We’re Growing!
I’ll be spending the next week on vacation with my family, but the dispatches will carry on in my absence! We actually are rolling out our expanded dispatch contributors both here and on the Re/Creation website this coming week, including the debuts of two of our longtime workshop members, Carolina Soto and Marvin Wade.
One of “the real women of Orange Is the New Black,” Carolina is one of the founding members of the Re/Creation writing workshop at Restoration Plaza. Unlike the fictionalized Yoga Jones, Carolina has a long history of work in social justice and advocacy, and is a seasoned painter and visual artist. Since beginning her work in the Re/Creation writing workshop at Restoration Plaza in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, Carolina has increased her confidence and aptitude with both the written and spoken word, composing speeches and essays for her advocacy work and as well as written memoir. In particular, her essays and memoirs illustrate her vast capacity for empathy in her descriptions of people with whom she shared time inside. She now splits her time between living in New York City and the Dominican Republic.
Marvin joined the Re/Creation Bed-Stuy writing workshop in 2019, shortly after coming home from a 25-year sentence primarily at Sing Sing. While inside, Marvin wrote multiple books’ worth of stories, novels, and personal essays on every bit of paper he could find, using his gifts as a writer to remake himself. He’s now learning the rudiments of writing and editing on a computer while working with both the Re/Creation team and the Fortune Society. He is a Spiritual Activist based in Brooklyn, where he has found a spiritual home with his local Quaker community. He reads his work, which is populated largely by strong women characters, every week in workshop, and now works with our team to create and edit his own dispatches.
You can look forward to hearing from both Carolina and Marvin this week! In the meantime, check out the rest of the website if you haven’t already, and let us know what you think!