I’m super excited to announce that 2025 is our 30th Anniversary year – that’s right, InsideOut Literary Arts has been serving Detroit youth with high quality creative writing programming for three decades! From our start in a handful of high schools to serving over three thousand students last year, it’s been a journey to get here.
This milestone is about giving back to the community that has nourished us and made our work possible. In honor of this special year, we have experiences for the community that we hope will inspire and connect you to each other.
With City Walls Detroit, we have an open call for artists to envision a 30th anniversary mural featuring youth poetry on Detroit’s historic Avenue of Fashion – inspiring viewers for years to come.
This year’s InsideOut Main Stage Performance Showcase on Saturday, March 15th, will feature the incredibly talented Brittany Rogers, a native Detroiter and InsideOut alumna and the author of the debut Good Dress. Another Citywide Poets Alumna, Ajanae Dawkins, will join the stage for an interactive Q&A with Brittany. These Best Friends and hosts of Poetry Foundation’s V.S. Podcast will perform new and old work and chat on stage about what it means to dedicate themselves to their craft, develop as multi-genre artist, and to love one another.
In April, we’re going to encourage you to LOOK UP for student poetry as more billboards than ever before are installed throughout the city to celebrate and delight during National Poetry Month.
And we’ll be throwing the best poetry party of the year – InsideOut’s 30th birthday party on Saturday, October 25, 2025. Nothing like your typical nonprofit gala, we can’t wait to share more!
It is such a gift to be able to celebrate our talented youth and our incredible community, especially in the midst of all the world’s challenges today. I hope to see you at any, or all, of the above – come find me for a hug, a toast and high five!
Suma Karaman Rosen
Executive Director