UPCOMING WORKSHOPS
A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF OKINAWA
Wendy Matsumura
August 10, 2024 (Saturday)
12-2pm PST
“A People’s History of Okinawa” will cover the history of Okinawa from the time of Japan's annexation of the Ryukyu kingdom to the present. It will focus on the way that ordinary people, in particular, women, refused colonial, capitalist violence through forms that largely go unacknowledged in histories of organized labor.
Wendy Matsumura is the author of The Limits of Okinawa: Japanese Capitalism, Living Labor, and Theorizations of Community (Duke University Press, 2015) and Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan's Empire (Duke University Press, 2024). She teaches Okinawan and Japanese history at UCSD.
To register for “A People’s History of Okinawa,” donate to Hamza (suggested donation $60 USD / 56 EUR, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
POETRY IN WORK
Monica Teresa Ortiz
August 11, 2024
3-5pm CST
In “Poetry in Work,” participants will focus on the role of poetry in worker movements, thinking together about the connections between labor and language, as well as how poetry can refuse the apolitical in the expression of ideas. They will discuss poems by Zaina Alsous. Otto Rene Castillo, and Nanni Balestrini, then write a few poems of their own.
Monica Teresa Ortiz is a poet, critic, and memory worker born, raised, and based in Texas. Their work appears in Scalawag, Annulet, and Mizna, and they are the author of Book of Provocations (Host Publications, 2024).
To register for “Poetry in Work,” donate to Nevin’s family (suggested donation $60 USD / 83 CAD, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
MIYAZAKI MODE
Nina Li Coomes
August 13, 2024
7:30-9:30pm CST
“Miyazaki Mode” is a generative workshop that will use the work of Hayao Miyazaki as a jumping-off point for participants’ own creative practice. It is open to artists and writers of all experience levels but will specifically use writing-based exercises that draw on visual sequences and discussions of several Ghibli films. A familiarity with Miyazaki's work is welcome but not required!
Nina Li Coomes is a Japanese and American writer living in Chicago. Her work has won fellowships at Hedgebrook, Tin House, and Aspen Words. You can read it in the Chicago Reader, Eater, and the Believer, among other places.
To register for “Miyazaki Mode,” donate to Ahmed’s family (suggested donation $60 USD / 47 GBP, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
COLONIALISM AND THE HERITAGE OF GENOCIDE
Harry Harootunian
August 14
1-2:30pm EST
In “Colonialism and the Heritage of Genocide,” participants will think through the ongoing genocide in Palestine through the lens of the Armenian genocide (1915-16). Professor Harootunian will discuss the failures of postcolonial theory to account for the contemporary material impact of the violence colonialism imparts to colonized subjects in their everyday lives.
Harry Harootunian is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Chicago. He has written and edited over 15 volumes and numerous essays on Japan, East Asia, Marx and historical practice, including most recently, The Unspoken as Heritage: The Armenian Genocide and its Unaccounted Lives (Duke University Press, 2019).
To register for “Colonialism and the Heritage of Genocide,” donate to Mohammed’s family (suggested donation $60 USD / 56 EUR, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
ESPERANTO 101
Adam Kuplowsky
August 15
6-8pm EST
In “Esperanto 101,” translator Adam Kuplowsky will offer a brief history of the international auxiliary language known as Esperanto. Drawing on his deep knowledge of the language, Adam will discuss Esperanto's connections to anti-imperial, anti-fascist, and worker movements in the early 20th century. Following this, participants will explore the basics of its grammar, and will practice translating into and out of the language.
At a time when multiple imperial powers were competing for domination of the world's land and resources, Esperanto was created as an internationalist experiment: a language of solidarity that had no allegiance to any country or state. Come learn about this fascinating experiment and what models it might offer for the present.
Adam Kuplowsky is the translator of The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales (Columbia University Press, 2023), a collection of political fairy tales written by Vasily Eroshenko (1890-1952), a blind multilingual Esperantist and anarchist from Ukraine who joined left-wing circles in China and Japan in the early 20th century. He is also the translator of the forthcoming Whispers in a Storm (U of Hawaii Press, 2025), a collection of political writings by Hasegawa Teru (1912-1947), a Japanese Esperantist and anti-fascist who fled Japan in 1937 to join China's War of Resistance against the invading Japanese imperial army.
To register for “Esperanto 101,” donate to Mohammed’s family (suggested donation $60 USD / 56 EUR, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
REDEFINING WORDS
Fatimah Asghar
August 22, 2o24
6-8pm EST
In “Redefining Words: Through Poetry,” participants will examine commonly used words (particularly relational words like “wife,” “sister,” etc.) and break them down, interrogating where our ideas of them come from in order to redefine them for ourselves.
Fatimah Asghar is a poet, filmmaker, educator and performer as well as the author of If They Come For Us (OneWorld, 2023). They are the writer and co-creator of Brown Girls, an Emmy-nominated web series that highlights friendships between women of color.
Along with Safia Elhillo, they edited Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019), an anthology that celebrates Muslim writers who are also women, queer, gender-noncomforming, and/or trans. They are also a writer and co-producer on Ms. Marvel on Disney+ and wrote Episode 5, “Time and Again.”
To register for “Redefining Words,” donate to Mohammed’s family (suggested donation $60 USD / 56 EUR, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
SEEING THE STANZA: USING EKPHRASIS AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN POETRY AND VISUAL ART
Brittany Rogers
August 25 2024
1-3pm EST
In “Seeing the Stanza,” participants will learn how to write ekphrastic poems, a genre of poetry which uses vivid language to describe or respond to a visual form of art. Participants will explore ekphrastic works by poets such as Tiana Clark and M. Mick Powell, then generate their own ekphrastic poems in response to contemporary forms of visual art.
Brittany Rogers is a poet, educator and lifelong Detroiter. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Hopkins Review, The Poet Lore, Indiana Review, Four Way Review, Underbelly, Mississippi Review, Lambda Literary and Oprah Daily. Her debut collection of poetry, Good Dress, is forthcoming from Tin House Books in October 2024. She is Editor-in-Chief of Muzzle Magazine and co-host of VS Podcast.
To register for “Seeing the Stanza,” donate to Khalid’s family (suggested donation $60USD / 662NOK, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
CRIMINAL QUEERS
Eric Stanley and Chris Vargas
August 28, 2024
6-7:30pm PST
In this workshop, co-directors Eric Stanley and Chris Vargas will screen their film, Criminal Queers (2020) then engage in an audience discussion about the making of the film, as well as its lessons for our present moment. Criminal Queers is a DIY queer abolitionist comedy that visualizes a radical trans /queer struggle against the prison industrial complex, toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, it imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation. The film follows Yoshi, Joy, Susan and Lucy as they fiercely read everything from the Human Rights Campaign and hate crimes legislation to the non-profitization of social movements.
Eric A Stanley is the author of Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring
Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable (2021) and co-editor of Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility.
Chris Vargas is a video maker and artist from LA. With Greg Youmans, he made the web-based trans / cisgender sitcom "Falling In Love…..with Chris and Greg." He is Executive Director of MOTHA, the Museum of Transgender History & Art.
To register for “Criminal Queers,” donate to Khalid (suggested donation $60 USD / 662 NOK, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
LISTENING AGAINST GENOCIDE: REPARATIVE ORAL HISTORY
Crystal Mun-hye Baik
August 30, 2024
3-5pm PST
This workshop will approach the practice of oral history through a de-colonial, anti-capitalist, and reparative lens. Rather than treating oral history as a research method that produces intellectual property, we will ask: what might it mean to listen, sit with, and ethically steward memories in a time of ongoing war and genocide? What does it mean to share and hold stories and silences with care and intentionality, especially when memory workers in war zones—librarians, writers, artists, seed keepers, and other knowledge-bearers—are strategically murdered by the settler state? What does it look, sound, and feel like to enact “local” forms of oral history from where we are? Readings will include work by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Yusef Omowale, and Winona Wheeler, and participants will be encouraged to draw on technologies that are readily available and accessible to them.
Crystal Mun-hye Baik (she/her) is a guest living on unceded Tongva land (greater Los Angeles area). She is a feminist memory worker and Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at UC Riverside. Her publications include Reencounters: On the Korean War & Diasporic Memory Critique (Temple University Press, 2020). Beginning in Fall 2024, she will co-lead a UC-wide Multicampus Research Group that brings together faculty, librarians, seed keepers, artists, and others to uplift how memory keepers are ethically gathering and preserving their cultural histories during times of war, genocide, and catastrophic upheaval.
To register for “Listening Against Genocide,” donate to Dana (suggested donation $60 USD, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
WRITING TEOSINTES
Victor Cazares
September 4, 2024 - October 30, 2024 (Every Wednesday, 8 weeks)
5-7pm PST
In “Writing Teosintes,” participants will draw inspiration from teosinte, the wild ancestor of maize, as they collectively work on a script (theater / film / TV) that, in Cazares’s own words, “Meta would immediately flag, cancel, and ban.” The goal will be to create an alternate cultural canon uncensored by Zionism.
“Writing Teosintes” will be limited to twelve participants. Those interested should fill out the application form by August 25, and will be notified of results by August 30. If accepted, participants will be asked to pay the workshop fee (sliding scale $600-$1000), 100% of which will be donated to Khalid's family in Gaza.
Victor Cazares is American theater’s first living dead playwright. With the support of principled theater workers, teaching artists, Gen Z playwrights, as well as family and friends, Victor underwent a 5-month HIV med strike to force New York Theatre Workshop (their former artistic home) to call for a ceasefire and condemn the Israeli genocide of of Palestinians. The NYTW refused to take a stand against genocide and ultimately preferred the death of the only Indigenous playwright it has ever produced in its season. Victor grew up in the U.S.-Mexico border and now haunt New York from their garden in Portland. They are supposedly repped by an agent at CAA that earnestly shares Ritchie Torres’s zionuts posts and has not spoken to them since mid-October.
BEYOND THE BRAIDED ESSAY
Tajja Isen
September 8, 2024
4-6pm PST
In “Beyond the Braided Essay: Reworking our Sources in Creative Nonfiction” participants will learn different ways of incorporating external sources—research, cultural objects, reportage, literary texts—into personal nonfiction. The aim will be to think of more surprising and dynamic ways to build out the essay than the classic section break or braided structure. They will read short examples of writing that employs these techniques, and then try out some generative writing exercises.
Tajja Isen is the author of the essay collection SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS and the forthcoming memoir TOUGH LOVE. She is the former editor-in-chief of Catapult Magazine and is currently the interim editor-in-chief of Orion Magazine. She is also a contributing writer for The Walrus, where she writes a column on arts and culture.
To register for “Beyond the Braided Essay,” donate to Hamza (suggested donation $60 USD / 56 EUR, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
WHO’S THIS: WRITING THE PROFILE PIECE
E. Alex Jung
September 10, 2024
6-8pm EST
In “Who’s This: Writing the Profile Piece,” E. Alex Jung will walk participants through the process of writing two profile pieces -- one short, one long -- with an hour devoted to each. The first will focus on a sketch of the musician Mitski (what's called an "encounter" in magazine parlance) and the second will be a posthumous portrait of the fiction writer Anthony Veasna So. Participants will come away with a basic understanding of how to write a journalistic profile piece.
E. Alex Jung is a features writer at New York Magazine. He has also written for Dissent, the LA Review of Books, Buzzfeed, and other publications.
All proceeds from Alex's workshop will go to Khalid's family, who are urgently raising funds to evacuate from Gaza.
To register for “Who’s This,” donate to Khalid (suggested donation $60 USD / 658 NOK, please donate more if you can) then fill out the registration form.
NARRATIVE PODCAST SCRIPTING
Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong
September 13, 2024
5-7pm EST
In “Narrative Podcast Scripting,” participants will explore both workflow and narrative arc in podcast scripting. Using structure as a scaffolding tool, participants will learn to build layered, nuanced audio stories in their podcasts. While open to participants of all levels, this workshop will be most helpful to those with some audio experience.
Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong is a first generation Ghanaian-American audio producer, reporter, story editor. Her work has been featured in NPR, Novel, Audible, Wondery and Vox Creative among others.
To register for “Narrative Podcast Scripting,” donate to the Imad family (suggested donation $60 USD, please donate more if you can) then fill out the registration form.
INTRO TO TATREEZ
Tala Totah
September 15, 2024
12-2pm PST
“Intro to Tatreez” is an introductory workshop that will teach participants the ins and outs of Tatreez, a traditional form of Palestinian embroidery. Before the workshop, participants will be provided with a set of supplies to purchase, and during the workshop they will receive instruction on how to stitch a Tatreez motif. This workshop is meant for beginners – no stitching experience is needed.
Tala is a Palestinian American Tatreez artist. She began practicing Tatreez as a way to connect to her Palestinian roots. Through finishing Tatreez pieces begun by her maternal relatives in Palestine, Tala brings relics of displacement into the present. She co-organizes local Tatreez circles in her community and recently showcased her art at the Banat al Hara (women of the neighborhood) exhibit for Arab Women in the Arts.
To register for “Intro to Tatreez” donate to Jehan and her family (suggested donation $60 USD, please donate more if you can) then fill out the registration form.
LITERARY TRANSLATION MANUSCRIPT CONSULTATION
Deborah Smith
Rolling Admission
Are you an aspiring literary translator? Working on a project and want to get feedback from a professional? Submit up to ten pages of your work as a draft of a “pitch” to a publisher, and Deborah will give you detailed line editing on your ten-page sample, suggestions for improving the pitch, and advice on which publishers to pitch to.
Deborah Smith is a Korean to English literary translator who has translated over fifteen books from Korean, including the Booker Prize-winning The Vegetarian by Han Kang. She is the founder of Tilted Axis Press, an independent publisher of contemporary literature by the Global Majority, translated into or written in a variety of Englishes.
To register for “Literary Translation Manuscript Consultation,” donate to Khalid (suggested donation $60 USD / 658 NOK, please donate more if you can) then fill out the registration form. Once we receive your form, we will put you in touch with Deborah for your consultation.
PREVIOUS WORKSHOPS
BOOK REVIEWING 101
Summer Farah
July 7, 2024 (Sunday)
12pm-1:30pm PST
“Book Reviewing 101” is an introductory workshop that will teach you the ins and outs of pitching book reviews, requesting galleys, finding outlets, as well as how to situate your writing within the broader literary landscape.
Summer Farah is a Palestinian American writer from California. The author of the chapbook I Could Die Today and Live Again (Game Over Books, 2024), she organizes with the Radius of Arab American Writers and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. She is calling on you to recommit yourself to the liberation of the Palestinian people each day. Summer’s work can be found at https://summerfarah.com/
All proceeds from Book Reviewing 101 will be donated to Hamza Salha, a Palestinian writer and journalist in Gaza. Read Hamza’s writing here and here and here.
Sign up for Book Reviewing 101 here.
INSPIRATION AND DEPARTURE
Emily Jungmin Yoon
July 8, 2024 (Monday)
12pm-1:30pm PST
“Inspiration and Departure for Writing Love” is a poetry workshop where participants will read examples of poems that borrow from and acknowledge other poems. They will also engage in generative sessions to create their own poems on love, conceived broadly.
Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species (Ecco / HarperCollins, 2018), the forthcoming Find Me as the Creature I Am (Knopf, October 2024), and the translation chapbook anthology Against Healing: Nine Korean Poets (Tilted Axis, 2019). Her critical manuscript is titled Enclosed Reading: A Feminist Method for Korean and Korean American Women’s Poetry, 1987-2019. She is an Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and as the Poetry Editor for The Margins, the digital magazine of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
All proceeds from Emily’s workshop will be donated to Mohammed and his family of five.
Sign up for “Inspiration and Departure” here.
WRITING THE BODYMIND
Khairani Barokka
July 13, 2024 (Saturday)
10am-12am EST
“Writing the Bodymind” is a workshop for anyone who would like to practice and express attunement with their bodymind, as well as possibilities for resistance in their interiorities under colonial capitalism. Readings will include works by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, Himali Singh Soin, Natalie Harkin, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Participants of any level of experience and genre are welcome.
Khairani Barokka is a writer, translator, and artist from Jakarta, Indonesia. Okka’s work centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis, and access as translation. Her latest books are Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches Press), shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize, and amuk (Nine Arches Press).
Okka has been recognized as a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, a Delfina Foundation Associate Artist, and Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing. In 2023, she was shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards. Khairani’s work can be found at http://www.khairanibarokka.com/
All proceeds from Writing the Bodymind will be donated to Mohammed and his family of five.
Sign up for Writing the Bodymind here.
PERSEPHONE
Saint
July 16, 7-9pm CST
In this workshop, Saint, a filmmaker, will screen their short indie film “Persephone,” about a girl trying to outrun her demons. They will discuss their process of writing and shooting the film, as well as their interest in themes of cosmic horror, anti-Blackness, and the apocalypse. The workshop will conclude with a participant Q and A session.
All funds from Saint's workshop will go to Khalid’s family in Gaza.
Sign up for Persephone here.
ORAL HISTORY: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
Eraldo Souza dos Santos
July 19, 2024 (Friday)
6-8pm EST
In Oral History: A Brief Introduction, participants will explore the practice of oral history with a focus on the history of social movements, reading and discussing the ACT UP oral history archive. Special attention will be given to different oral history methods as well as the ethical issues that oral historians typically encounter. Participants will come away knowing the basics of how to conduct oral history research for a future project.
Eraldo Souza dos Santos is a historian of political thought who is interested in the politics of social movements. They are currently writing a book about the global history of civil disobedience as well as a family memoir that probes the question of modern enslavement in Brazil. Their writing has appeared in Jacobin Brasil, Al Jazeera, and the Washington Post. In 2025, they will join UC Irvine as an Assistant Professor.
All proceeds from Eraldo's workshop will be donated to Mohammed and his family of five.
Sign up for Oral History: A Brief Introduction here.
PIPELINE COLONIALISM
Joshua Clover
July 20-21, 2024 (Saturday-Sunday)
12-2pm PST
“Pipeline Colonialism” is a workshop that explores the relationship among oil pipelines, colonial projects, and anticolonial struggles, with particular attention to the history of Palestine. Readings will include passages from Ghassan Kanafani, The Revolution of 1936-39 in Palestine; the Declaration and Manifesto of the Dene Nation; and a few short readings on infrastructure.
Joshua Clover is the author of seven books, including Roadrunner (Duke University Press, 2021) as well as Riot.Strike.Riot: the New Era of Uprisings (Verso, 2016). A former journalist with the Village Voice, The Nation, and others, he is currently a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UC Davis as well as Affiliated Professor of Literature and Modern Culture at University of Copenhagen.
All proceeds from Pipeline Colonialism will be donated to Mohammed and his family of five.
Sign up for Pipeline Colonialism here.
PERFORMANCE/TEXT
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi
July 30, 2024 (Tuesday)
5-8pm EST
“Performance/Text” will explore text as performance, performance as text, performing texts, reading performances, and more. Participants will look at performances that work with texts, discuss different elements of performance, and then experiment with application.
Participants should bring a text in progress that they are interested in exploring through performance. Workshop is capped at ten participants.
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a queer Palestinian-American performance artist and writer. His writing has appeared in Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Gulf Coast, Mizna, Strange Horizons, Protean, and elsewhere. His performance and exhibition work has been programmed at OUTsider Fest, Rhizome DC, VisArts Gallery, the Arab-American National Museum, and has been supported by the National Performance Network, the MAP fund, and the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
To register for “Performance/Text,” donate to Khalid’s family (suggested donation $60USD / 662NOK, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
WHAT IS CASTE?
Shaista Patel
August 3, 2024 (Saturday)
12-2pm EST
“What is Caste?” will introduce students to a system of violence called caste. Although caste is often portrayed as a phenomenon unique to South Asia, Dr. Patel will show how caste works in tandem with racism, white supremacy, multiple colonialisms (such as in the case of Palestine and Kashmir), and capitalism. In short, participants will learn how caste is a system of violence that is relevant to all of our lives, and a crucial analytic for understanding our modern world.
Shaista Patel is an Assistant Professor of Critical Muslim Studies at UCSD who specializes in Indigenous, Black, Dalit, anti-caste, Muslim, and transnational feminist studies. She is the co-founder of the UC collective for Caste Abolition.
To register for “What is Caste,” donate to Mohammed’s family (suggested donation $60 USD / 56 EUR, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.
UNDISCIPLINED: A TRANSPACIFIC HISTORY OF SOLDIER REBELLION
Simeon Man
August 4, 2024 (Sunday)
10-12am PST
"Undisciplined" will focus on the history of soldier rebellion in the context of U.S. imperialist wars since 1945. Participants will learn how drafted and enlisted people of the U.S. military and other U.S.-backed armed forces organized themselves and collectively refused participation in the U.S. war machine.
Simeon Man is the author of Soldiering Through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific (UC Press, 2018). He teaches U.S. and Asian American history at University of California, San Diego.
To register for “Undisciplined,” donate to Hamza (suggested donation $60 USD / 56 EUR, please donate more if you can!) then fill out the registration form.