Terms of service.

The free practice & the Circle

there are two ways to be here.

the writing practice is free and open to anyone. you can write, keep a Vellum of what you've made, and read the letters nina shares — no payment, no obligation.

The Circle is a paid membership. it opens the weekly live gathering, the reading room where members witness each other's work, and the fuller archive. everything below about billing applies only to the Circle.

Your writing stays yours

anything you write here belongs to you. always. we don't claim it, sell it, train anything on it, or read it for our own use.

your writing is private by default. it lives in your Vellum, visible only to you, until you deliberately choose to share a piece — into the reading room, or with nina. nothing you write becomes visible to anyone else unless you make it so.

to run the app we need one narrow, practical permission: to store your words, back them up, and show them back to you (and, if you share a piece, to the people you shared it with). that is the whole of it. you can export or delete your writing whenever you like.

Joining the Circle

the Circle is $47 / month or $470 / year, charged through Stripe, our payment processor. Stripe handles your card securely — we never see or store your card number.

every new membership begins with a 14-day trial. you won't be charged until it ends. cancel before the trial is over and you pay nothing.

after the trial, membership renews automatically — monthly or yearly, whichever you chose — at the price shown when you joined. we'll always tell you before a price ever changes, and any change would touch only renewals ahead, never a period you've already paid for.

Cancelling, kindly

you can cancel anytime from your account page. it takes a moment and asks nothing of you.

when you cancel, your membership stays open until the end of the period you've already paid for — you keep every gathering and every part of the Circle until then. after that it simply lapses back to the free practice, and your writing stays exactly where it is.

we don't pro-rate or refund partial periods. but if money is the reason you're leaving — or the reason you can't join — please write to us first. there are quiet scholarship places, and we'd rather keep you in the room than lose you over $47. we mean that.

The live circle

the Circle meets live each week over Zoom. you'll find the time and the link inside the app.

it's a living human gathering, so it moves the way living things do — now and then a session shifts an hour, or nina has to reschedule for a week. we'll give you as much notice as we can when that happens. we can't promise any single date will always hold, only that the Circle keeps gathering.

if a session is ever recorded, the recording is shared only inside the Circle, and only the reading — never anyone's private writing.

How we hold the room

the reading room is a witnessing space, not a critique arena. members share writing there to be received, not corrected.

be kind. read others' work with care. what's shared in the room stays in the room — don't copy, repost, screenshot, or otherwise harvest another member's writing, and don't pass anyone's words off as your own or feed them to a machine.

harassment, cruelty, and unwanted attention have no place here. nina may remove anyone who breaks this trust, to protect everyone else's.

Fair use

• one account per person. don’t share your login, resell access, or automate your way around the app.
• don’t upload anything unlawful, or anything that infringes someone else’s rights.
• don’t try to break, overload, or reverse-engineer the service. if you find a hole, tell us instead of walking through it.
• you must be old enough to be here — see the privacy policy for the ages.

breaking these asks can end your access.

What we can & can't promise

we build portal poem with care, but we offer it as it is. we can't promise it will always be available, unbroken, or free of error, and to the extent the law allows we're not liable for loss that follows from using it.

portal poem is a writing practice and a community. it isn't therapy, medical, or crisis care. if you're in danger or in a mental-health crisis, please reach for a professional or a crisis line — we can't be that, and we won't pretend to be.

If these terms change

we may update these terms as portal poem grows. when we do, we'll change the date at the top, and for anything meaningful we'll tell members directly. continuing to use the app after a change means you accept the new version. if you don't, you're free to leave — see “leaving.”

Say hello

a real person reads this address. questions, scholarship, anything at all — hello@portalpoem.com.