Help Sam Attend the Iowa Writers' Workshop

This GoFundMe is to financially support my attendance to the Iowa Writers' Workshop for their Summer Session. The prestigious and world-renowned Iowa Writers' Workshop has long been considered the United States' best place to study creative writing, and my poetry and I were accepted this past week to attend their summer session. During this summer workshop, for the first time in my life, I'd be able to dedicate substantial time to the art and identity I care most deeply for.

With your financial help, I would nurture my poetry alongside other poets in a new place—Iowa City—for three weeks this summer. Not only would I have dedicated time and the collaborative support of other participants, but I would also receive mentorship from Mark Levine, a North American poet whom I admire greatly: see his Poetry Foundation page here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mark-levine.

For those who don't know me or were unaware, I read/write poetry nearly every day. My engagement and practice with poetry is what sustained my Watson, what held me throughout my Fulbright; poetry is what has kept me alive. (I've shared this poetry in the form of informal collections with my friends and loved ones annually since 2015—that's a decade of poetry!)

The Iowa Writers' Workshop Summer Session is not cheap. The tuition is around $3,000 USD. That said, I am hopeful to fundraise around $5,000 USD to spend on Writers' Workshop tuition, room and board in Iowa City, my rent in Ann Arbor, and to recoup the money I would have made working. I will not be able to attend without your help.

This opportunity comes at a particularly important time, as I will have just graduated with a Master's in Public Health from the University of Michigan and am desperately needing a respite from the social sciences and Ann Arbor.

Please do not hesitate to ask me any questions / let me know if you would like to read a poem or two of mine.

Thank you, anything helps <3