REGISTRATION IS CLOSED
All WORKSHOPS are free to attend with preregistration and are only for people who identify adoptees. Attendance is capped for each workshop, and registration is on a first-come, first served basis.
All times listed are EASTERN.
Please follow @adopteelitfest for more updates!
3:30 pm – 5 pm ET
Workshop A: Writing in the Void
Participants will encounter the work of three adoptee writers tackling estrangement across essay, memoir, poetry, and fiction. Participants will explore questions around what it means to be “estranged” within the context of the adoptee experience, and discuss the unique challenges of writing through and about absence. The three workshop facilitators, who each represent different adoptee backgrounds and have a unique experience with estrangement, will read excerpts from their own work and lead exercises to help participants explore estrangement in an emotionally safe and supportive environment. The workshop welcomes adoptee participants at all points in the consciousness journey, and who are in all types of relationships to their bio and adoptive families.
Nik Chang Hoon 임창훈
Nik Chang Hoon 임창훈 (he/him) is a transracial Korean adoptee, memoirist and poet. He is the winner of the 2024 Annie Dillard Prize for Creative Nonfiction, Runner-Up to the 2024 Minnesota BIPOC Emerging Writer in Poetry, and an alum of the 2024 Bread Loaf, Kenyon Review and Tin House workshops. His speculative memoir-in-progress explores how transracial adoption unfolds as an ongoing experience that is generationally violent, emotionally traumatic and physically embedded into the body. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and their spoiled golden doodle, Penny. Learn more at nikchanghoon.com, Instagram (@nikchanghoon) and Bluesky (@nikchanghoon.bsky.social).
Lora K. Joy/Lora Alegria
Lora K. Joy/Lora Alegria (she/her) is a domestic, same race adoptee. She is fully estranged from her adoptive family and reunited with both maternal and paternal biological family. In 2022, she legally changed her name back to her birth name – Lora’s biological mom reclaimed her through an adult adoption. Lora has authored 3 illustrated books and a blog at www.myadopteetruth.com. She also co-led the publishing of an anthology of adoptee writers from The Flourish Group. Lora is excited to participate in this workshop to show the power and growth in healing from sharing stories of prioritizing our own emotional needs. You may contact Lora via e-mail at lora@myadopteetruth.com or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/myadopteetruth/. You may also email from the website www.myadopteetruth.com.
Sullivan Summer
Sullivan Summer (she/her) is a domestic, transracial adoptee raised in rural New England. Her writing focuses on themes of race, adoption, identity reclamation, US history, politics, and pop culture. Sullivan is a past participant of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Tin House Workshop, and a graduate of the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program. Her work has been published in The Plentitudes and Redivider (among other publications). Sullivan’s first chapbook, Performance Anxiety, is forthcoming from Black Sunflowers Poetry Press in spring 2025. She lives in New York City. Connect with her on Instagram (@thesullivansummer) and visit sullivansummer.com.
Workshop B: Adoptee Experience As Creative Archive
This workshop will lead participants through generating personalized, meaningful writing prompts to have in your toolbox when you are feeling stuck. We will also share resources to stimulate your writing in multiple genres that you can return to again and again as you create.
Susan Ito
The author of the memoir I Would Meet You Anywhere, Susan Ito began reading at the age of three, and writing stories at the age six. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Literary Mama, Catapult, Hyphen,The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is a MacDowell colony Fellow, and has also been awarded residencies at The Mesa Refuge, Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center. She has performed her solo show, The Ice Cream Gene, around the US. Her theatrical adaption of Untold, stories of reproductive stigma, was produced at Brava Theater She is a member of the Writers’ Grotto, and teaches at Mills College/ Northeastern University and Bay Path University. She was one of the co-organizers of Rooted and Written, a no-fee writing workshop for writers of color. She lives in Northern California.
Lisa Marie Rollins
Lisa Marie Rollins (she/her) is a writer, director and new work developer. She has been a writing resident with Djerassi, Hedgebrook, Joshua Tree Highlands Residency, CALLALOO London, VONA and more. She received a Wallace Gerbode Playwright Award for a commission with Crowded Fire Theater for her new play KARA and is a 24-25 member of the Susan Fairbanks Playwright Cohort at TheaterWorks Silicon Valley. She was honored with a “Bay Brilliant” artist award from San Francisco’s KQED, has been a Bay Area Rainin Arts Fellowship nominee and is the recipient of multiple grants for her playwriting and theater making work. Selected directing & dramaturg credits include Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, New York Stage and Film, Berkeley Repertory Theater’s Ground Floor, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Arizona Theater Company, Hedgebrook Women’s Play Festival, Crowded Fire Theater, American Conservatory Theatre SF, Magic Theatre, new work by Lauren Gunderson, Geetha Reddy, Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm (CLIPPED- FX), and creative collaboration with comedic artist W. Kamau Bell (CNN). She has been a Literary Manager for Intiman Theater in Seattle, WA, and reads for juries & play selection panels around the country. She has been a Community Arts Panelist for Zellerbach Family Foundation and a Resident Artist with Crowded Fire Theater in San Francisco. She is a Member of Dramatist Guild and Stage Directors & Choreographers. She leads THE IRIS LAB, a new creative incubator & residency space for global majority & equity minded theater makers located at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Connect at Insta: lisamarie_9 or lisamarierollins@gmail.com
5:20 pm – 6:50 pm ET
Workshop C: Writing Adoption
This free workshop with bestselling, award-winning author Nicole Chung is for adoptees pursuing nonfiction or fiction writing projects. How do you know when you are “ready” to write or publish a particular story? What preparation, research, and/or support might you need in order to do so? Who is it you write for, and why? What do you hope to accomplish through your work? We will read some excerpts by adoptee writers, participate in reflection and generative exercises (so come prepared to do some writing!), and talk about how to build the sustainable writing practice you want. We’ll also discuss some of the risks and rewards of publishing as adoptees, including structural barriers within publishing/media that often center non-adoptee voices. Whether you’re hoping to jumpstart your writing practice or are already well on your way, this workshop should provide you with some momentum and ideas for concrete next steps. We will conclude with an open Q&A focused on craft as well as the practical aspects of publishing.
Nicole Chung
Nicole Chung’s (she/her) A Living Remedy was named a Notable Book of 2023 by The New York Times, landed on over a dozen Best Book of the Year lists, and won the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing and the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Nonfiction Book of the Year Award. Her 2018 bestseller All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and an Indies Choice Honor Book. Chung has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Time, The Atlantic, Esquire, Slate, Vulture, and many other publications. Previously, she was the digital editorial director at Catapult, the managing editor of The Toast, and an editor for Hyphen magazine. She has taught writing workshops for Tin House, Catapult, Kundiman, and Kweli International Literary Festival, among others, and volunteers as a mentor and secretary for Periplus, a mentorship collective serving early-career writers of color.
nicolechung.net | IG and Twitter: @nicolesjchung | BlueSky: @nicolechung | order signed & personalized copies of Nicole’s books from Loyalty Bookstores
Workshop D: Playing with Words and Migrating Toward Wholeness
Spoken word poetry, personal narrative, and public performance are powerful ways for adoptees to explore issues of identity, belonging, and establish empathy and connection to self and others. In this interactive workshop you will learn how emotional content coupled with the energy of performance can empower us to move, speak, and think differently about ourselves and our stories. Utilizing performance tools combined with the Migrating Toward Wholeness© method we will play with words and co-create a piece of spoken word performance that centers individual lived experience and helps us to articulate the internal experience of being adopted. Attendees will discover the therapeutic benefits of using writing and performance to unlock creative expression to migrate and heal embodied trauma.
Dr. Liz DeBetta
Dr. Liz DeBetta (she/her) is a scholar-artist-activist and Founder of Migrating Toward Wholeness©, a transformative program that empowers adoptees and women who have experienced trauma to heal and reclaim their narratives through creative writing and storytelling. As an adoptee herself, she brings a deeply personal perspective to her work, which emphasizes the power of personal narratives in fostering resilience, connection, and self-acceptance. She holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus on creative writing, feminist critical theory, and social justice, which informs her innovative approach to blending art and activism. She is the author of Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal: Migrating Toward Wholeness and the award-winning creator of the one-woman show Un-M-Othered, which delves into the complexities of adoption and patriarchy, offering audiences a powerful exploration of identity and healing through performance. Dr. DeBetta’s interdisciplinary approach combines creative expression, social justice, and personal healing to inspire individual and collective transformation.
After the workshops will be a roundtable reading of various panelists and presenters. This will be open to all.
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Adoptee Literary Festival 