Your Blues Ain’t Mine Workshop Video

On November 16, 2025, Paul Nelson, Roxi Power and allia abdullah-matta, three of eight Winter in America (Again editors, facilitated an online workshop called Your Blues Ain’t Mine. The editors discussed the value of reflective rather than reactive language in a time when poetry is motivated by anger and despair about the direction of U.S. American politics. Their anthologia, “a gathering of flowers,” assembled between election day and inauguration day, represents the struggle to be inclusive of diverse aesthetics. They each chose a poem from the anthology and discussed what they are looking for in the sequel. You can now watch the full workshop and follow along with the video below!

Submissions for the sequel anthology, Winter in America (Still, are currently open! If you are interested in submitting, we highly recommend watching the video below! Submission types welcome are:

• Poetry that meditates on where we are now, what endures, and how we carry both grief and hope.

• Prose that reflects personal and collective experiences, offering narrative, essay, or hybrid forms of witness.

• Artwork that explores justice, identity, resilience, silence, and resistance.

• Cross-genre or intermedia work (include link to audio or video if you’d like).

• Voices across aesthetics and backgrounds—diverse, layered, and inclusive.

• Abstract work welcome.

This anthology is not about headlines, but about the quieter reverberations of political life in our daily experience—reflections that help us see not only the election’s impact, but also what it reveals about who we are, and who we might yet become. Submit your work HERE or learn more at the WIA (Still website.