welcome to at Louis Place,
a liberatory home for writers.

who are we

About our community

We are writers, artists, activists, and dreamers who hold each other accountable through shared writing practice. We are a community of generous readers and writers sharing ideas, listening to each other, studying together, learning from one another, and taking each other seriously. We are writing glossaries, short stories, screenplays, guides, essays, ghost stories, poems, morning pages, memoirs, syllabi, haiku, artist statements, journals, notes, fellowship applications, plays, sorrow songs, proposals.

Our creative community offers opportunities for personal and creative growth, as well as connection to peers from across the continent and the world. Offerings include daily co-writing, monthly project exchange, weekly groups for feedback or inspiration, guest workshops, and more. Through an online platform and mix of synchronous and asynchronous offerings, we support writers who are parents, caregivers, disabled writers and writers with chronic illness, rural writers, and others whose access to in-person creative communities is limited.

Our biweekly open letter—free to all thinkers and readers—activates intellectual and creative networks across traditional intellectual silos.

Leadership and support

at Louis Place is an artist-led organization with cooperative values; we prioritize knowledge sharing, peer learning, and horizontal leadership. We are accountable first to the artists and writers in our community. Founded in 2020 by Steffani Jemison and Quincy Flowers, at Louis Place has been coordinated by Naima Lowe in collaboration with Steffani and Quincy since 2022.

at Louis Place is a black-led project. We center historically-marginalized voices. Access and disability justice are core commitments of our work.

Programs at Louis Place in 2024-2025 are made possible in part through the sponsorship of The Field, with funding from the Wagner Foundation.

what’s on

Writers: our doors are open through January 23, 2025! Join us.

We’re excited to announce two 2025 initiatives:

👉🏾 the Artist Publishing Cohort: A funded opportunity for artists working on books! Accepting applications through February 15. Read more and apply

👉🏾 the Artist Publishing Practicum: A weekend to learn and share publishing resources and ideas—by artists, for artists, and open to all! Read more and save the date

Every other week, Quincy and Steffani share an email conversation about writerly things to read and contemplate. The letter includes information about artist opportunities and is the best way to learn about events and happenings at Louis Place. This year, our letter also includes chats with artists and authors in our community; these are slowly being added to our website archive.

Sign up for the letter here; unsubscribe at any time.

join us

what we do

at Louis Place is a community for writers. All activities are open to every writer in our community. We usually accept new writers three times each year. This season, we will accept new writers through January 23, 2025.

If you know you’re ready to sign up to write with us, you can head directly to the registration form. If you know you want to attend the information session January 20, 2025, you can sign up for that here. Otherwise, read on for more information about our Winter-spring 2025 offerings.

Yes, at Louis Place is right for you if:

✌🏾 You seek nonhierarchical, interdisciplinary, intergenerational intellectual exchange

✌🏾 You write or think meaningfully about writing in relation to your creative work

✌🏾 You want to be in comfortable, private, and drama-free conversation with ambitious writers (editors, playwrights, scholars, performers, artists, curators, activists) from around the world. We are in the cities currently known as Lima, Austin, Chicago, Mexico City, Oklahoma City, Brooklyn, New Haven, Washington DC, Cincinnati, Harlem, New Jersey, Atlanta, and more.

✌🏾 You prioritize Black voices & revolutionary dreams.

✌🏾 You want to share ideas and feedback and frustrations with other writers.

✌🏾 You are willing to give as much as you receive from a community.

Here’s what we’re up to in winter-spring 2025:

Daily writing: We write together for an hour, twice every day (8-9am and 12-1pm ET, Monday through Sunday). Not everyone can join us every day. Some of our writers don’t participate in daily writing at all. For others, quiet daily cowriting is an important anchor. During monthly writing retreats, the Daily writing room is open all day. In winter-spring 2025, writing retreats—with prompts and encouragement—are lovingly hosted by Jessica Harvey.

Need a reader? Facilitated by Naima Lowe, Project Exchange is a monthly opportunity to exchange pages, ideas, or creative work for feedback with writers in the community. Submit pages for exchange mid-month; meet with your partner to discuss later in the month. Project Exchange is designed for writers who need more or different feedback than they can find in weekly Trajectory sessions (e.g. a second reader on that grant application or fiction submission), as well as for writers who can't commit to weekly sessions.

We shoot the shit occasionally...strategizing about software, residency applications, chitchatting about articles we've recently read, just hanging out. In recent sessions, we’ve talked about popular education, when to lawyer up, application strategies, and much more.

Looking for a creative group for feedback / feed forward / accountability? About half of us link up with small groups—we call these Trajectory. All groups are interdisciplinary and include a mix of writers from different backgrounds.

Some Trajectories are supported by our team of Community Liaisons—stewards who help anchor Trajectory groups and keep them running smoothly. Current groups include:

📚 Non-Fiction Fever (workshopping non-fiction projects)
🔭 Close Encounters (renewing our relationship to creative practice)
🎭 Weird Scripts (interdisciplinary experiments in performance)
⚡️Hybrid Forms (working across visual and textual modes.)
❤️ Reading and Writing in Community (read together/write together)
🧞‍♀️ Fiction Workshop (for novelists and short story writers)

Breathing Room

We share prompts and reflections from writers, articles, and events discussed in the community. We’ve got hundreds so far, including new follow-along video prompts. In Winter-Spring 2025, new prompts are shared every other week in Wednesday Writing Prompts, a write-along session facilitated by community liaisons.

We gather with guests for generative and horizontal workshops—thinking/writing aloud and alongside our mentors and guides. Writers in our community have access to all guest workshops as well as our growing archive, which includes recordings and notes from sessions led by Gabrielle Civil, Sharon Bridgforth, Morgan Bassichis, Sahra Motalebi, Quincy Flowers, Anjuli Raza Kolb, Cori Olinghouse, Tisa Bryant, Ashon Crawley, Mayra Rodríguez Castro, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and many others.

In Winter-Spring 2025, dedicated workshop leaders for writers in our community include:

artist and filmmaker Patty Chang (February)
dancer, writer, and New York Times dance critic Siobhan Burke (March)
novelist, dancer, curator and critic Benedict Nguyen (April)

Also visiting us this spring: eight guests who will join our Artist Publishing Practicum March 22-23—names soon to be announced!

How much does it cost? at Louis Place uses a choose-your-price model that honors our labor while supporting the most diverse possible group of participants. You can change your contribution amount at any time; folks often reduce their contributions when times are tough and increase when things are going well. Our community liaison positions and barter opportunities are creative ways for us to support writers with a wide range of gifts. If you have a barter proposal or non-financial offering you'd like to suggest, please feel free to reach out. We look forward to welcoming every single person who wants to be a part.

Still curious? Check out the frequently asked questions, join the information sesssion, or email us.

sign me up

JOIN AT LOUIS PLACE

at Louis Place will welcome new writers in January 2025. Register by Thursday, January 23, 2025.

Step 1: Complete a short registration form that collects information about your access needs, your current time zone, and your writing goals. The form also describes our sliding scale contribution philosophy and our community compass. Don’t worry, no writing sample required.

Step 2: After you submit, give us time to read your materials; we’ll send you a personal response with your next steps. If you apply during a period when registrations aren’t open, you’ll automatically be added to our waiting list; we’ll review your application for the next available cycle.

Step 3: Check out. You will receive your checkout instructions via email.

Step 4: You’ll receive an email with a special link to access together.atlouisplace.com.

During each application season, we host information sessions for writers who are curious about whether we’re a good fit. Our next information session will be January 20, 2025 at 8pm ET / 5pm PT. Use the button above to register.

If you still have questions or want to speak with someone directly, we’re happy to chat with you via Zoom or email to figure out whether at Louis Place is right for you. Start the process by registering your interest (follow the ‘sign up’ link above) or sending us a note.

You can also follow what we’re reading and thinking about by joining our mailing list or checking out our Instagram.

welcome to at Louis Place, a liberatory home for writers.