Writing through Darkness: Creating Powerful Poetry and Prose During Difficult Times
$30 each session or $75 for all 3 sessions in October
Join writer and editor Elaina Battista-Parsons for a prose and poetry course about taking your pain and anger and turning it into commanding and powerful text. We will journal, list, have discussions, and consider information from a mentor text called, Feeding Your Demons by Tsultrim Allione, an American Buddhist leader who unravels Tibetan wisdom in ways that can inspire words on the page. This course is a way to transform some of our anguish in present times into written pieces that provide a path for healing. We can create something beautiful out of ruins.
https://www.yellowarrowpublishing.com/workshop-sign-up/p/writingthroughdarkness
When: 6:30 pm-8:30 pm EST
October 8, 15, 22
$30/ session or $75 for the 3 session bundle
Where: Zoom (link provided after registration)
Class Size: 15 participants
About the instructor:
Elaina has seen her poetry, essays, and short stories published across dozens of literary journals. She’s also served as Editor in Chief for installment number two of a micro fiction anthology called 50-word Stories of 2023, while also acting as an acquisitions reader for Vine Leaves Press in the genres of memoir and historical fiction. She is also an active member of the Ocean County chapter for NOW: National Organization for Women.
Over the course of the last two years, Elaina has continued to devote her time to a few very important purposes—her favorite being The Toms River Arts Community (TRAC), bringing to fruition one of her final graduate projects that began as a hypothetical. In June 2025, Elaina collaborated with a two Jersey Shore high schools to collect and curate poetry, paintings, and textiles for a Queer Art Exhibition currently displayed in one of the main gallery windows in downtown Toms River. Future art exhibits for TRAC will call upon Elaina’s writing skills for informational panels and object labels. Elaina also served as communications coordinator for the Trans Equity Coalition’s community social calendar in 2024: a grassroots resource for transgender and nonbinary individuals in New Jersey.
Elaina is a writer, teacher, and graduate student. She wrote a short memoir collection of essays and poetry (Italian Bones in the Snow) and a short story collection (Heart and Salt) both published by Vine Leaves Press. She loves ice cream, antiques, dogs, and actively advocating for LGBTQ+ community. She’s a graduate student through CUNY in Museum Studies. Her newest memoir about growing up with sensory dysregulation in the 1980s and 1990s called Chomp, Press, Pull is a full-on immersive encounter. She loves ice cream, antiques, and fabric patterns.