The Fort: Writer’s Collective & Workshop

We built The Fort as a safe haven.
Four creators found a home in one
another and began working together
in a way that allows our creative spirits to flourish.

Together, we developed a true connection, a therapeutic outlet for our own ideas in efforts to impact, inspire, and tell the stories of others. This Fort we have built is both a firm statement of authority and a safe space in which to be vulnerable.

Our creation is done through workshops. We write on a range of open-ended topics like love, death, and power, and practice styles like tanka, short story, rhyme, and free verse. We open up our group of four to serve the writing community of color after getting out our first collaboration, “True & Living.” But first…

Builders of The Fort

João Amos
Noone Nobody
Sharita A. Sims
Tyree C. Worthy

João Amos is a New Orleans writer who started writing Slam Poetry at the New York UDUB Workshop after he evacuated from Hurricane Katrina. He returned to graduate high school where he received the Scholastic Silver Medal.

Baptized in the Mississippi River, Noone Nobody was born and raised in St. Louis. As a wordsmith and teller of stories, Noone is a master of fragments and run-ons using both to make sense of the realms of make-believe.

Sharita A. Sims is a New Orleans native raised in poverty and the Baptist church practice. As a poet, she commands the reader’s consciousness while devoted to provoking emotional response, thought, and intimate bonding within her culture.

Born in New Orleans, Tyree C. Worthy is a communicator by profession and writer by nature. He lives for the art of passion and the depths of what moves us all.

TRUE & LIVING:
Our First Release

We accomplished the purpose of this workshop when we self-published True and Living. In this group chapbook, we explore four themes from personal perspectives and hang them side by side. While our styles and word choices differ, we share a purpose: to express and create.

True & Living is a dive into poetry and prose from a contemporary Black perspective. We write explicitly about Romance, Art in All Forms, Resurrection, and Duality. As we explore our identities and these concepts, so do we explore ourselves and the depth of our craft.

Our words grow into feelings and honest conversation, unraveling the concepts of death, guidance, anxiety, love, balance, growth, and so much more. It is a scope of what is alive today and how real it all seems. We’re happy to share this with the public now, and look forward to workshop with other lovers of the craft in the near future.