What stories do we have a right to tell? Why does it matter whose stories get told or how different communities are represented in literature? How can you debias your own writing and use your unique viewpoint to challenge systemic perceptions?
Join Kaia Allen-Bevan for a thought-provoking journey into how bias pervades the stories we read and write, and how that shapes our public consciousness, as well as what we can do about it. Kaia will encourage you to challenge yourself to examine your own work and commit to a process of ongoing learning and growth as a writer and a human so that you can more effectively use your art for resistance. After all, anti-racism is a commitment and on-going, learning journey!
About the Writers’ HQ Writing as Resistance Festival
Supported by Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Strathclyde
“A word after a word after a word is power” Margaret Atwood
Join Team WHQ, Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), and a carefully curated team of incredible authors for a month of panels, workshops, write-alongs and events exploring stories, writing and creativity as radical, political and powerful.
During September, we’re taking a deep dive into the rebellious, subversive nature of creativity and what that means for you, an individual writer sitting in front of a laptop wishing things were better, and for all of us, a community of humans existing together in a world where change often feels impossible.
We’re going to wade deep into the transformative possibilities of fiction and how stories can open portals, sow seeds of change, or lob a well-timed literary Molotov in the jaws of the machine. Fuck yeah!
But! The WHQ Writing as Resistance Festival isn’t just about talking, we’re also doing. With a series of free guided workshops, we are challenging all of you to write a brand new story, but one that’s unlike anything you’ve written before. And then we’ll end he month with a mass celebration during which we’ll send all our stories into the world at once.
The Mass Submission Project
Can stories change the world? Absolutely yes. Throughout the month, via a series of free workshops, we’re challenging you to write a story about climate justice that’s unlike anything you’ve written before. And at the end, we’re all going to submit those stories to the same five mainstream publications. Why are we doing this? Part protest, part art, part ritual outsporing of our collective desires and a demand to be heard. We don’t necessarily expect anything to be published (yet! Cooeee future anthology maybe?!), but we are out to make a noise. There is so much more that stories can do. So we’re going to do it.
Full details of the Writing As Resistance Festival can be found here >>
