At Kaya, publishing is people. We recognize that traditional industry models can’t protect or propel the stories we champion, so we are re-envisioning our architecture to build a resilient, independent foundation for the future. As part of our commitment to collective possibility, we are launching our first-ever online workshop series, Creative Contagion. Featuring Kaya writers, translators, editors, and community members, we seek to create an accessible and open space to experiment, generate new work, and sow the seeds of new possibilities. 

Workshops will be hosted on Zoom and are open to writers and readers of all experience levels at a sliding fee scale. All proceeds go towards publishing and programming here at Kaya, an independent non-profit publisher.  

Sign up via the buttons below and email info@kaya.com with any questions. After you sign up, you’ll receive a confirmation email and the private zoom link will be sent out three days before the workshop. All workshops will be recorded to be shared with signed up participants only. We can’t wait to create with you!

We’re pleased to announce two new workshops this August with Pulitzer Finalist and Kaya author Anelise Chen as well as Kaya translator Sophie . Read on for more about these workshop offerings and sign up today! 

Sowing Pennies with Anelise Chen – Saturday, August 8th from 10-11:30 am pst / 1-2:30 pm est via Zoom. 

Workshop Description: 

One of my favorite books of all time is Annie Dillard’s nature writing classic, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It’s a book I return to whenever I need a reminder that the world we live in is full of wonder and worthy of description. Weather, seasons, animals and insects, yes, but also the light that comes through the window while you’re just sitting at the kitchen table. What fills you with wonder? How do you translate mundane experience into something rapturous and ecstatic? For Dillard, the key to wonder is to become like a child again, delighted to find a mere penny, then translating that joy into language so others can discover it. She calls this practice “sowing pennies.” We will read some short passages together and write about our metaphorical pennies–the small and unremarkable things that we love–so that we can also feel rewarded and enriched, for very little, for nothing at all.

Facilitator bio: 

Anelise Chen is the author of Clam Down: A Metamorphosis, a 2026 Pulitzer Finalist in Memoir or Autobiography, a New York Times Editor’s Choice selection, and named one of the best books of the year by Chicago Tribune, Vulture, and Electric Lit. Based on her stint as the Paris Review’s “mollusk correspondent, Clam Down is a hybrid memoir about a woman who turns into a clam, and goes on a quest to learn more about her clam-lineage, including interviews with her father who disappeared for a decade to write a mysterious accounting software he called Shell Computing.

Chen is a 5 under 35 Honoree from the National Book Foundation. Her experimental novel So Many Olympic Exertions (2017), a meditation on winning and losing, failure and perseverance, was a finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She has written most recently about trees, birds, parking lots, and talking vegetables for venues like The Atlantic, Believer Magazine, McSweeney’s, Arnoldia, and The Baffler. She is an associate professor of fiction at Columbia University, and lives with her family in New Haven, Connecticut.

Rules of the Game with Sophie Lee – Saturday, August 21 from 11 am-1 pm pst / 2 pm-4 pm est via Zoom.

Workshop description:

When it comes to translation, what counts as cheating? Should we stick closely to the text in the original, or do we win something by taking a stylistic risk? In this two-hour workshop, Kaya translator Sophie Lee, will walk participants through her translation process using examples from an in-progress Kaya translation by Alexander Kan. Participants will be guided through short, generative exercises that use the act of translation as the basis for creative work. This workshop is ideal for readers, writers, translators at any level and those who are curious about how the constraints of translation can open new creative modes. Participants are welcome to bring a short piece (up to 300 words) in either English or another language to translate. Translations from English to English can involve a play with tone/style/genre. Registration is capped at 10 participants.

Facilitator bio:
Sophie Lee is a PhD candidate in Slavic literature at UC Berkeley, where she has focussed on twentieth and twenty-first century Central Asian literature and diasporic Korean history. In her translation practice Sophie works with Russian, German and French, and she is currently learning Qazaq. She spent time with Aleksandr Kan in Almaty in 2023 and feels grateful to be able to translate in dialogue with her authors.

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Creative Contagion will kick off with author André Dao who will be teaching “Writing With/Through Our Ghosts” on Thursday, April 23rd from 4-6 PM PST. 

Workshop Description:

In this two-hour workshop, we will explore writing with and through our ghosts—literary, political, and familial. We will engage with generative prompts in conversation with excerpts from Viet Thanh Nguyen, Saidiya Hartman, Anne Carson, Seamus Heaney, Edward Said, and others. This workshop is ideal for writers of poetry or prose at any level. Please be prepared to write with a text that haunts you in some way—it may be a document related to personal or family history, an essay you can’t stop thinking about, an excerpt from a writer whose voice keeps returning, etc.

Sign up for André Dao’s workshop below!