Welcome Table Talk #4: I Know a Place: Black Women Artists Imagine Sanctuary
Time & Location
March 31, 2026, 7:00 PM EST
Webinar
Wintergreen Women Writers Collective (Wintergreen) and Torch Literary Arts (Torch) are embarking on an intergenerational three-year project for Black women writers called Welcome Table Talks. The virtual discussions will cover various topics related to organization building, literary freedom, legacy, and more. The virtual discussions are free and open to all.
“When is my sanctuary the place of dreams? When are my dreams the place of sanctuary?”
Join us for the next Welcome Table Talk - I Know a Place: Black Women Artists Imagine Sanctuary with Ashunda Norris and Desiree Cooper, moderated by Opal Moore.
Ashunda Norris is a Black feminist multidisciplinary artist with creative work that encompasses film, poetry, archiving and her own theoretical frameworks. Her art is preoccupied with ancestral inheritance, Black womxnhood as a freedom site, futuristic maroon expressions and fugitivity. She has written, directed and produced several films, including her most recent multi award winning cinematic project, MINO: A Diasporic Myth; now streaming on kweliTV. A California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellow, Ashunda’s art has been supported by Cave Canem, Torch Literary Arts, Tin House, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and more. She is a two-time Furious Flower Poetry Prize finalist, a Pushcart Prize nominee and one of 15 filmmakers selected for ARRAY’s Haile Gerima Liberated Territory MasterClass. Ashunda’s writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Salamander, Gulf Coast, Obsidian, Evergreen Review, The Adroit Journal, Rootwork Journal and Fence among other noteworthy literary publications. Ashunda is the founder of Sibyls Palace; a Black womxn centered art house that produces oppositional cinema & photography. Ashunda is a proud alumna of Paine College and Howard University. She holds MFAs in both Poetry and Screenwriting. A country blk girl at heart, Ashunda lives and dreams in Los Angeles.
Desiree Cooper is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, award-winning author, and speaker. Her latest two publications—the compelling anthology Black Summers: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors (Wayne State University Press, Feb. 2026), and her award-winning children’s picture book, Nothing Special (Wayne State University Press, 2022)—are an outgrowth of that family history. Cooper’s fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in The New York Times, 2023 Flash Fiction America, The Best Small Fictions 2018, Callaloo, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth, and Best African American Fiction 2010, among other publications. Her essay, “We Have Lost Too Many Wigs,” was listed as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2019. In 2018, she wrote, produced and co-directed “The Choice,” a short film about reproductive rights and recipient of a 2019 Outstanding Achievement Award from the Berlin Flash Film Festival, and Award of Merit from the Best Short Film Festival in Los Angeles. She was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for black poets, and has received residencies at Kimbilio and Ragdale. Having forged a 30-year career in Detroit, she now lives in the Virginia Beach area where she’s raising her three grandchildren.
Opal Moore is the author of the poetry collection, Lot’s Daughters, a meditation on Black souls in migration. Her poems, short fiction and essays appear in various journals and anthologies including Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic; The Boston Review; Callaloo: The Notre Dame Review; Honey, Hush! An Anthology of African American Women’s Humor, and Homeplaces: Stories of the South by Women Writers. Opal is a Cave Canem and Bellagio fellow. She is an original member of the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective and is our Programs and Partnerships Coordinator. Her current work-in-progress is titled “Color”.
About Wintergreen Writers Collective
The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective is a 501(c)3 organization that gathers Black women writers in a literary community that seeks to publish, document, preserve, and celebrate their creative work. More than 70 women from all over the country have taken part in one or more of the Wintergreen retreats or programs over the last 38 years, coming to a place where they can do the sacred work of literary and cultural production. Wintergreen Women are prefiguring a world where the history and legacy of Black women writers are honored and preserved—a world where Black women writers have access to intergenerational spaces where, in community and mutuality, they can nurture one another and locate resources to support their creative practice. Members of the Collective share their knowledge and creativity as a way of encouraging and engaging one another and their extended literary and scholarly communities.
About Torch Literary Arts
Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established with love and intention in 2006 to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Torch Magazine has featured work by Toi Derricotte, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.
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