FALL WORKSHOP—Writing into Silence: A MemoryWorks Workshop for Asian Pacific Diasporic Writers
FALL WORKSHOP—Writing into Silence: A MemoryWorks Workshop for Asian Pacific Diasporic Writers
(Photo by Chris Gaul)
This month-long remote workshop is for writers, story-tellers, and truth-tellers who are trying to trace elusive family histories across the Pacific and beyond. During our time together, we will experiment with creative tools and practices for re-searching and writing into intergenerational silences and historical erasures that are all too familiar within Asian Pacific diasporic families and communities. We will explore the shapes and forms that these silences often take—in the family, on the body, between nations—and how to re-fashion and re-claim them as next gen writers.
Each week, I will share with you some of the memory work practices that emerged in the making of my book, Accomplice to Memory, and we will draw inspiration and example from other Kaya Press authors and API diasporic writers of how to write into the silences of the past, the disappearances of the present, and the imagined possibilities of the future. I will offer creative research exercises and guided writing provocations, and provide a safe and supportive virtual space to write together and workshop your writing with others. Whether you are just beginning to ask questions of your past, or you already have a project underway, you will leave this workshop with new tools and writing on the page.
Registration Options (choose one from the drop-down menu below):
WORKSHOP ONLY: This month-long workshop includes weekly readings and examples of memory work, in-class guided writing and take-home writing provocations, and a structured and supportive small group environment for experimentation and feedback on new writing.
WORKSHOP + 1-ON-1 CONSULT WITH KIM: At the end of the workshop, you may submit up to five pages of writing to Kim and schedule a 30-minute, one-on-one meeting to discuss your writing in the context of your larger memory work project.
Registered participants will receive a Zoom link one week in advance of the first session.
Workshop Schedule
Week 1: The Shapes of Silence
What is the shape of silence? What tangible forms does silence take or leave behind—in a conversation, a photograph, the land, a body? How is it even possible to see the contours of something that was never there? In this first session, we will draw from next gen writers Victoria Chang, Dao Strom, and Q.M. Zhang for examples of how to use the shapes and forms of silence in our work of re-membering.
Week 2: What the Body Re-members
How does silence reside in the immigrant body? How does it coexist with “what the nerves and skin remember”? Where does this embodied knowledge live in the next generation (e.g. in memories of experiences you never had)? In this second session, we will draw from Kaya author Jenny Liou’s book, Muscle Memory, to explore what the body re-members of things past—"which is not necessarily remembrance of things as they were”—and find the forms we need to make something new out of what we inherit.
Week 3: Between the Hither and the Farther Shore
How does silence travel? What happens to silence borne out of one land when it is transplanted into another—in what shapes and forms does it hide? How do we as next gen writers move in between this shore and that one without getting lost or losing ourselves? In this third session, we will draw from the writings of Sangamithra Iyer and Brandon Shimoda as they journey to sites where loss can be visited, ghosts can become collaborators, and divination can become a tool for time travel.
Week 4: Writing Co-temporaneously (a.k.a. Everything Everywhere All at Once)
How do we do the work of re-membering in a time of disappearance? What shapes and forms do we need as next gen writers to hold the silences of the past, refuse the obliterations of the present, and imagine the infinite possibilities of the future? In this final session, we will draw from Kaya author Sesshu Foster’s book City of the Future for inspiration and tools for writing everything, everywhere, all at once.