New Free Workshop: Career Out of Joy–Marginalised Voices Writing About Pleasure

Date: Saturday 24th July, 1pm to 3pm BST.

We are seeing an increasing awareness of the need to centre of voices of people of colour, disabled, LGBTIAQ+ and many others who have been excluded.

However, trauma survivors and marginalised folx are always (often only) asked to write about our suffering. Many of us are still welcomed for our shock value, but it’s disguised as “listening to lived experience”.

(The giveaway is that there’s only certain experiences they want to listen to; it’s an updated freak show. Tell us of your terrible experiences so we can nod and gasp, while disavowing how we are contributing to othering in this very room.)

When you are only asked to speak on what you’ve suffered, not your expertise, craft, art, possibility, that has an impact on how you experience yourself and the direction of your work in our world. We redress that here exploring the challenges of writing pleasure and possibility after trauma. 

While the structures of our media and industry as artists and writers are inequitable, unfit and unsafe, we still want to speak and occupy space. In this workshop we explore how to do that in a way that’s effective and safe for each of us.

We’ll reflect on and process the ways in which we can explore pleasure and possibility when we struggle to find spaces of safety and how to centre our own pleasure, fighting a temptation to make a career of pain.*

*Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language, 21 Love Poems, VIII

This FREE workshop is made possible by a Literature Wales and The Royal College of Psychiatrists Wales commission.

We’ll explore questions including: 

– Where is the appetite for our stories? How do we discern what’s ours to share and ours to protect?

– What can we draw on to begin writing about joy in a world that dismisses our pleasure?

– How can we centre our joy when we’re only asked about our pain?

– How can we write both pain and joy in a trauma-informed way?

This class is in British Summer Time zone, via Zoom. Saturday 24th July, 1pm to 3pm BST via Zoom.

This workshop is a follow up to my 2020 workshop There is a Charge For The Eyeing Of My Scars: Marginalised Voices Writing About Pain.

N.B: There will be a recording provided after the workshop, and a transcript. Just sign up to get the recording.

If you have questions but can’t attend or want to share them in advance, you can submit them via a comment below this post and I will try to answer them in the Q and A.

This workshop is exclusively for marginalised writers. 

Want to join us? Add your email below and I’ll send you details of the workshop and the joining link. (You’ll also get my monthly e-letters on creativity and living well in tough times).

Join the workshop

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About your teacher

Grace sitting in her wheelchair wearing a teal dress and a pink jumper, roses are growing in the ground behind her.

I’m a writer and psychotherapeutic counsellor. I write creative non-fiction, focussing on the experiences of connecting with self and others when living with life challenges. 

My writing is found at the intersection between systemic dynamics in relationship, social justice, marginalised identities and the creative arts. 

I have explored and developed my work with the thousands of disabled and marginalised peoples I have been privileged to learn, teach, coach and work with.

My work has been featured in The Guardian, The Metro, The Institute of Welsh Affairs, Literature Wales and The Unexpected Shape.