Max's Writers Cafe: Micro Poetry & Prose, Apr. 1, 2026, 12-1 PM Eastern

This event is free, but does require registration via Eventbrite to attend. All attendees should be ages 18+. Please note that these are inspiration sessions only; there is neither instruction nor critique.

Join us on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, as we create short poetry (including prose poems) and flash fiction/vignettes. Host Max Gardner (they/he, gardnercastle.com) provides the prompts; you provide the creativity. Interested participants may have a chance to share their micro works, depending on time (but there is no obligation to do so).

Max Gardner (he/they, https://gardnercastle.com/) is a fiction writer & award-winning poet published under a variety of bylines, including Max Jason Peterson and Adele Gardner. A poetry collection, Halloween Hearts, is available from Jackanapes Press (https://www.jackanapespress.com/product/halloween-hearts), while over 500 stories, poems, art, and articles appear in Analog, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, PodCastle, Daily Science Fiction, and more. Gardner is a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, Poetry Society of Virginia, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and Horror Writers Association, as well as a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Gardner serves as literary executor for father and mentor Delbert R. Gardner; Muse Mansion, a collection of poems by both father and firstborn, will be released soon by San Francisco Bay Press (https://www.sanfranciscobaypress.com/).

Gardner curated the 2019 Halloween Poetry Reading for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) (https://sfpoetry.org/wp/halloween-readings/halloween-reading-2019/); coedited SFPA’s Dwarf Stars 2022 (the best speculative verse of ten lines or less published in 2021, https://sfpoetry.org/wp/dwarf-stars/2022-dwarf-stars-anthology-and-award/); and guest-edited the Arthuriana issue of SFPA’s poetry journal Eye to the Telescope (Issue 27, January 2018, https://eyetothetelescope.com/intros/027intro.html).