Sharing Out Loud helping writers discover new notes in their work

We're celebrating the first season of our writer/performer meetup Revising Out Loud with an exciting performance of new and developing work!

Revising Out Loud kicked off last September at the Hoboken Public Library and brought together writers of all genders and colors to share drafts and hear them performed. We believe that performance is a powerful revision tool, whether you're doing it for yourself or hearing it read in a new voice by another writer or performer.

Join us for Sharing Out Loud is Saturday, June 24 from 12 pm to 2 pm at the Hoboken Public Library, 500 Park Ave., Hoboken, for a performance by several of our members, including both virtual and in-person participants. This event is free and open to the public. Content may not be suitable for all ages. Register here.

Check out our lineup below!

CARMEN

an excerpt from "4 the Breath" by Ameerah Shabazz-Bilal, performed by Shelley “Smooches” Taylor (CW, or Content Warning: suggestion of incest and rape)

This is a section of a novel which tells the story of four young women and their overlapping lives/coming of age and the big secret they will eventually try to hide from the world/their world.

Ameerah Shabazz-Bilal is an award-winning poet from Newark. She is the 2020 recipient of the Maria Mazziotti Gillan Literary Service Award and has a unique talent for telling stories through poetry and visual arts. Ameerah is a poet, visual artist, teacher, photographer and the founder/facilitator of When Women Speak and When People Speak. She’s the author/illustrator of “Breathing Through Concrete” with features in “Every Kinda Lady and Her Sister Pages,” “Philadelphia Says: Black Lives Matter,” “Womb of the Violet II,” “American Muslim Journal,” “Soup Can” Magazine Issue 2, “Life in Qurantine - Global Pandemic.” Her mantra is: “Poetry isn’t poetry unless it’s Spoken...Word.”

THE SIX-HOUR SUNSET

excerpt written and performed by Esther Yumi Ko (CW: cancer)

This is an excerpt of a full-length solo show titled SAD HA HA which examines humor as a mechanism for both coping with and avoiding our worst traumas.

Esther Yumi Ko is a writer and photographer who was born in New Jersey and forged in NYC. She has been traveling full-time for over two years and is currently working in a collection of stories about the Great American Road Trip as an existential horror story from the perspective of a queer, Korean-American woman in 2021. Find more of her writing: www.paragraphsandpixels.com

PICASSO BOOBS

excerpt written by Goldberg, performed by Summer Dawn

A story about an unlikely friendship between two women that may or may not go awry.

Goldberg says: My work focuses on three threads--playwright, educator, consultant. As a writer, I gravitate to highlighting footnotes to history, exceptional women, and overlooked issues. As a consultant, I worked with illustrious NYC theatres, have been a longtime member of the Dramatist Guild, and have been written up in Crain’s New York Business and The New York Times. As an educator, I have taught numerous courses in drama, film, creative writing, and literature at Fordham University, Fashion Institute of Technology, Stevens Institute of Technology, and others. I enjoy challenges and intense scrabble games.

ROCK STAR

written and performed by Nancy Méndez-Booth

A reflection on the longing, gratitude, despair, and hope that mark the speaker's life--all at once, in a familiar moment now made strange--in this post-pandemic-lockdown world.

Nancy Méndez-Booth: Artist. Puerto Rican descent. NYC-born. JC-based. Winner of the JCAC 2020 Literary Arts award. Publications include Poets & Writers, Latina, Salon, OZY, VIDA.org, and the Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity anthology. Performances include Cornelia Street Café, The Moth, In Full Color, Hear Her Call Caribbean-American Women’s Theater Festival, Midtown International Theatre Festival. Alum of Rutgers-Newark (MFA, MA), Amherst College (BA), Vermont Studio Center, Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Blue Mountain Center, and NJ Women Playwrights Program. Currently completing her fiction manuscript, The Mother Land. Actively seeking representation.

N TO THE O

song written and performed by Vero Verano (CW: sexual harassment, gendered violence)

This playful pop song is an anti-sexual harassment anthem that gives thirsty dudes a simple answer: N-O.

Vero Verano is an alt R&B and pop singer-songwriter whose songs are filled with vulnerability, passion and the occasional reggaeton beat. She’s Asian/Hispanic, proudly bi and lives in Jersey City. She's also the founder/director of In Full Color, an arts organization empowering BIPOC, through which she created and facilitates Revising Out Loud. @vvveroverano

IMBUED WITH COLOR

written and performed by Rare Essence

Rare Essence says: My piece, “Imbued With Color,” was written in my younger years in high school and was going to be published in 2015 and I'm still trying to get it published in 2023. Finding the color in life is what the poem is about. My anxiety stopped the press from getting a hold of this masterpiece in the making. Revising Out Loud has expanded my piece to a new level from a short poem to a longer poem by getting critics from other masterminds of the arts. Essence is my middle name but Essence is also a state of mind I go in when I read my poems.

BLUES RESSURRECTIN SPIRITS

excerpt written by Jacquese Armstrong, performed by Ameerah Shabazz-Bilal and featuring Shelley "Smooches" Taylor

A piece based on the author's mental health recovery journey and how she sees its parallel with the historical cadence of injustice to black bodies in America. The excerpt, (i find myself) in the blues, spotlights the transformative feelings of living in mental distress and reaching for recovery and healing for decades.

Jacquese Armstrong, author of birthing yourself naturally: motivational reflections on a mental health journey (2022) and blues legacy (Broadside Lotus Press, 2019), was the recipient of the 2019 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and a 2015 Ambassador Award from the State of New Jersey Governor’s Council on Mental Health Stigma for promoting wellness and recovery and reducing stigma through the arts. Jacquese was a 2022 Black Fire—This Time Anthology Summer Fellow with Aquarius Press. She has been a cast member of TMI Project’s storytelling performances Black Stories Matter: Every Word Spoken and Alone Together stories of COVID-19 in quarantine.

CHAPTERS 4, 5 AND 6

excerpts from "Friendship Served Cold" written and performed by Shelley "Smooches" Taylor

This piece is about personal reflection and the rollercoaster ride of friendships and new connections.

Shelley “Smooches” Taylor developed a strong sense of writing in early childhood. While traveling around the world as a “military brat” at age 5, she was often observed writing short stories and plays. Today, Smooches continues to write short stories, poems, and is passionate towards helping others use their voice in her role as a professor of developmental writing and English at Montclair State University and Passaic County Community College. Smooches currently belongs to a writer’s collective since 2022 sponsored by In Full Color by Summer Dawn’s “Revising Out Loud” in Hoboken, NJ. She is currently working towards finishing two bodies of work. The first is a collection of poetry to inspire and open black narratives called “Black~ICE” and the other is a short-story fiction product called “Friendship Served Cold” a prose in personal reflection.

LOVE LETTER

written and performed by Jackie Santos

In this powerful poem to her younger self, Jackie looks to create enduring empowerment for Afro-Latine girls in the present and future.

Jackie Santos is a feeler, educator, and writer native to nowhere but proud to call Jersey City home. Her writing untangles the dualities within her identity as a melanated woman, Afro-Latina, and empath. Writing often feels radical, healing and like home; welcome, thank you, and please, make yourself at home.

For more information, visit the Hoboken Public Library website.

To join Revising Out Loud, follow us on IG @infullcolorus_ and keep an eye out for the announcement of our fall dates. The club will be on hiatus during the summer.