HumanitiesDC Community Showcase

This year, we’re bringing the energy to a new Southeast location as we continue to spotlight the stories that define the public humanities.

Join us on April 9, 2026, at 6 pm at THEARC for a celebration of bold ideas, even bolder questions, and some powerful stories to go with them. Together, we’ll honor the outstanding work of our 2025 Community, Culture & Heritage grantees. Engage with fellow curious minds as we share the diverse stories and transformative impact of the humanities over the past year.

Register here!

Suggested Donation: We at HumanitiesDC believe that the humanities should be accessible to all. If you are able, help ensure our approach to programming remains sustainable with a suggested donation. Your donation will help offset the operational costs of this program.

The Great 8 Fashion Tour East of The River Presents: In The Pocket – The Magical, Mystical Influence of Go-Go On Culture Style and Fashion

An interactive “tour stop” exploring the impact of Go-Go music on fashion and cultural expression in Washington, DC. Through visual media, archival material, and community storytelling, attendees will explore how rhythm, movement, and sound shape personal style and creative identity. The event highlights Go-Go as a living cultural force that influences fashion, community connection, and cultural memory, offering insight into its enduring role in DC?’s cultural landscape. This event is a part of The Great 8 Fashion Tour, an interactive documentary project exploring the cultural significance of style and fashion across Washington, DC’s eight wards. By centering diverse voices, The Great 8 highlights style as a powerful form of cultural expression and storytelling within DC communities.

 

Register here

Silence is Violence: The Podcast – Episode 4 Release

Led by Artistic Director Farah Lawal Harris and Production Manager Keta Newborn, Silence is Violence is Young Playwrights’ Theater’s playwriting, performance, and community dialogue series exploring areas of injustice experienced by our city’s young people.

Through a mixture of scripted performances, interviews, poetry readings, and music, Silence is Violence: The Podcast is a four-episode series detailing key moments and performances from Silence is Violence’s 10-year history alongside ten years of the cultural touchstones and current events that inspired each production: racism, police brutality, xenophobia, gentrification, young Black motherhood, and the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Listen here.

 

Pride Month Poetry Reading

2026 PRIDE POETRY WORKSHOPS AT THE ARTS CLUB

The Arts Club of Washington announces a slate of free community writing workshops for 2026, led by five Pride Poets-in-Residence. Workshops are designed to be generative, so participants will leave each session with a new poem-in-progress, and are open to writers of all levels of experience and backgrounds. This is the final of six sessions.

 

Pride Month Poetry Reading

Reading by Gregory Adams, Xochi Quetzali Cartland, Marlena Chertock, Angelique Palmer, and Nico Penaranda, the five LGBTQ+ poets awarded 2026 Pride Poetry Fellowships from the Arts Club of Washington. Followed by a reception and book signing.

Register here.

Pride Poetry Workshop: Resistance – LGBTQ Poetry as an Act of Defiance

2026 PRIDE POETRY WORKSHOPS AT THE ARTS CLUB

The Arts Club of Washington announces a slate of free community writing workshops for 2026, led by five Pride Poets-in-Residence. Workshops are designed to be generative, so participants will leave each session with a new poem-in-progress, and are open to writers of all levels of experience and backgrounds.

 

Pride Poetry Workshop: Resistance – LGBTQ Poetry as an Act of Defiance

In this workshop, participants will consider the forms that resistance to the heteronormative status quo—and the limits of their own thinking—can take. We will look at poems that not only assert a queer life, but also challenge those who view that life as “less than.” Led by Gregory Adams.

Gregory Adams is a founding member of Station-to-Station, a groundbreaking collective of Black LGBTQ performance poets and writers of the 1980s, and part of the creative team who produced the documentary Fierceness Served!: The ENIK Alley Coffeehouse (2021).

Register here.

Pride Poetry Workshop: Wronged Women – Hell Hath No Fury

2026 PRIDE POETRY WORKSHOPS AT THE ARTS CLUB

The Arts Club of Washington announces a slate of free community writing workshops for 2026, led by five Pride Poets-in-Residence. Workshops are designed to be generative, so participants will leave each session with a new poem-in-progress, and are open to writers of all levels of experience and backgrounds.

 

Pride Poetry Workshop: Wronged Women – Hell Hath No Fury

In Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz said “Trust your anger. It is a demand for love.” For women who are socialized to be forever accommodating, how can anger be a liberatory force? In this poetry workshop, participants will be invited to engage with female figures such as Eve, Lot’s Wife, Selena Quintanilla, Yolanda Saldívar, and Harley Quinn, giving these infamous women the dignity of context. Led by Xochi Quetzali Cartland.

Xochi Quetzali Cartland is a queer Chicana poet and seamstress who was the 2025 Latinx in Publishing poetry mentee, and has been supported with fellowships from National Arts Strategies and Brooklyn Poets.

Register here.

Pride Poetry Workshop: Queer Homage

2026 PRIDE POETRY WORKSHOPS AT THE ARTS CLUB

The Arts Club of Washington announces a slate of free community writing workshops for 2026, led by five Pride Poets-in-Residence. Workshops are designed to be generative, so participants will leave each session with a new poem-in-progress, and are open to writers of all levels of experience and backgrounds.

 

Pride Poetry Workshop: Queer Homage

In this workshop, we will create poems in conversation with, or in the style of, or in response to another poem, or piece of art, or song. “After poems” are a powerful form of connection across mediums and artists—they can generate dialogue, honor, subvert, or reclaim. Led by Marlena Chertock,

Marlena Chertock is a disabled, lesbian, Jewish poet with two books of poems, who uses her skeletal dysplasia as a bridge to scientific poetry.

Register here.

Pride Poetry Workshop: Erasure Poems

2026 PRIDE POETRY WORKSHOPS AT THE ARTS CLUB

The Arts Club of Washington announces a slate of free community writing workshops for 2026, led by five Pride Poets-in-Residence. Workshops are designed to be generative, so participants will leave each session with a new poem-in-progress, and are open to writers of all levels of experience and backgrounds.

 

Pride Poetry Workshop: Erasure Poems

Working with pre-existing material, we will black out, erase, or otherwise obscure to form new meaning. How do we as queer people create new meanings and identities from the ones we are given? Where did we clash or not fit in? And what do we do when the world seemingly wants to erase us? Led by Nico Penaranda.

Nico Penaranda is a teacher in Howard University’s first-year writing program, who has been a featured reader at recent events hosted by the DC Poet Project, the Smithsonian Asian Art Museum, and the DC Public Library.

Register here.

Pride Poetry Workshop: “Weird Way to Protest…but, Yes!”

2026 PRIDE POETRY WORKSHOPS AT THE ARTS CLUB

The Arts Club of Washington announces a slate of free community writing workshops for 2026, led by five Pride Poets-in-Residence. Workshops are designed to be generative, so participants will leave each session with a new poem-in-progress, and are open to writers of all levels of experience and backgrounds.

 

Pride Poetry Workshop: “Weird Way to Protest…but, Yes!”

Using popular protest signs and memes as prompts, participants create short poems in three veins: love, abstract, and erotica. This approach highlights the accessibility of inspiration, examines protest poems from new and imaginative angles, and boldly stands in queerness in a world that wants to pretend us away. Led by Angelique Palmer.

Angelique Palmer is a performance poet, kindergarten teacher, and spoken word instructor at Wilkes University, author of two books of poems, who is in her second year of a three-year tenure as Fairfax County Poet Laureate.

Register here.

Community Culture & Heritage Grant Workshop

Join for an in-depth look at the Community Culture & Heritage grant application and program requirements.

This online session will provide a detailed look at the Community Culture & Heritage grant requirements, eligibility information, and application questions. Attendees will also get to hear from a current Community Culture & Heritage grantee who will share insights into their project as well as their successful grant application process.

Register to receive the Zoom link!