September 19, 8-10pm EST / September 20, 8-10am HKT

I have come to believe something: that life is preparation for the possibility of becoming an ancestor.—Brandon Shimoda, “The Descendant”

Join Q.M. Zhang for this annual gathering in observance of the Qing Ming Festival, 清明節. Traditionally a spring ritual of visiting and sweeping the graves of our ancestors, Qing Ming can happen any time, any place we gather to create our own rituals and practices as descendants, memory workers, and next gen writers and artists.

This year, we will gather to do Qing Ming on the Autumn Equinox, a time when Northern and Southern hemispheres share equal amounts of light and darkness. We’ll go to the imagined grave sites of our ancestors—human and non-human, known and unknown—and listen for the voices and silences we find there. We’ll experiment with tools and forms of memory work for summoning our ancestors and writing through time. We’ll practice descendance as a relationship with our ancestors that flows in many directions at once, asking not only what have we inherited, but what must we reclaim and what will we pass on.

This remote workshop is being offered at a time that makes possible the participation of writers and artists in both Asia and North America. Creatives in all parts of the world are welcome to join. Workshop readings and writing prompts will be offered in English. Participants are invited to write in any language that feels necessary and urgent for them.

Registration closes on September 17. All registered participants will receive a Zoom link in advance of the workshop.