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    • Hello, it's me. I know the name below looks complicated. I would like to help you with that: BLAISE is pronounced BLAZE. My middle name, ALLYSEN, is ALISON, but with some different letters, and KEARSLEY basically sounds like KEY-ER-SLEE.

      That's it for this first section of my website. It's gotten pretty demanding already.

      BLAISE ALLYSEN KEARSLEY

    • bio

      I'm a writer, teacher, occasional artist, and sometime performer. I identify as Black, biracial, or person of color–and she/her. My writing has appeared in Longreads, VICE, Midnight Breakfast, Electric Literature's The Nervous Breakdown, Cringe: Teenage Diaries, Journals, Poems, and Abandoned Rock Operas, Mortified: Real Words. Real People. Real Pathetic., and in several other magazines and online outlets a long time ago that are perhaps not worth mentioning by name and probably don't even exist anymore.

       

      I'm the creator, producer, and host of How I Learned—a long-running, live storytelling / comedy / reading series. I've appeared on The Moth, Risk, Mortified, The Liar Show, Literary Death Match, and at The Gotham Storytelling Festival, and various New York venues that have booze and sometimes snacks.

       

      Also, I used to take a lot of photographs. My photos have appeared in JPG, An-Mag, New York Magazine, Gothamist, Playbill, Gawker, Nerve,​ The Morning News, and on the album cover for "Out Of Love" by The Waylons.

       

      I teach mostly creative nonfiction, and I'm currently a contributing editor at Vestal Review. I live in Brooklyn, but if you need me for something somewhere else, maybe I'll go there.

    • teaching

      I teach public and private writing workshops on memoir, personal essay, and autobiographical fiction. I mentor emerging writers, and teach a creative writing 101 class for teens.

      "I've taken writing classes off and on for the last 20 years all over the US, and this was the most effective by far. Blaise is a treasure." —TW

       

      "Blaise offers a safe space for non-binary, queer, and POC to explore and enhance their writing with sensitive, constructive suggestions." —SO

       

      "I was held accountable and had to show up for myself and others who counted on me, even when I felt like all I wanted to do was hide under my couch. Being part of this creative group of writers saved me." —AG

       

      "Blaise always says what she means. Always interesting ideas, thoughtful in her suggestions—and always so perceptive." —DH

       

      I feel an increased level of confidence. I'm not sure where my writing journey will take me, but I feel encouraged. —AA

       

      "The private workshop made me a stronger writer and I felt more challenged than I did in other workshops. " —SS

       

      "It was the hardest workshop I've done, but also one of the most important." —JE

    • the how i learned series

      How I Learned was born on the Lower East Side in 2009. The series has featured Aparna Nancherla, Janelle James, Nick Flynn, Alexander Chee, Amanda Duarte, David Carr, Anna Sale, Ophira Eisenberg, Sasheer Zamata, Isaac Oliver, Eugene Mirman, Dan Kennedy, Phoebe Robinson, Choire Sicha, Rob Sheffield, Isaac Fitzgerald, and many, many, many, many others.

       

       

      "One of five best comedy shows hosted by women. Hostess Blaise Allysen Kearsley makes sure to keep it awkwardly funny."

      —CBS New York

       

      "...Always hilarious, sometimes touching, and without fail entertaining."

      —Brooklyn Magazine

       

      "Each show is a packed, standing room only, crowd lit on fire as the show progresses."

      —Ophira Eisenberg, NPR's Ask Me Another

       

      "This show has renewed my faith in this whole storytelling endeavor and what it means in the world." —David Crabb, Bad Kid

       

      "Blaise Allysen Kearsley is a charming host with an irrepressible, humming little laugh that seems to be a compromise she’s made with some wicked guffaw within." —LitWrap

       

      "One of the best reading series the Big Apple, and possibly the world, has ever known." 

      —Greg Olear, Fathermucker

       

      Photos: Jon Boulier

    • contact: thisisblaise@gmail.com

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