Inlandia Institute

Three of Inlandia's core programs are youth creative literacy and adult creative literacy and literary professional development programs as well as the literary laureate, currently focused on teens. These programs support writers of all levels and ages. This is accomplished through creative writing workshops that range from free to minimal cost. Most of Inlandia's workshops are held in a virtual setting, on zoom, although we have begun resuming in-person workshops as necessary and appropriate. Highlights this year include a new writing and creating poetry in american sign language workshop with deaf poet ryan fingerle. We have also held novella, flash, and micro fiction workshops, romance writing, as well as workshops to help writers learn best practices in submitting their work for publication. We held year two of the teen poet laureate project in partnership with the riverside county office of education and a children's program at title 1 school Washington elementary, the starshine art and poetry club and with the riverside public library a journaling journey from a to zine. In fy 2022-23, we delivered 271 workshop sessions and 17 children and youth creative literacy programs

Our fifth and final core program, free public literary and cultural events, encompasses everything else that Inlandia does. We continue to offer hybrid programs wherever possible, although most of our events have moved to in-person venues. In the most recently completed fiscal year, this included program partnerships with venues across the region including the home gardens library, the garcia center for the arts in san bernardino, louis robidoux library in jurupa valley, the civil rights Institute and the riverside public library in riverside, the riverside art museum, the dorothy ramon center in banning, and even in seattle as part of the annual association of writers and writing programs conference and los angeles as part of pacific ancient and modern languages association conference and the los angeles times festival of books. Total number of individuals served from all programs for the year ended june 30, 2023 were 14,000+ people, one-third of which were children and youth. We delivered 271 workshop sessions, 41 cultural events, and 17 children and youth creative literacy programs.

Another of Inlandia's core programs is our publications program which amplifies the voices of those who call this region home as well as under-heard and marginalized voices everywhere. In the fy ending june 2023, Inlandia published these black bodies are, an anthology edited by and consisting solely of writers and artists who are black. We also published our first manga, written and illustrated by a young black creative based in riverside, as well as two poetry collections through the hillary gravendyk prize and our annual anthology of work written by participants in our creative writing workshops program. We also published two issues of the online literary journal, one in fall featuring adult writers and one in spring edited by and featuring work exclusively by teens. Additionally, we publish a weekly literary newspaper column in all four regional newspapers.

Inlandia Institute's programs have moved back to an in-person format, but with the added benefit of livestreaming thanks to cares-act funding which allowed for the purchase of and training with new technologies.