts of the world. At present we are collaborating with schools and universities in countries where writers are from an ESL background.

All you need is a stable Internet connection, Microsoft Word on your computer and a love for words. Convenience of time and location, a formal certification from The New York Writers Academy, getting a chance to have your work read at our partner venues in the city, are just some of the reasons why you should explore our services.

Class size is limited, so that all students get personal attention.

Rutha he rahan par hujan hayati

Bhali paya wirhan suhnra bhali paya wirhan sunhra

Par hujan hayati

Language is sometimes convoluted—too complicated to translate. It has its own expression—the way we move our mouth, open our lips, the way our tongue touches our teeth to make a sound, give it a meaning, no translation could decode the sentiment of it. Therefore, we tend to preserve our languages. Words change over time because people change. Words become archaic because customs and rituals change, and so do habits. Perhaps the feelings change over generations too.

I heard this song when I was little, too little to perhaps remember where the memory comes from, let alone know the meaning of it. But it kept coming back to me, reviving the intimacy of it—in times of sorrow and in moments of joy.

There was a time when I was finally able to grasp the meaning of it but laughed at its romanticism. Was it possible that you keep praying for the life of a beloved when they have forsaken you? (At one point the lyrics of this song talk about the beloved butchering the protagonist but the protagonist keeps praying for their life). But ‘forsaken’ is not the right word for ‘rusanr’. Nor is ‘being angry’. ‘Rusanr’ in Sindhi or ‘roothna’ in Urdu/Hindi is not equivalent to forsaking someone or being angry at them. Perhaps there is no synonym for it in English. ‘Rusanr’ or ‘Roothna’ signifies the state when the beloved does not talk to you, does not respond and yet thinks about you and complains about you so that there is always a flickering hope that they will come back to you if you plead them enough. And thus there is always a ray of hope between the lover and the beloved. Roothna in our desi culture is a common practice—which is why a specific word for it—often between members of the extended family, siblings and friends, besides purely romantic relations. Every desi wedding and funeral would have someone from the family who would need persuasion and pleading because they are ‘ruthay huay’. And so we try to persuade them, bring them back to our side, take benefit of the delicate thread hanging between the two sides. Roothna, besides everything, also signifies a relationship of deep faith, on whose basis one lets go of all contact and yet trusts the other party to return to them.

So when the lines say, rutha he rahan par hujan hayati, bhali paya wirhan suhnra, hujan hayati’(roughly translated to: even if they remain angry, may they be alive/even though they may keep fighting with us, may they be alive), they keep up the hope of the beloved returning to us, because we’ll keep on trying to win them back.

In these uncertain times, when some of our loved ones are thousands of miles away, this Sindhi song resonates more than ever. For now, the anger, arguments, quarrels and squabbles are not important; only lives are. Hence, when words fall short in one language; songs, secondary languages, lines and phrases from books, music and art come to rescue—to articulate how we feel.

“This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.” James Baldwin said in 1961. “Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to them from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it’s true for everybody.” His words have never rung truer.

Paras Abbasi is a poet and a short story writer. Her work has been published in Confluence magazine UK, East Lit Journal, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, New Asian Writing and local news websites in Pakistan . Paras lives in Karachi, Pakistan and can be reached at ofconversations.wordpress.com and on instagram: @ofcoffeeconversations

Dear Ma-Baba,

It has broken my heart to leave our village
leave you so far behind.

This astonishing city holds many challenges.

My first great accomplishment:
I visited Chowpatty Beach
And stood shoulder to shoulder
Amongst the Mumbai elite
On the most prestigious
Rubbish dump in all of India.

It was truly a sea of inspiration
No well, no river
But an ocean of plastic bottles
Stretching further than the eye could see
Farther than my mind could dream.

I am grateful for your sacrifices
Your lifetime of simple meals
Fruit, sabzi, dhal, chapatis
To give me this opportunity
This golden wandering
Through potato chip packets
Ice cream wrappers
paper plates.

This isn’t trash.
This is cash.
And you know?
I couldn’t resist removing my sandals
To feel Lakshmi’s love
Dusting my feet.

The sea harbours such indescribable smells
No outdated salt
Or bygone fish
But bouquets of industry, progress, exports
I’ve heard it said they’re channelled
In a pipeline from Malabar Hill.

Such beautiful pollution
Is attainable for all.

Mumbai couldn’t be
Without filmy magic.

I have heard the most entertaining fable
About a mythical palace called Antilia
A palace of such treasures
It could not exist on this earth.
I believe it serves as an inspiration
That no matter how great one’s wealth
There’s no harm in coveting more.

I am enclosing three hundred and twenty rupees
But Chowpatty has strengthened my resolve
To become more than you or I
Ever dreamed I could be.

I am also enclosing half of a paper plate
I took as a souvenir.

I was tempted to take two
But wish my successes
To be tempered with the humility
You have instilled in me.

Please show it to my siblings and cousins.
As the oldest, I need to be the strongest of role models.

You have brought me up not to take without giving.
So I dropped my bus ticket on the sand
May it serve as a symbol.

I am a man of the modern world.
A capitalist, a Mumbaikar

Your loving son

Andy Conner is a Birmingham, UK-based poet and educator, with a long track record of performing his work nationally and internationally. His credits include BBC Radio 4, Jaipur Literature Festival and India International Centre. A highly dramatic and visual performer, Andy’s work ranges from the humorous to the very dark. Many of his poems are for young people. Some of Andy’s poems have been written to help children of all ages deal with issues such as bullying and domestic violence. Recently, Andy has also worked in British schools, conducting workshops for National Refugee Week. A compelling live performer, Andy is known for his close rapport with his audiences and can be relied upon to deliver a memorable show with humor and intensity.

I wait
like an insect
watching you

Hoping to catch your eye
as I sink back
to sand

for the silence
of you.

John Drudge is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology. He is the author of two books of poetry, “March” and “The Seasons of Us” (2019). His work has appeared in the Arlington Literary Journal, The Rye Whiskey Review, Poetica Review, Drinkers Only, Literary Yard, The Alien Buddha Press, Montreal Writes, Mad Swirl, La Picoletta Barca Literary Journal Cambridge University, The Avocet, Writers and Readers Magazine, Sparks of Caliope, Harbinger Asylum, Black Coffee Review, Setu Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and the Adelaide Literary Magazine. John is a Pushcart Prize nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.

Eye of the needle

Camel that slips through the eye these days,
we don’t know whether friend or foe—
hell, it could be ourselves we
shouldn’t trust or camel unwilling
to trust us.
Bristly toes of pollen whether we want
them to or not, but the universe can’t
resist us, so driven by insatiable desires
to spread chaos to nearby roses-of-Sharon
or tulip bulbs hibernating the Blizzard
of ’16, we enter the clover of better
judgement and not a moment too soon.

Fortunate son

(It ain’t me, it ain’t me,
I ain’t no fortunate one, no.)
~John Fogarty

We emerged slimy and six-legged poised
for a fight with anything and everything
that moved or promised to move
in one alternate universe or another.
We grew dorsals along our spines
and with eyes like dwarf planets we
marched down Main Street dragging
the flag through blood and mud.
Some of us sailed home in pine boxes,
others lined marble ledges
above grandmothers’ fireplaces
just in time for the holidays.
Some of us did as we were told
because we believed in the flag
being dragged through the blood and mud.
We were not senators’ sons; we
were ordinary sons, sons of mothers
and fathers who fought for freedom
in the good old days, freedom we were
taught to worship in the good old

Alan Britt has been nominated for the 2021 International Janus Pannonius Prize awarded by the Hungarian Centre of PEN International for excellence in poetry from any part of the world. Previous nominated recipients include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bernstein and Yves Bonnefoy. Alan has published extensively in Agni, Christian Science Monitor, English Journal, International Gallerie (India), Irodalmi Jelen (Hungary), Kansas Quarterly, Letras (Chile), Magyar Naplo (Hungary), Midwest Quarterly, Minnesota Review, Missouri Review, New Letters, Pedrada Zurda (Ecuador), Poet’s Market, Queen’s Quarterly (Canada), Revista/Review Interamericana (Puerto Rico), Revista Solar (Mexico), Steaua (Romania), Tampa Tribune, Tulane Review, and Wasafiri (UK), and was recently interviewed at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem. He has published 18 books of poetry and served as Art Agent for the late great Ultra Violet while often reading poetry at her Chelsea, New York studio. A graduate of the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University he currently teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.

working overtime

at full moon
i turn into a bedtime story
dancing dabke^[1] on closed eyes
a black haired lullaby working overtime
to uncover blended memories
heavy and complex with a full body
in distant coffee dregs

where i came from

on the back of my blanket
i see a paper storm
galvanizing the displaced
i see baba’s^[2] carpet frayed
and a last word wriggling on each cord
i hear a phone call rolling characters off every leaf
like dancing pocket change in dede’s^[3]

barber shop
and i fall back on His lips
to where i really came from

Glossary
1 levantine folk dance
2 father (tr)
3 grandfather (tr)

Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç is a freelance writer, poet and lecturer living in Berlin.

Asturian

SILENCIU ENCARNÁU

Préstenme los xeranios.
Nun-yos fai falta
facebook o instagram
p’amosa-y al mundiu
la so guapura.
Abasta-yos un pocu d’agua.

***

Préstenme los xeranios.
Préstame’l so silenciu encarnáu,
cuandu toi mayáu
de les nueses pallabres.

***

Al xeraniu nun-y esmolez
en qué llingua-y fales,
el collor de la to pelleya
o si yes d’equí
o d’otru planeta.

English

SCARLET SILENCE

I like geraniums.
They do not need
facebook or instagram
to show to the world
its beuty.
They have enough with a little water.

***

I like geraniums.
I like its scarlet silence
when I tired
of our words.

***

The geranium does not care about
in what language you talk to him,
about the colour of your skin
or about if you are from here
or from another planet.

Xe M. Sánchez was born in 1970 in Grau (Asturies, Spain). He received his Ph.D in History from the University of Oviedo (2016). An anthropologist, he also studied Tourism. His work features in Escorzobeyos (2002), Les fueyes tresmanaes d’Enol Xivares (2003), Toponimia de la parroquia de Sobrefoz. Ponga (2006), Llué, esi mundu paralelu  (2007), Les Erbíes del Diañu (E-book: 2013, Paperback: 2015), Cróniques de la Gandaya (E-book, 2013), El Cuadernu Prietu (2015), and several journals in Asturies, USA, Portugal, France, Sweden, Scotland, Australia, South Africa, India, Italy, England, Canada, Reunion Island, China, Belgium and Ireland.