ABOUT THE Event
The end of the year offers an opportunity to feel, absorb, reflect, and refract. Communing with the sunrise can also release a rare magic that deepens our spiritual and creative connection with ourselves and the environment around us.
In this year-end sunrise session, we will activate memories, moments of reflection, sensory experiences, and guiding writing prompts to consider the year behind us and imagine what lies ahead.
We will read short excerpts from various authors, engage in mindful observation, and have time to write. Everyone is welcome to share and discuss what they conjure during the session with a focus more on open-ended possibilities than critical feedback.
This session is open to creatives and writers of all skill levels.
ABOUT THE LEADERS
Scott Daughtridge DeMer is a writer from Atlanta, Georgia. His work has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Shirley Magazine, Hobart, Necessary Fiction, Midwestern Gothic, The Fanzine, matchbook, Curbside Splendor, and other places. His novella Then Then Then will be published by Kernpunkt Press in April 2025. His chapbook I Hope Something Good Happens was published by Lame House Press. A recent graduate from the MFA program at Arizona State University, he has received a Virginia G. Piper Center Creative Engagement Fellowship and attended residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hambidge Center, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. He is an Idea Capital grant recipient and was named the Emerging Artist of the Year in the Literary Arts by the Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. In 2012, he founded Lostintheletters, a literary organization presenting an award-winning reading series, free craft workshops, and the annual Letters Festival.
Stephanie Dowda DeMer, MFA’18 VCU, is an American photographer and experimental media artist. Her work excavates invisibility and creates space for reflection through phenomena, communion, and kinship. Dowda DeMer uses the materiality of photography to address grief, climate catastrophe, and power. Dowda DeMer was named the inaugural Iowa Idea Fellow in Photography at the University of Iowa. She has taught photography at Arizona State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and most recently, Wesleyan College. DeMer holds an MFA in Photo + Video from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is an Atlanta Contemporary Studio Artist alum, Hambidge Fellow, and Idea Capital grantee, and her work has been published in Dialogue, Bad at Sports, MuseA, ArtsATL, BurnAway, and Numbers Inc., among others. She is currently represented by White Space Gallery-Atlanta, and has shown at Grizzly Grizzly-Philadelphia, MART-Dublin, Institute 193 Lexington, KY, PhotoNola, Day & Night Projects, Atlanta, University of Iowa, Atlanta Contemporary, and other galleries. Dowda DeMer curatorial projects include Practicexpractice, McCrary Gallery at Wesleyan College, and currently serves as Creative Director for the Lostintheletters Studio & Space, opening late summer 2025. She is the Art Editor of Brink Literary Journal and co-founder of the Atlanta-based creative writing festival, The Letters Festival. She has been awarded grants from the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Leonian Foundation, Fulton County Arts Council, Atlanta Mayor's Office, and others.