Española Writes!
Writing Workshops for the Española Valley
Writing Workshops for the Española Valley
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From Joan's Tea House to the Española Library, enthusiastic members of our valley community came together to write stories and poems in the First Annual Fall Española Writes! 2025.
NMLA sponsored a series of four writing workshops in the fall for the Española community. As our first foray into this kind of offering, we are proud to report the success of the programming, with much thanks to David Lopez, Española Library's new librarian, who allowed us the space to offer three workshops. Also, a big thank you to Joan Logghe, who opened up her "tea house," on her property to host two workshops. Overall, 40 community members attended the workshops, and generated poems, stories, reminiscences, and reflections. Participants reflected the diversity of our valley, and some attended more than one workshop. Later in this year, NMLA will publish, on this website, and as a down-loadable document, a collection of writings gathered from the participants, for the participants. Look for our spring series -- Española Writes! 2026.
Storytelling with Gino Brazil
Espanola Library
Storytelling, cuentos (short stories), legends, and lore have been a magical and unique part of the people of this region for centuries. In Part 1 of this storytelling series, participants will get a chance to continue the long tradition of creating, retelling, and sharing stories, including fictional and personal narratives. Gino Brazil grew up in the tiny northeastern New Mexico village of Cimarrón. Gino discovered storytelling through the works of Hispanic writers like Rudolfo Anaya, Benedicto Cuesta, and Sabine Ulibarri. In addition to a career in education, Gino owned and managed Gino’s Gym in Española for 35 years. In the last several years, Gino has taught storytelling, writing, cartooning, and Spanish conversation classes at LaFarge Library in Santa Fe and in Española. Most recently he helped the Rio Arriba Adult Literacy Program initiate their storytelling series and fundraiser in Española.
Obsessions and Awe with Joan Logghe
Teahouse (yurt at Joan's)
Obsessions and Awe. Explore the sources of inspiration, formal poems, formless poems, poets we love, as Leonard Cohen says "Dance me to the end of love.” I say, write me to the end of the obsession. Join Former Santa Fe Poet Laureate in a beautiful round tea house with a group limited to ten writers of all levels. We'll explore fuels of worry, love, favorite poets, forms, grief, the irresistibles of our life whether they be the obsession of the day, week, or lifetime. We'll return in two weeks, which happen to be during the High Holy days in Judaism, the Days of Awe, Moving from Odes to Awe. Joan Logghe works at poetry on a family compound in La Puebla, New Mexico where she and her husband, Michael, raised three children and built three houses. Joan sees poetry as a tool for emotional activism and a vessel for beauty. Her enthusiasm has inspired poetry in students from Santa Clara Day School to Zagreb, Croatia, from Kindergarten through elders and Ghost Ranch for the past 32 years. Awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry Grants, and a Mabel Dodge Luhan Internship.
Short Forms: Haiku,Haibun, Tanka, and Renga
with Michelle Holland
Espanola Library
Celebrate short forms! Create vignettes, surprises, and aha! moments. We will use haiku, haibun, tanka, and other short forms, as well as the communal experience of renga. Bring tokens that might generate ideas and moments – bright feathers, gathered shells, memorable photos of favorite places and faces, the kinds of things that line the ledges, hearths, and nichos in your house. Miriam Sagan’s form-poetry text, The Unbroken Line will be our accessible and generous guide. Michelle Holland is currently the Poet-in-Residence for the Santa Fe Girls School and the treasurer of NM Literary Arts. She lives in Chimayo, where she writes and runs the trails from the BLM gate through the barrancas to Truchas. Her poems can be found in literary journals, in print and on the internet, most recently New Mexico Poetry Anthology 2023, UNM Press. She has two book-length collections of poetry, Chaos Theory, Sin Fronteras Press, and The Sound a Raven Makes, Tres Chicas Press.
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Song, Myth, Prayer: Poetics of Ancestral Storytelling Natachee Momaday Gray and Yesh (Y) Salz Espanola Library |
Yesh (Y) Salz (they/them) is a poet, song carrier and community organizer currently completing their MFA in Poetry at the Institute of Indian American Arts where they are writing on queer ancestors, bird migration and radical diasporism. When they are not writing and working, you can find them ranging the Nambé badlands or singing in the streets, megaphone in hand, in Santa Fe.
Natachee Momaday Gray is a Santa Fe native and indigenous poet/performer/musician. Her work focuses on the melding of art and myth, ancestry and nostalgia, food and prayer, glamour, frivolity and time. She comes from a long lineage of storytellers and honors this tradition. She holds numerous awards including the Lena Todd award for poetry and recently was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of Small Presses. Always creating and collaborating. She lives on a small farm with her family in Coyote, NM.
Natachee Momaday Gray is a Santa Fe native and indigenous poet/performer/musician. Her work focuses on the melding of art and myth, ancestry and nostalgia, food and prayer, glamour, frivolity and time. She comes from a long lineage of storytellers and honors this tradition. She holds numerous awards including the Lena Todd award for poetry and recently was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of Small Presses. Always creating and collaborating. She lives on a small farm with her family in Coyote, NM.
Alzheimer's Poetry Project
The Alzheimer's Poetry Project (APP) was founded by poet Gary Glazner in Santa Fe, New Mexico as a project of New Mexico Literary Arts in December 2003. NMLA gave Gary Glazner a small seed grant to get his Alzeimer's Poetry Project off the ground in New Mexico more than twenty years ago. A number of New Mexico poets participated in bringing poetry into memory care facilities in Santa Fe, and throughout New Mexico. Board member, Michelle Holland, was among the poets who participated. To date the APP has held programming in 23 states and internationally in Germany, Poland and South Korea, serving over 20,000 people living with dementia. The Alzheimer's Poetry Project was awarded the 2012 MetLife Foundation Creativity and Aging in America Leadership Award in the category of Community Engagement.
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Poetry Pollinators
Poetry Pollinators is an eco-poetry public art initiative dedicated to empowering poetry, art, and education in support of native bee populations. NMLA is the fiscal agent for Elizabeth Jacobson's Poetry Pollinators Project which she began at the end of her tenure as the Poet Laureate of Santa Fe. Native solitary bees are beneficial creatures with no hive, no honey, and no queen, which has prompted communities nationwide to help support bees through the placement of nesting boxes that have come to be known as "bee hotels." The Poetry Pollinators bee hotel by the Santa Fe River, on Alameda and Camino Escondido, serves as an open space gathering spot for personal contemplation, poetry readings, educational workshops, public events and celebrations. The bee house integrates an educational panel and presents one poem that is curated bi-annually. This project has been supported by grants from The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, New Mexico Arts (a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts), ShadowCatcher Entertainment and funds managed by Santa Fe Community Foundation. After completion, it was donated by co-founders Elizabeth Jacobson and Julie Chase-Daniel to the City of Santa Fe and is maintained by the Santa Fe Watershed Association. Artist Peter Joseph was commissioned to design and build the bee house which incorporates a poetry display, ecological information, and a nesting habitat for native pollinator species. The trunk that forms the basis of the sculpture is from a cottonwood tree which once grew in Santa Fe’s Rose Park and was removed after being struck by lightning. |
The WingSpan Poetry Project
Elizabeth Jacobson founded the WingSpan Poetry Project with the objective: Cultivating Empowerment Through Poetry, and began bringing weekly poetry classes to the Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families. The project grew quickly to involve four more poets teaching in other local shelters including St. Elizabeth’s emergency women’s shelter, La Familia, and the St. Elizabeth’s Men’s Shelter. We also taught at a two-year housing facility, Sonrisa (part of the St. Elizabeth’s Shelter), The Esperanza Support Center, and at Youth Shelters, in Santa Fe. As the Founding Director of this project, I was continually working to expand our teaching capacity. We established a poetry library at Esperanza and over the years the project was supported with six consecutive grants from The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. This is all to say we did meaningful work and touched numerous individuals in many areas of our community. Sadly, WingSpan closed in 2020 with the onset of the pandemic.
Elizabeth Jacobson founded the WingSpan Poetry Project with the objective: Cultivating Empowerment Through Poetry, and began bringing weekly poetry classes to the Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families. The project grew quickly to involve four more poets teaching in other local shelters including St. Elizabeth’s emergency women’s shelter, La Familia, and the St. Elizabeth’s Men’s Shelter. We also taught at a two-year housing facility, Sonrisa (part of the St. Elizabeth’s Shelter), The Esperanza Support Center, and at Youth Shelters, in Santa Fe. As the Founding Director of this project, I was continually working to expand our teaching capacity. We established a poetry library at Esperanza and over the years the project was supported with six consecutive grants from The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. This is all to say we did meaningful work and touched numerous individuals in many areas of our community. Sadly, WingSpan closed in 2020 with the onset of the pandemic.
New Mexico Literary Arts History
Well, this obviously needs some updating!! NMLA is picking up steam, with a few new board members, the continuing annual gratitude awards and their accompanying celebrations, acting as fiscal agent for a number of poetry projects, and our newest offering, Española Writes!
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
Well, this obviously needs some updating!! NMLA is picking up steam, with a few new board members, the continuing annual gratitude awards and their accompanying celebrations, acting as fiscal agent for a number of poetry projects, and our newest offering, Española Writes!
2013
- Gratitude Award Reading / Fundraiser at Collected Works, Santa Fe
- Fifth Gratitude Award: Larry Goodell, Placitas and The Projects, curated by Mitch Rayes, Albuquerque
2012
- Wordspace Reading Series/Outpost curated by JB Bryan
- Fourth Gratitude Award: James McGrath, Santa Fe and S.O.M.O.S. (Society of the Muse of the Southwest), Taos
- Big Soiree feast at the Logghe ranch, La Puebla
2011
- Wordspace Reading Series / Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque curated by JB Bryan
- Woman of the Month Club—A monthly program presented in Espanola by Joan Logghe
- Third Gratitude Award: Stan Noyes, Santa Fe and Warehouse 408 Teen Poetry Project, coached by Kenn Rodriguez, Albuquerque
- Gratitude Award Reading / Fundraiser at Collected Works, Santa Fe
2010
- Wordspace Reading Series / Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque curated by JB Bryan
- Woman of the Month Club—A monthly program presented in Espanola by Joan Logghe
- Second Gratitude Award: Lisa Gill, Albuquerque and Sin Fronteras, Las Cruces
- Big Soiree feast and reading at Elzabeth Raby's house
- Lisa Gill reading at Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque
2009
- Wordspace Reading Series / Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque curated by JB Bryan
- Woman of the Month Club—A monthly program presented in Espanola by Joan Logghe
- First Annual Gratitude Award Reading / Fundraiser at Collected Works, Santa Fe
2008
- Wordspace Reading Series / Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque curated by JB Bryan
- Woman of the Month Club—A monthly program presented in Espanola by Joan Logghe
- Wordstock 2 Book Fair, in conjunction with STIR Poetry Festival, Albuquerque
- Inaugural Gratitude Award: Mary McGinnis, Santa Fe and Taos Poetry Circus / Anne McNaughton & Peter Rabbit
2007
- Wordspace Reading Series / Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque curated by JB Bryan
- Woman of the Month Club—A monthly program presented in Espanola by Joan Logghe
2006
- Wordspace Reading Series / Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque curated by JB Bryan
- Woman of the Month Club—A monthly program presented in Espanola by Joan Logghe
2005
- Wordspace Reading Series / Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque curated by JB Bryan
- Woman of the Month Club—A monthly program presented in Espanola by Joan Logghe
- Wordstock: Poetry Gathering / Funraiser / Small Press Book Fair, Desert Academy, Santa Fe
2004
- Urban Enhancement Trust Fund of the City of Albuquerque Grant for Wordspace Reading Series / Outpost Performance Space curated by JB Bryan
- Woman of the Month Club—A monthly program presented in Espanola by Joan Logghe, funded in part by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
- Alzheimer’s Poetry Project (APP)—A program to bring poets into assisted living centers and read classic poems to the patients. Gary Mex Glazner began by working with Sierra Vista Center in Santa Fe. This project is still ongoing.
2003
- Santa Fe Poetry TeenWorks, funded by Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, O’Keeffe Museum & McCune Foundation
- Talking Gourds Poets Gathering: Rockmirth, Las Vegas, August
- National Poetry Month/Poetry Habitat: Technical Assistance, Magnifico, Albuquerque
- Harwood Review, literary magazine: Technical Assistance
2002
- Santa Fe Poetry TeenWorks, funded by Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, O’Keeffe Museum & McCune Foundation
- Talking Gourds Poets Gathering: Rockmirth, Las Vegas, June
- National Poetry Month/Poetry Habitat: Technical Assistance, Magnifico, Albuquerque
- Harwood Review, literary magazine: Technical Assistance
2001
- Santa Fe Teen Writing Workshop, funded by Witter Bynner Foundation, O’Keeffe Museum & McCune Foundation
- Talking Gourds Poets Gathering: Rockmirth, Las Vegas
- National Poetry Month/Poetry Habitat: Technical Assistance, Magnifico, Albuquerque
2000
- Santa Fe Poetry TeenWorks: funded by Witter Bynner Foundation For Poetry, O’Keeffe Museum & McCune Foundation
- Turned over Handy Dandy Guide: Rewards & Resources for NM Writer to New Mexico Arts: A Division of the Office of Cultural Affairs
- Talking Gourds Poets Gathering: Rockmirth, Las Vegas
- National Poetry Month/Poetry Habitat: Technical Assistance, Magnifico, Albuquerque
1999
- Santa Fe Poetry TeenWorks: funded by Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, O’Keeffe Museum & McCune Foundation
- National Poetry Month/Poetry Habitat, Magnifico Festival of the Arts, Albuquerque
- Poetry Paint: 7 Poets & 7 Painters: Curator, Harwood Art Center, Albuquerque
- Handy Dandy Guide: Rewards & Resources for NM Writers/3rd printing
- SW Writer’s Workshop/Small Press Panel: Technical Assistance
- Santa Fe Community College Writers Conference/Panels: Technical Assistance
- Talking Gourds Poets Gathering: Rockmirth, Las Vegas
- Produced show: The Rose, the Thorn, & the Raggedy Child with storytellers, Martín Prechtel, Gioia Timpanelli: James A. Little Theater in Santa Fe
1998
- Intergalactic Poetry Month: Curator, (Harwood Art Center, Albuquerque)
- Broadsided: Poetry on Walls Show: Curated by JB Bryan
- Rite of Spring, Left of the Moon Reading
- Vehicle/Ride the Moon/Poetry on the Buses: Technical Assistance (Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Las Cruces)
- Handy Dandy Guide: Rewards & Resources for NM Writers: 2nd printing
1997
- Poets Forums
- NM Fine Arts Museum Reading: NMLA Board Members present a History of NM Poets
- Handy Dandy Guide: Rewards & Resources for NM Writers: 1st printing
