Who We Are
Unfold Writing Community is made up of poets just like you. With members all over the world, we care about showing up and trying—and making writing fun along the way.
Originally limited to a 30-day workshop in April, Unfold has grown to become its own ecosystem of workshops and community, all year round. Join us to write in community, play with new ideas, and fight your inner perfectionist. Writing doesn’t have to be hard. Let’s bring the fun back into it.
Our philosophy:
Every attempt is a poem.
In Unfold, every attempt is a poem. Beginning is what we’re after, not complete drafts. A scribbled idea counts. A journal entry counts. An outline counts. Writing your 73rd attempt at the same poem counts. Playing with a new form counts. An unformatted paragraph counts. A haiku counts. A found poem counts. A poem without an ending counts. Something that doesn’t contribute to a broader project counts. Writing that you never show to another person or look at again counts. It’s in writing those pieces that don’t feel like they “count” that we find the real poem, the one that makes us feel like we’re getting somewhere. We have to clear out the rest first.
Our Team
Tristan Richards
Founder & Lead Facilitator
Danielle Estelle Ramsay
Camp Unfold Logistics Coordinator
To Be Announced
Teaching Assistant
To Be Announced
Teaching Assistant
To Be Announced
Teaching Assistant
Maybe you?!
Street Team Member
Apply here by XX/XX
How We Got Here
At the end of March 2022, Tristan posted an Instagram story asking if anyone wanted to be #NaPoWriMo accountabilibuddies. At first, she was just looking for someone to text drafts back and forth with. Previously, she had failed to write 30 poems in 30 days almost as many times as she had tried. She always hit a wall 5-10 days in and got so behind that she gave up.
A ton of people responded to her story and she started thinking, “What if…?” On a whim, she decided to post a Zoom link every day in April.
The first day, 4 of her friends showed up. She was wildly nervous and thought, “Well that was cool, maybe this’ll last a few days before it fizzles out.” Then people kept showing up. Then 6 people offered to co-host a workshop. Then more people found us. Then she planned a workshop every single day for 30 days straight. Then we did a reading! There was never a day that no one showed up.
In April, Tristan spent all of her free time reading poetry, looking for poems that spoke to each other, and thinking about questions she could ask that would pull poems out of the 26 people who showed up. She got better at facilitating, leading discussion, creating prompts, and showing up to writing every day and exercising the muscle. She wrote 38 poems, and our group collectively wrote about 200 poems! This community held each other with such care. It really felt like we did something. She immediately started planning for the next year, and here we are!
Since our humble beginnings, Tristan has created 13 writing and creativity workshops, many of which take place each year. In 2023, we added in Refold, our editing workshop, and playBC, Unfold’s unhinged sibling workshop. In 2024, we hosted our first Camp Unfold in Pullman, WA. In 2025, Poetry Sangha became a regular part of our weekly programming. In 2026, we became Unfold Writing Community.
Curious how many poems we’ve written each April?
2022: 200+
2023: 1,504
2024: 2,021
2025: 1,805
2026: TBD