Events Calendar

For so many of us, our family story is what defines our lives—what we run from or toward in the decades after leaving home. In this course, we will dive into family narratives together. The events we hope to discuss can include those that seem to haunt family struggles: trauma, abuse, neglect. Yet those blessed with stable families have plenty of stories to tell, too—a glorious summer road trip that reveals the love between siblings, or a tender reckoning with a parent’s humanity. As guidance for methods of writing on experiences with family, we will read poetry of Ai, Aria Aber, Catullus, Victoria Chang, Lucille Clifton, Natalie Diaz, Tarfia Fiazullah, Joy Harjo, Robin Coste Lewis, Vi Khi Nao, Sylvia Plath, Carmen Giménez Smith, and others. In order to consider different approaches to the idea of “family histories,” the assigned work will roughly fall in one of the following topics: parents and guardians, siblings and those of our youth, ancestors, and continuing the cycle. These are delineated by the familial figures the authors address in their works, leading up to the writers’ own enactment of parenthood.

In each class, we will discuss the methods the authors have employed, and their methods of engagement with their creative production. In addition, we will consider the effects assigned texts have on you as a reader and, just as important, how you think the writer accomplishes these effects. You will create your own works with these methods in mind. Beyond merely creating new work, we will also revise with help from the discussions.

This four-part course will take place on Mondays, October 2, 9, 16, & 23 from 5:30 – 7:30 PM ET.

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Diana Arterian is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Agrippina the Younger (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone, 2025). Her first book, Playing Monster :: Seiche (1913 Press), received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was a Poetry Foundation Staff Pick. A Poetry Editor at Noemi Press, Diana’s creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Banff Centre, Caldera, Millay Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. Her poetry, nonfiction, criticism, co-translations, and conversations have been featured in BOMB, Brooklyn Rail, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR, The New York Times Book Review, and The Poetry Foundation website, among others. She curates and writes “The Annotated Nightstand” column at LitHub. Diana holds a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, and she splits her time between Cambridge and Los Angeles.

Here is what you can expect from us:

• Best in class professional networking
• Fresh ideas on your venture
• A chance to meet your next employer, customer, partner, or colleague
• Career advice & connections
• a chance to practice your personal introduction in a Zoom full of supportive and helpful people.

How do you make all this happen? Sign up and show up.

The event is virtual. Join from anywhere.

Some of you may be wondering how you can benefit from conferences even if you weren’t able to attend DEF CON 31, BSides Las Vegas, or any local BSides. For starters, attend the October meeting where Overcast and probably a few others will share stories with only a hint of embellishment. He’ll also explore ways to have your own remote con experience if training or travel are limited. While attending the DEF CON 31 conference Overcast acquired Frog Badge #26 of 28. Cutting it kinda close there before they ran out. He’ll share how a random group of Frog Badge collectors reverse engineered its challenges.

Also, he brought back goodies to share with the DC864 crew.

SPEAKER BIO
Overcast is a co-founder of DEF CON 864 and one of its current leads. He loves exploring hacking and spending quality conversational time with family and friends. Occasionally those folks enjoy talking to him too.

LOCATION
Pelham Road Library (F.W. Symmes Branch) | 1508 Pelham Road, Greenville, SC 29615
Also virtually streaming on Discord (invite is on our website About page)

AGENDA

• Welcome and announcements at 6 PM
• Presentation (15 – 20 minutes)
• Projects open mic (15 – 20 minutes)
• Villages and networking (remaining time)

Join us for the first HackGreenville Nights at OpenWorks in downtown Greenville on October 12th!

We’re piloting a new, “quarterly-ish” community gathering format that will provide ample social time and multiple speakers.

Most talks will be technical in nature, but we hope to also explore some tech-adjacent topics of interest sparked from conversations in the HackGreenville Slack.

Big thanks to Simply Binary for sponsoring the food! 🎉

Schedule
6:00 – 6:15 – Social with Food from Simply Binary
6:15 – 6:20 – Sponsor Intro & Brief Community Announcements
6:20 – 6:50

• Room 1: System Level Thinking by Pete Broderick
• Room 2: How to Sanely Test Complex Systems by Robert Roskam + Quick Intro to Synergy Mill Project Opportunities by Joey Loman

6:50 – 7:00 – Break
7:00 – 7:40

• Room 1: Cooking Up Better Applications with Inspiration from the Culinary World by Ryan Lanciaux
• Room 2: Development Tooling with Laravel by Zach Robichaud + Quick Intro to HG Labs Project Opportunities by Olivia Sculley

7:40 – 8:00 – Social with ice cream bars by host OpenWorks

Directions

• Downtown Greenville, SC
• 101 North Main Street (the former Bank of America building, now Canal)
• Use the 3rd floor Richardson Street parking garage door and hit the doorbell to walk right in.
  Or, enter the lobby on the Main Street side, via ONE Plaza and take the elevator to the 3rd floor. Mention OpenWorks, on the 3rd floor, if the security folks ask where you’re headed.

Tech After Five connects the tech community. We invite IT Professionals, Startups, Entrepreneurs and their community of support to come together and make meaningful professional connections.

You may be looking for work or looking to hire. You might be looking for customers or prospects. You may need co-founders, partners or mentors. We’ve got you covered.

Tech After Five is not like other networking events. We work particularly hard to make sure we get the right people in the room and then make sure it’s easy for you to find each other. Sign up using the right ticket type for you. We will then follow up with custom emails that let you know who you can expect to meet. We will print custom badges for the event that make it easy for you to find the people you are looking for.

We know that networking can be hard. We try to make it as easy as possible for you to meet the right people. We know that when smart people come together we can make things happen. We hope you will join us and become part of our community.

Join us for a celebration of all things pen-related during the 12th Annual Fountain Pen Day. We will offer special deals and in-store promotions. Drop in to learn the joy of writing with a fountain pen!

Tech After Five connects the tech community. We invite IT Professionals, Startups, Entrepreneurs and their community of support to come together and make meaningful professional connections.

You may be looking for work or looking to hire. You might be looking for customers or prospects. You may need co-founders, partners or mentors. We’ve got you covered.

Tech After Five is not like other networking events. We work particularly hard to make sure we get the right people in the room and then make sure it’s easy for you to find each other. Sign up using the right ticket type for you. We will then follow up with custom emails that let you know who you can expect to meet. We will print custom badges for the event that make it easy for you to find the people you are looking for.

We know that networking can be hard. We try to make it as easy as possible for you to meet the right people. We know that when smart people come together we can make things happen. We hope you will join us and become part of our community.

“Looking Back, Looking Forward” is perfect for the holiday time of year. This is the season when many of us consider the events of the past year and look forward to what a new year might bring. In this writing workshop, we will use this transitional time as a focus for creating a new piece of writing which will allow us to set 2023 aside and move forward toward 2024. For writers at all levels. The workshop is led by Rick Mulkey, author of six books and director of Creative Writing at Converse University. Hosted by Truphae and Converse Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing.

This event is FREE and open to the public – just bring pen and paper! Seating is limited to only 18. Please sign up on our website.

Writing is a solitary task and many writers benefit from having peers to get feedback and support. Join us for the monthly meeting of our writers group and the chance to meet other writers.

Writers of all genres, formats, and skill levels are welcome to attend the writing group. Those who attend may share and discuss their work with others, participate in writing exercises, and access helpful writing resources.

Darren Todd, will lead a virtual writing workshop titled “What if you fly? Weaving speculative elements into fiction.”

The term speculative fiction has grown in usage, but what does it mean? Simply, it’s fiction that speculates or forecasts what might happen. The “if” in that scenario is up to the writer. Spec-fic (as it’s often called) isn’t beholden to a single genre. Certainly, dystopian novels fall under this category, but so could alternate history, science fiction, horror, or even drama. Many ideas can greatly benefit from introducing speculative elements, which give readers a heightened sense of curiosity, wonder, and even engages them to be a part of how the writer’s “what if” develops. Humans are natural problem solvers, and few things kick off that need to find answers like a solid “what if.”
For this workshop, we’ll delve into the rise of spec-fic, how it crosses genre, as well as flexing our speculative muscles with breakout exercises to be reviewed during the workshop.

This workshop is open to writers of all skill levels and is a fun way to find inspiration from a new prompt or revise current work. It is hosted by the Friends of Carl Sandburg at Connemara and will use Microsoft Teams for the virtual connection. Sign up to attend the workshop here!

Darren is a freelance book editor for Evolved Publications, and his short fiction has appeared in fifty publications over the years, including Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and The Stoneslide Corrective. His short story collection, The Ugly Mug and Other Stories, launched on Amazon and Audible in 2023.

While some of his works fall under the literary umbrella, he often returns to speculative and horror fiction. His style and preferences tend toward the psychological, as he enjoys stories that linger in the imagination long after he’s closed the book on them.

He lives in Hendersonville, NC with his son and girlfriend. See what he’s up to at darrentodd.net.

Everyone is welcome to attend the Riverside Writers meetings. We will complete writing activities, writing sprints, work in pairs/groups to discuss each other’s writing, and share our work with the group as a whole.

Would you like to be a writer but worry about the word count? Join us as we discuss and write short fiction. We’ll read short-short stories that will inspire our own short stories and we’ll follow prompts to feed our imaginations. Call to reserve your place.

Part of the event series: Small Business Development Center Training