Working with FEARS
With a Prompt on Xenophobia
I’m on my way to Baltimore to attend AWP, a conference for all kinds of writers and publishers, hoping to meet and connect with other people concerned with the state of the world. I’ll be reading some of my work, including microfiction anthologized in Best Microfiction 2026, judged by poet Diane Seuss, and poems from my chapbook Dear Palestine.
Yes, Playwrights, I have branched out into other genres, forms and structures! I encourage anyone feeling that pull to go for it. I’m also proud to announce that I was accepted into an Advanced Poetry Workshop at the Poetry Society of America with Layli Long Soldier, best known for her book, Whereas, that I highly recommend. You can read her astonishing poem “38” here.
A chapbook (called a pamphlet in the UK) is a short book of poetry, usually 20-30 pages, typically with an over-arching theme. This is a way for emerging poets to get their work into the world. There are 29 poems in Dear Palestine, almost half of which appeared in literary magazines first.
Dear Palestine begins with the title poem. First published in Toyon Issue 71, Dispatches from the Global Intifada, Dear Palestine was the last poem in the issue, published in the Spring of 2025. Here’s the artwork from the facing page called Kufiya Palestina by Tania Unland. The Arabic translation is by Dr. Abdulaziz Akila. If you want to hear the editor’s notes or other selections from the issue performed, this link will take you to more.
THE PROMPT:
FEAR PART ONE: what stops us from writing or creating? You know if you are carrying something inside you that wants to be on the page or the canvas or the stage or the airwaves. And you know if you’re stuck. I believe that stuckness comes from fear. There are as many good reasons to be afraid as there are people (and each person might contain many good reasons). These concerns can be explored gently.
First how does the fear or concern arise in the body? Where do you feel it? Can you sketch it on a piece of paper? Or describe it in a notebook? Are there colors, sensations, feelings that surround it? Does it show up as an image, a memory, or a physical symptom? The more clearly we can identify the part that holds this concern as a part of us (in or around us) the easier it is to begin to work with this part from a place of non-judgment.
Can you welcome this part and their concerns? Do you feel any curiosity toward them? Can you share that curiosity with them and see if they can feel it? Is the part willing to share their concerns with you? Does it make sense that you would have a part that feels this way? Is it all right to validate how the part feels? Can the part take this in?
Does the part offer any prior experience it has been protecting you from repeating? If yes, when the part reminds you of this, how do you feel toward the part? If the part has been protecting you, do you feel any appreciation toward the part for the job it has been doing? And if so, can you share that appreciation with the part, and can the part take that in?
If yes, see if the part knows who you are? Ask the part to let you know what it sees when it sees you. Is that who you are now, today? If not, please update the part with who you are now. Give the part a chance to take this in.
See if there’s anything else the part wants to share with you. Proceed similarly with the part, letting it know that you get it, validating the part and appreciating the part if you authentically can. Always check to see if the part gets you getting it. If your heart is open to the part and the hard job it does, see if it can feel that openness.
Thank the part for sharing. Did you discover anything? Does this change how you are able to approach the work you want to do?
FEAR PART TWO: Xenophobia. Fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners or anything that is strange or unknown. From the Ancient Greek, xeno for strange, foreign or alien, and phobos for fear.
Are you or your characters aware of their own xenophobia or how it has affected your or their experience of the world?
Has xenophobia been directed at you or your characters? How have you or they experienced it? Do you or your characters have any experience with feeling alien or strange? If so, how does this manifest? Does it affect how you or they live in the world? How?
Does it have consequences in the narrative you may be working on? What does it cause to happen?
Do you or your characters take steps to change this feeling or experience? Or how do you or they protect from the pain of this? In what way can the xenophobia that currently exists in our culture be seen on a micro level in a family or a workplace or any other setting where your narrative may take place? Can or does it function as a metaphor or in counterpoint to other action?
COME TO BRAVE SPACE
Offering prompts, grounding practices, & discussions about the creative process and craft! Brave Space invites all female-identified & nonbinary/trans playwrights, poets, painters, potters, novelists, memoirists, musicians & artists working in any medium to make meaning in a safe community. Begin &/or bring your projects to completion.
Or use Brave Space as a body-doubling space to get other things done in community (write hard emails, clean out your closets, do taxes).
$5-25 suggested per session. 4x/week! On or off camera. No commitment, drop-ins welcome. Try it!
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 12pm ET with Fast Feedback every Friday; and Sundays at 6pm ET with Sharing Second Sundays at 730pm ET (that means March 8th!!!) Email or reply for a link!
ACTUAL SCHEDULE: Next Brave Space is Sunday March 8th with Sharing! Then Monday and Wednesday at 12pm 3/9 & 3/11. NO BRAVE SPACE FRIDAY 3/13 because I’ll be at another conference (for coaches).
HOW to get into Brave Space: send me an email. Or reply to this directly with the intention to join. LET ME KNOW! I will send you a link. Or add you to the list for links and prompts to go out on the morning of each session. But I need to know. I’m not always able to see that you are interested ten minutes ahead of a session. I do check, but often those emails are magically missing from my inbox until I’ve started, and then I am caring for the people in the room.
NeuroAffirming (NAF) Parts Work Group:
Meets Second Saturdays of each month (March 14th at 12pm ET - time zone converter here) to offer community, parts work experience and support for anyone neurodivergent (inclusive of Autism, ADHD, Audhd, OCD, cPTSD and more).
You do not need an actual diagnosis to participate. Run by Emma and Jess (Level II), both of us Audhd, we are creating non-pathologizing and anti-ableist Parts Work content for healing and ease in neurodivergent systems. Sign up for our link here. Sliding scale from $5-25/session, but no one will be turned away.
Opportunities
Centre Stage 24th Annual New Play Festival call for new plays due by March 15th!
AACT New PLAYFEST call for scripts! They will start taking scripts on May 1st 206 and will only take the first 350. Full length, no limit on characters, one per playwright. For world premiere and publication. Read the contract first, it’s all on the website.
Free Peer Coaching for Res Artist members. Res Artis is a worldwide network of artist residencies.
Women in the Arts and Media has a newsletter full of opps for stage plays and screenplays.
You can also sign up for Audrey Cephaly’s Substack, How to Playwright where she keeps better track of the opps.
David Diamond is a creative coach who is connected to everything theatrical happening in NYC. Find out more at Stages of Change.
PREPARE INC offers self defense classes in NYC & elsewhere. LIFE CHANGING.
Amazing People Doing Amazing Things:
If you want to be listed here, please let me know what you’re up to and include your links!
If you’re attending AWP please say hello! I’d love to meet you! I’m a featured reader Friday night at Lord Baltimore with Boudin, Eckleburg, and Gargoyle. Or just wave me down - I’ll have copies of my chapbook, Dear Palestine, from Moonstone Press.
author photo courtesy of Melinda Hall @snappynyc
Shoshanna Gleich AKA Super Fire Woman’s song “The Enlightened Cycle” is available to be purchased for 1:50.
To help support my work spreading peace through creative expression please follow me at Bandcamp and at instagram@shoshannagleich.
Kelly Grace Thomas offers poetry workshops that I highly recommend. She has helped me improve my writing in easy-to-implement, concrete ways that have taken my work to new levels. 3/29 she’ll be teaching a workshop on poems that swerve, startle and surprise!
Julia Lee Barclay-Morton is writing beautiful essays on Substack and whether you’re autistic or disabled or not, I highly recommend her work!
MS Kohut has a Substack I highly recommend called “5 Simple Ways to Protect Your Energy in 2026.” I already do these things and they all work!
Jess Pearce & I made these neuroaffirming IFS experientials on Insight Timer. Enjoy here.
I have joined the Conscious Writers Collective created and run by Maya C. Popa, and I am learning so much! I recommend this for anyone wanting to take a very deep dive into the craft of poetry (and there is also a prose group for those of you writing prose).
Thank you for sharing Emma. It's wonderful to see your poem in print and congratulations on the chapbook! I also really enjoyed reading '38' -- what an amazing poem.
Thanks for writing this poem Emma. It captures a lot of what I feel. Compassion for others makes us human, without it we are are lost. I wish there were more Jewish voices against Isreali aggression in the world. I read your newsletters and treasure your writing and "brave space" much love, your cousin, Jill