BIPOC Open Mic Night

Stay tuned for our next BIPOC Open Mic Night - date TBD.

After many beautiful evenings of writing and sharing in the BIPOC Writing Space, we’re holding an Open Mic Night for BIPOC! This free event will be hosted by coaches Mari, Asifa, and Kim online via Zoom.

We are keeping this a BIPOC-only space, so please pass this link along to any Black, Indigenous or other person of colour who might like to attend.

Here are all the details:

• We’ll be meeting on Zoom, you can sign up for free when this event is open for registration.

• We’ll encourage our audience to keep their cameras on, so that our readers will be able to see faces, and feel connected to their listeners.

• We’ll encourage listeners to do LOTS of sharing in the chat of emojis and phrases they love, in order to make that delicious hum of togetherness we naturally create when we’re all in one room.

• We’ll take some time for writing as well as a short break. Our hosts will run a tiny writing workshop, so that readers and audience are all engaged in a creative process. If you’re new to Firefly, you can get a feel for our facilitation style here.

• To increase accessibility, we’ll have an Active Listener at the session in case anyone needs a quiet corner to talk.

• Closed captioning will be enabled.

If you want to read a piece, simply show up. When you arrive, you’ll be asked to send a direct message to one of our hosts through Zoom chat to put your name into the random name selector which will determine the reading order. Each reader will have 5 minutes, including any preamble, so keep your work under 500 words!

If you don’t want to read, please still come! We want to make a sea of smiling faces.

This is a hate-free space. Anyone reading work or making comments promoting racism or other forms of bigotry will be removed.

Never performed? Perfect! We’re nervous too. Awkwardness is beautiful. If you’re a veteran of the stage, you are also very welcome.

This evening will be perfect for you if:

• You’re delighted (and slightly terrified by) the idea of reading your work in front of a crowd…. Or you just want to listen and support.

• You want to slide out of your day-to-day to connect with other people who love words.

• You adore the idea of celebrating new voices, especially the shaky, tentative ones.

• You’re curious about our community and want to spend some time in its warm glow.

This won’t be a great night for you if:

• You want to share a piece that’s longer than 500 words. We’re keeping them short and sweet for this event.

• You’ll be heartbroken if your name isn’t chosen. We don’t know how many people will want to read, and we aren’t guaranteeing spots. Names will be chosen randomly.

• You don’t identify with the grouping of “Nicest people on the Internet.”

• You don’t have a private space away from kids. Since we can’t control the content being shared, we don’t recommend this event for children.

All the details:

We’ll start the evening at 7pm EDT. Mari, Asifa, and Kim will walk us through the evening, including a break in the middle and time for everyone to follow some writing prompts together. We’ll wrap up by 8:30pm.

Ready to sign up?

Our BIPOC Open Mic Night happens on the last Thursday of September. Sign up for our newsletter if you want email updates!