So Say We All is a 501c3 non-profit literary and performing arts organization whose mission is to help people tell their stories, and tell them better, through creating performance opportunities, educational offerings, and accessible media forums.
About
So Say We All (SSWA) was founded in 2009 in San Diego by a group of writers and artists who wanted to bring a truly accessible and populist storytelling platform to their communities—one where anyone in the audience at one show could be on stage at the next. From humble beginnings, So Say We All has grown to produce several shows each33 month at various venues for the public at large, providing programs to high schools and colleges, offering creative writing and storytelling workshops, and creating special programs for populations talked about more than heard from including US Veterans and the LGBTQ+ community—all amounting to our having a hand in the development thousands of original works from hundreds of writers.
We hope the next story we hear comes from you.
The VAMP Storytelling Showcase
A highly-produced multimedia reading series, The VAMP Storytelling Showcase presents an evening of several writers performing works with visual accompaniment revolving around a changing theme.
All participants are chosen by blind online submission, given writing and performance workshops to further improve the material and its delivery, and the final product is curated in a featured capacity, monthly since 2009.
Writers are encouraged to submit a 5-10 minute long (4-6 page, 12pt. font, double-spaced) story related to a show’s theme through the “submit” link on our website. We highly encourage the use of images in power-point style presentation during the writer’s final performance, but these do not need to be submitted up front.
How the VAMP process works:
• Writers submit a first draft of their true stories to our submittable account, indicating which VAMP theme they are submitting for.
• A panel of blind readers are assembled from volunteers who have previously performed at VAMP. Each reader, along with the show’s producer and SSWA’s Program Director, upvotes, downvotes, or stays neutral on each piece submitted.
• Scores are tallied and top-scoring stories are identified. Final selection begins with the show’s producer and Program Director, taking into account factors that will make the show as a whole the best it can be. These can include if there are two or more stories too similar in theme, if there is a range of performers that represent the community, if there is a balance of humor and poignancy, etc. Submitters who have never performed at VAMP before are given extra attention.
• The selected cohort begins a literary boot camp that involves participating in group read and critiques to give and receive feedback, work with assigned writing coaches 1-1, and receiving performance coaching to ensure they’re comfortable with public speaking.
• Finally, the cohort members select visual images to accompany their stories, send in their final drafts, and then perform together in front of an adoring audience!
• Videos of performances are uploaded to our Youtube Channel, and selected pieces will appear on The VAMP Podcast.
• We encourage writers to seek opportunities to publish their work, and to treat the VAMP Storytelling Showcase as a powerful growth experience, but not the end of the line for the stories they workshop with us. Authors retain the rights to their work.
Upcoming performances and submission opportunities
Long Story Short
Long Story Short offers a populist platform for anyone, and we mean anyone, to join us and tell a true story, without notes, for five minutes or less on a different theme every month. No RSVP necessary, just check the schedule for the next event and show up ready to share! This is an excellent opportunity to get your storytelling feet wet in a fun environment. It’s a great place to meet people, with an extraordinarily welcoming environment and supportive people genuinely curious to hear true stories from strangers in their community — whether funny, painful, practiced, or off the cuff. Sign up when you arrive. Or halfway through the show. Or just come to listen! Long Story Short is held the first Thursday evening of every month, at 7pm PST.
Education Partnerships
Since 2011, So Say We All has been proud to work in community college, high, and middle school classrooms to develop storytelling programs with students. We work alongside instructors developing syllabi and course curricula, after-class programs, special sessions, and critiques groups, all in the efforts of having final performance showcases which feature student storytellers performing their own true stories (involving their selected media) in front of the public — oftentimes in large-capacity buildings such as theaters and public auditoriums, housing audiences of 200 or more.
Check out some videos from a prior educational partnership here.
If you would like to partner with us to bring storytelling to your class, contact us at info@sosayweallonline.com.
Veteran Writers Division
So Say We All’s Veteran Writers Division provides free non-fiction creative writing courses to veterans, active duty military, and military family members. Participants create and workshop original stories as a team, learning the fundamentals of craft while supporting each other through feedback. 1-1 literary and performance coaching further hone the cohort’s stories, culminating in a public storytelling performance (participation optional.) The Veteran Writers Division accepts participants outside the San Diego area through digital attendance.
The Whole Alphabet
The Whole Alphabet is a series of free creative writing workshops for LGBTQ+ writers, wherein they follow a process much like our VAMP bootcamp. Together with editors and performance coaches, over a series of sessions and through individual work, writers take their true story from first draft to stage- and publication- ready material. TWA provides a fun, caring, and supportive environment where participants can learn, express themselves, and take pride in their work.
So Say We All TV
SSWA TV is a collection of original programming, created by individual artists and beloved partner organizations, in the purpose of creating a newly re-imagined public access network where the people’s art can be witnessed.
SSWA YouTube Channel
Every video of every show produced by So Say We All is available on our Youtube channel. Looking for a particular show or performer? Click here to view our video catalogue. - COMING SOON!
San Diego Film Consortium Collaboration
San Diego Film Consortium Collaboration The San Diego Film Consortium’s student filmmakers adapt selected stories created by So Say We All’s writers into short films, screened in theaters, and broadcast on local PBS Television in partnership with KPBS. Click here to learn more.
The VAMP Storytelling Podcast brings So Say We All’s flagship monthly stage show out of San Diego and into your favorite podcatcher, wherever you are. Featuring stories from across the archives of The VAMP Storytelling Showcase spanning back to 2009, whether you’re new to So Say We All or an old friend, we guarantee there’s a world of true stories here you’ll be amazed to discover for the first time.
Subscribe wherever you catch your pods and leave us a review, it really does help:
Twisted up in paranoia, magical realism, ghosts, monsters, sibling rivalry, and even earth death, Listen With The Lights Off takes listeners to wholly unexpected worlds – sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing, but always memorable, and eerily plausible. These fictional short plays, adapted from So Say We All’s literary horror anthologies are brought to audio reality to make sure Halloween thrives, all year round..
Originally a commission for La Jolla Playhouse’s 2020 Digital Without Walls Series and a
dapted from So Say We All’s literary horror anthologies, Listen With The Lights Off is available wherever fine podcasts are found, including, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher.
Intelligent, original, and unsettling, this new take on the radio drama features stories from diverse artists who will have listeners on the edge of their seats.
Be sure to listen with your lights off…
Incoming provides a platform for the true stories of America’s veterans and service members, told in their own words, straight from their own mouths..
Originally created in the form of a print anthology and storytelling showcase series by So Say We All, Incoming provided creative writing workshops to veterans throughout Southern California at no cost, and solicited veteran writers across the nation to submit their works on the subject.
Incoming has been able to present those stories on-air and online since 2014. The project is intended to serve as an oral history of post-9/11 veterans’ experiences–with both being deployed and returning from war–and veteran culture as a whole..
We hope this show serves as a catalyst for conversations we’re all better off for having, and helps to educate civilians about their militar
y
.
You can listen, download, and subscribe to Incoming through a number of handy services. Whatever your preference, subscribe and get some:
Publishing
SSWA Press publishes new and established voices side-by-side through anthologies on a variety of subjects, special projects, and more. Submission calls for future publication can be found on our Submittable Account.
The Whole Alphabet
In this intensely compelling nonfiction anthology, The Whole Alphabet: The Light And The Dark, a collection of brave and creative authors from across America delve into their most personal experiences to deliver unexpected and original shots to the heart. These boldly-rendered stories and poems are reflections of the authors’ true, lived experiences and are told from the perspectives of teens to octogenarians. Their creations pop from the pages, chronicling the range of their realities, from the raw in the muck to the sparkle in the parades.
Discover your queer neighbors, friends, coworkers, and community — however they identify through the alphabet and acronyms — in this compilation of riveting works, with a refreshing honesty usually reserved for the closest of confidants. No matter what labels we apply to ourselves, or what labels get applied to us, we all grow, we all learn, we all love (and if all goes well, we learn to love ourselves). So dive into this book, explore and enjoy authentic, well crafted pieces, and love.
So Say We All Press is the publishing branch of So Say We All, a 501(c)(3) literary and performing arts nonprofit based in San Diego, CA. So Say We All’s mission is to create opportunities for individuals to tell their stories, and tell them better, through three core priorities: publishing, performance, and education.
Incoming
Incoming is a series of publications (and live storytelling performances, and radio / podcast programming) that provides a forum for veterans, veteran families, and foreign nationals who’ve worked with the US military to tell their own stories in their own words. We solicit non-fiction and poetry nationally, while drawing heavily upon work from our own Veteran Writers Division. Every book you buy helps So Say We All provide veteran writer workshops, masterclasses, additional episodes of the Incoming public radio program, and more books. Thank you for helping us serve those who’ve served!
Incoming: Sex, Drugs, and Copenhagen
2019
The second volume in the Incoming series, “Sex, Drugs, and Copenhagen,” features the true stories of veterans and military family members told in their own words, straight from their own mouths, about what comes from the boredom, loneliness, and need for escapism that pervades military life. Uniquely hilarious, poignant, and bizarre, this collection opens a window into the unexplored side of military culture when things start getting weird.
Incoming: Veteran Writers on Returning Home
2016
As the inspiration behind the radio series of the same name, this beautiful paperback anthology contains true stories from veteran and active duty writers across the US and its bases abroad, told in their own words, straight from their own mouths, on the topic of returning from deployment and transitioning back into civilian life. At times poignant and darkly humorous, the wit and insights of these voices are an important and well-wrought addition to a conversation we all need to be having. Your purchase of the book not only helps So Say We All continue to produce the radio program, it helps the contributing writers spread their work, and if you gift it for a veteran or a family member of a veteran you know, we hope it will speak to them as well.
Black Candies: The Journal of Literary Horror
Black Candies is SSWA’s journal of literary horror with a commitment to diverse voices. Black Candies is a place where “genre” is not a dirty word. It’s a place where respectable and serious writers can indulge their darkest and weirdest tendencies. It’s a platform for authors to create intelligent terror. Black Candies: A Journal of Literary Horror wants to unsettle you. We have several anthologies available:
Black Candies: See Through
2013
For this issue, 17 writers offer their own disturbing interpretations of the theme “See Through.” With more than half of the stories written by women, Black Candies aims to correct the trajectory of the male-dominated literary journals, as well as provide a home for notoriously underrepresented women horror writers.
Black Candies: Surveillance
2016
We’re never alone. Paranoia has replaced privacy. Secrets are the new currency. The strangers who watched from the street now watch from within. For our third issue of Black Candies, we found 11 smart, terrifying stories that explore the theme of “Surveillance” in explicit, implicit and abstract ways. These stories not only touch on the contradiction of the securities of our modern era, but unearth the deeper terror, paranoia, and anxiety that results.
Black Candies: Gross and Unlikeable
2017
Here at Black Candies, we’re always striving to create a better platform for women writers, who are often underrepresented in horror, genre, and speculative outlets. For this special issue of Black Candies, guest-edited by Natanya Ann Pulley, we exclusively feature work from those who identify as women.
Black Candies: The Eighties
2018
We’re living in a loop. Things keep repeating. The eighties almost killed us, and now they’re back to finish the job. Black Candies: The Eighties features 23 stories of analog horror that slice through the late-night whir of VHS, the big hair, and neon parties to prove that nostalgia is the real murderer behind the mask.
The Radvocate
What started in 2011 as a poorly-xeroxed cry for artistic solidarity in the form of a zine, morphed into an open-sourced platform of expression. A like-minded community of artists was formed: poets, authors, artists, photographers, columnists, videographers, journalists, and many more joined together from all over the country to make the eclectic issues a reality. In those flimsy paper copies, the soul of The Radvocate was forged, an irreverent but proud spirit which carries on to this day. The Radvocate is a new kind of literary arts journal from the San Diego-based literary arts non-profit So Say We All. Get Rad.
The Far East Project
The Far East Project is an ongoing attempt to create a people’s history of San Diego’s East County through the prism of its residents’ perspectives, curated through solicited stories, poems, photography, journalism and more. In addition to this online archive, The Far East publishes print and digital books featuring exclusive content, periodically produces showcases throughout the Southern California region, and leads initiatives to strengthen the community and its economy through art.
Its first collection of stories by and about East County, “Everything Just As It Is,” was published in 2012 as a people’s history of the region told through non-fiction and poetry. A paperback version was released for San Diego City College in its literature and creative writing classes, where participants in the Project are invited to speak and read each semester. — Currently sold out.
Last Night on Earth
We asked 22 authors to write from the perspective of their lives – as they lived them at the moment in reality – if they had woken up one morning to learn the world would end in 24 hours, answering the implicit question, “what would you do?”
Strip away the illusion of having a future and inject an overwhelming need to act, and what you get is “Last Night On Earth,” a single novel written by different authors from all over the world, chronicling the final day of their lives in the face of a coming apocalypse. Evocative of “War of the Worlds” (without the aliens) meets “Our Town” if it were all produced by Ira Glass, “Last Night On Earth” is a lyrical experiment at discovering meaning in mortality. — Currently sold out.
A collection of true stories from writers and interviewees from our podcast None of the Above, plus many more writers. This book features amazing true stories from people who had to overcome difficulties many of us couldn’t even imagine. Get inspired, laugh, and cry as you read and accompany these authors on their journeys. —.
FORTHCOMING.