COURTNEY SEXTON & RACHEL COONCE (THE INNER LOOP)

Courtney Sexton is a New Jersey native who calls DC home. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, has been awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, was a 2015 Our City Festival curator and is the co-founder of Washington, DC’s The Inner Loop, a literary reading series. She is also the recipient of a DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship. Her Inner Loop co-founder, Rachel Coonce, is a graduate of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College whose nonfiction has appeared in The Missouri Review and The Avenue. Rachel is currently working on her first book, Bounce, a collection of memoir short stories.

The Inner Loop is a literary reading series and network for creative writers in the Washington, DC metro area. We aim to create a space for both emerging and established writers to connect with their community, and to transform the written word into a shared experience through the act of reading aloud. Founded in 2014, our organization is driven by a love of writing, by the joy of hearing people read their work, and by a desire to make the work of local writers more accessible to their community. We strive to create a space where people gather to experience the short stories, the memoirs, the poems, the essays, and most especially, the writers themselves. We feel that the act of reading aloud transforms the written word into a communal event, bringing the writer and the audience together in a way that is entirely different from reading on the page.

Connect with the Inner Loop! Email: theinnerlooplit@gmail.com | Facebook: facebook.com/theinnerloopdc | Instagram: @theinnerlooplit | Twitter: @theinnerlooplit