Guilty Pleasures: Making Lyric Poetry Out of Pop Culture

Guilty Pleasures: Making Lyric Poetry Out of Pop Culture is an online writing workshop on Tuesday, August 25, from 7 PM to 8:30 PM. The whole point is to take the pop culture you love but maybe don't brag about and turn it into a spark for new writing. The starting point is your own guilty pleasures—Hallmark movies, teen dramas, Love Island, Taylor Swift, The Golden Girls reruns, or just rewatching The Wire—which fuel quick writing exercises, friendly discussion, voluntary sharing, and plenty of laughs.

The exercises were originally created for poetry, but they work for any genre you're into. The session is framed for anyone who finds it hard to write when the world feels heavy, so it's more about the act of making something than about the end result. You bring your favorite low-brow obsession, and the workshop helps you build something from it.

Leading the session is a disabled, childless 'cat lady' who works in public education here in Texas. She describes the workshop as low-stakes, and the format reflects that: the exercises lead into discussion and sharing, and the whole thing is meant to be lighthearted. If you've been staring at a blank page because everything feels too big or too serious, this is a way to get moving again by leaning into the things that are easy to love.

It's an online workshop, so you can join from wherever you are in Austin. It runs from 7 PM to 8:30 PM on Tuesday, August 25, and tickets are $35.