To Senegal 🇸🇳: Atena’s New Year Adventure is Coming Up!
IF YOU APPRECIATE the creative work Atena is doing, help her get to Senegal next month 🇸🇳 for her (sooner than originally expected) writing retreat. Find out how here: https://gofund.me/7a622444
This Week’s Fundraiser Update
"The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible" ~ Toni Cade Bambara
if you haven’t been following my socials or Patreon, watch the video above for context. [Video thumbnail description: Atena is wearing a brown and black zebra stripes sweater, big, dangling silver earrings, and light lipgloss, gesturing with her hands and looking excited. She’s sitting on her bed next to her Labrador retriever, Sissy.]
Okay, now updates! We’re doing great with the fundraiser - 91% of the initial goal! Beautiful! Fantastic! ALSO surpassing the initial goal will make the financial impact of this endeavor much less of a hit. If you can believe it, poetry doesn’t bring in a lot of money.
It fills me with hope to see people investing in creative cultural work in this way. I wonder if the SAG strike by entertainers last year opened people’s eyes a bit more to the reach and impact of creative writing in people’s lives… We really do turn toward our favorite shows and favorite songs and comfort movies and yes, POEMS, when things are hard. All brought to you by writers.
Times are plenty hard right now; what comforts you?
I hope you’re keeping an eye on my socials (Bluesky: @atenaoyadi.bsky.social and Instagram: @atenadelight) as well as my Patreon; to keep things interesting I’ve been posting some videos of my readings and resharing some writing that I’ve done so that people know what they’re investing in and can have a clearer idea of what I do.
Things you don’t learn when you don’t have a lot of money and can’t afford to travel a lot: immunizations are so expensive for travel!
I went to get my travel shots this week. Yellow fever? Over $400! Rabies? Over $1000! Which insurance may or may not cover, of course. I wanted to get the series for rabies, because it’s recommended for both places I’m going but couldn’t afford it!
If you have room to invest some dollars toward this journey, every donation is a big deal. If not, I only ask that you please share this fundraiser in one or two of the places where you are able to. It would be impactful for people outside of my established network to be able to see this fundraiser.
As my brother said to me this week, “This is the trip of a lifetime!” I’m grateful to even be able to have these travel-the-world problems. Thank you over and over for helping me make this happen!
Ever grateful,
đź’– Atena
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