Lives & Letters Mailing: June 2018
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to another Lives & Letters Mailing. This month’s mailing contains information about:
1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
2017 Google Analytics reports now online
From the blog: Mozart
From the blog: How big is a letter?
From the blog: Migration, transnationalism & Chang family letters
From the blog: Hear the trace! The Forbes Diary, 15 December 1915
2. Career Construction Theory and Life Writing – Special Edition of Life Writing
3. Call for Papers FQS Special Issue “Challenging Times—Qualitative Methods and Methodological Approaches to Research on Time”
4. Summer Lecture Series at The National Archives: Mapping movement: people, place and power
5. Edinburgh International Book Festival: In Light of What We Write
6. Newsletter Biography Institute 2018/2
7. ‘Africa Writes’ 2018, 29 June –1 July at the British Library
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1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
There are five new items of project news we would like to share:
2017 Google Analytics reports now online
Data of a non-intrusive kind is routinely collected about the basics of WWW website use using Google Analytics. We use this to fine-tune the website, to develop new sections, to add to popular already existing pages, and generally to be responsive to our readers and users. Although this data is collected monthly, it is reviewed ‘by hand and eye’ every three months, and then in more detail and on paper every six months. To read the most recent reports, please follow the links below:
January – June 2017: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/thehub/google-analytics/google-analytics-jan-jun-2017/
July – December 2017: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/thehub/google-analytics/google-analytics-jul-dec-2017/
From the blog: Mozart
What has Mozart to do with the WWW project? Mozart with other members of his family and network wrote letters, some 1400 of which are extant, so this is of interest in itself. In addition, in working out his ideas about the relationship between the individual person and collectivities and social structures, Elias wrote some extended essays on cultural production, of both art and music. In the latter case he was intending to finalise a book on how the phenomenon that was Mozart came about in sociological terms. Although never finished, this project was embarked on, and number of sections were completed – and in what remains he makes reference to Mozart letters. This too is of interest for WWW because of the Elias connection. To read more, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/mozart/
From the blog: How big is a letter?
The answer to the question of how big a letter has to be is, not too long and not too short but just right. It is nonetheless a question that has much preoccupied letter-writers, anxious to do it right in the eyes of the people they are writing to. What has become the world’s most famous correspondence is the recent exchange of letters between Donald Trump of the US and Kim Jong Un of North Korea. To read more, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/how-big-is-a-letter/
From the blog: Migration, transnationalism & Chang family letters
The Chang family letters (reference information is at the end of this blog) are fascinating and offer an interesting parallel, albeit with important differences, with the Forbes family letters. These family letters provide an insight into family letter-writing as a moral education (pp135-140) and also open up wider concerns, including the presence of the lively and entrepreneurially-minded Chinese community in the US. To read more, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/chang-family-letters/
From the blog: Hear the trace! The Forbes Diary, 15 December 1915
On 15 December 1915 Jim Forbes, the youngest surviving son of David and Kate Forbes, then aged 49, married Olive Mathews. After the bride and groom left, a select gathering went to the theatre to see a play called ‘Peg o’my heart’, which ran on Broadway in New York from 1912 to 1914 and was an enormous success. This blog includes transcription of the 15 December diary entry, discussion of its contents, and a rare opportunity to hear what the theatre goers may have heard that night. To read more, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/hear-the-trace-the-forbes-diary-15-december-1915/
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2. Career Construction Theory and Life Writing – Special Edition of Life Writing
Over the last twenty years, a new form of career counselling practice has emerged, one that Mark Savickas (Career Counselling, 2011) refers to as career construction theory. Where earlier forms of vocational guidance utilised aptitude tests, statistical profiling and other forms of quantitative analysis, career construction takes a far more qualitative approach to employment counselling. By encouraging clients to see their careers as stories of which they are both the metaphorical authors and the main protagonists, career construction counsellors enable them to envisage the next chapter in those stories. Periods of troubling change or uncertainty, when people do not know what to do next in their lives, are thus treated as experiences akin to ‘writer’s block’, experiences which can be overcome first by imagining new character arcs, then by narrating them and finally by performing them. Larry Cochran (Career Counselling: A Narrative Approach, 1997) defines career construction theory as a ‘narrative’ based practice because it is all about elucidating life stories and using them as resources to endow vocational decisions with meaning and value to the individual in question.
Drawing on the field of career construction theory, this special edition will explore how diverse forms of life writing have been used to think about and portray careers in new ways. It will also examine the extent to which the construction of a vocational personality (Peter McIlveen, ‘Dialogical Self: Author and narrator of career life themes’, 2007) varies according to the social environment. Potential contributors might explore connections became career construction theory and the recently emerging genre of autofiction, since as Isabelle Grell points out (L’Autofiction, 2014), it is a form of life writing in which writers invent different serialised personae for themselves, rather than assuming a single, continuous sense of selfhood across different time periods and different works.
Because the field of career construction mobilises an authorial paradigm, it has the potential to be applied to discussion of literary careers in an especially illuminating way. This work was begun by Hywel Dix in The Late-Career Novelist (2017) and by Davidson and Evans’s Literary Careers in the Modern Era (2015). We welcome submissions that further such analysis.
Potential topics to be addressed include (but are not limited to):
– the role of autobiographical reasoning as a resource that writers (and others) both draw upon when they make vocational decisions in their professional lives and deploy in the creation of new life narratives;
– the potential insight to be gained by bringing recent narrative-based theories of career development to bear on analysis of authorial careers;
– the distinction between writing as a profession and writing as a vocation; and what difference is made by approaching writing in either of these ways;
– the use of writing as a therapeutic process in addressing past events of a troubling, challenging or even traumatic nature;
– the tension between employment counselling practices that prioritise the need of the individual and autofictional theories that emphasise mutually supportive, collective and collaborative forms of solidarity;
– the question of whether vocational counselling can help writers develop forms of narrative that critique the neo-liberal social order; or conversely the question of whether or not career counselling aims to facilitate direct participation in neo-liberal economics in a way that might vitiate and undermine such critique.
Proposals are invited for articles of between 7-8,000 words of original, previously unpublished research addressing some of these (or related) questions.
Procedure for Submission
Proposals of up to 400 words should be sent to Hywel Dix at HDix@bournemouth.ac.uk by 31 July 2018. Please include a brief biographical note, institutional affiliation and 4-5 keywords. Full-length papers will be solicited from these proposals, with final chapters due by the end of February, 2019.
Timeline
CFP deadline: 31 July 2018
Decisions Communicated by: 31 August 2018
Full length articles due: 28 February 2019
Deadline for Revisions (if needed): 30 April 2019
Papers to reach journal: June 2019
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IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/
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3. Call for Papers FQS Special Issue “Challenging Times— Qualitative Methods and Methodological Approaches to Research on Time”
Guest Editors
Elisabeth Schilling (University of Applied Administrative Sciences NRW), Alexandra König (University Duisburg-Essen), Maggie O’Neill (University of York).
Background
Time is a concept, which is of interest to a range of different disciplines. In the social sciences time is primarily seen as a social phenomenon or as an element of the social order (BURZAN & SCHÖNECK, 2014; ELIAS, 1992; SCHILLING, 2005). However, the perspectives on time in the social sciences are rather heterogeneous as has been already discussed, e.g. in the FQS special issue on “Time and Discourse” (HANNKEN-ILLJES, KOZIN & SCHEFFER, 2007). Changes in social time relations (ROSA, 2015), time as an instrument of control and power (DELEUZE, 1995; FOUCAULT, 1972, 1975, 1982) and the interdependence of the structures of time and economy (BOURDIEU, 1977) are being discussed on the macro level. There are also a number of studies investigating time practices, subjective time perception and time projections (CARMO, CANTANTE & DE ALMEIDA ALVES, 2014; SCHILLING & KOZIN, 2009) as well as their correlations with certain resources (DRESSEL & LANGREITER, 2008; KÖLBL & STRAUB, 2001; MÜNCH, 2014; ZIMBARDO & BOYD, 2008) on the micro level. Numerous publications in the area of biographical research (LUTZ, SCHIEBEL & TUIDER, 2018; ROBERTS, 2011; ROSENTHAL & BOGNER, 2017) are focused on the meaning of time-related life practices (e.g., specific to a particular social class or cross-generational biographical family patterns), defining biographies as “communicative structuring (…), which use and produce social and individual time” (FISCHER, 2018, p.461, our translation). Changes in time practices have been observed in particular with regard to family life and gender-related inequalities (HEITKÖTTER, JURCZYK, LANGE & MEIER-GRÄWE, 2009; WINGARD, 2007). Furthermore, there is plenty of social research on time in institutions, for example on time spent in the educational system (KING, 2017), the time structures in teaching at school (RABENSTEIN, 2018), the rigid time regime of curricula at universities (LIAO et al., 2013) and changing time structures (O’NEILL, 2014; ROSA, 2015; VOSTAL, 2016). The questions of acceleration, intensification of work in academia and the critical engagement with the problem of slowing down were discussed, e.g., in the FQS special issue on “The Slow University” (O’NEILL, MARTELL, MENDICK & MÜLLER, 2014).
Student boredom during lessons (BREIDENSTEIN, 2006) as well as the length of time invested in studies (PIPKIN, 1982) are also time-related matters.
The diversity of qualitative methods and methodological approaches to research on time reflects the thematic breadth within this research field. The planned special issue aims to pool these diverse approaches and discuss their potentials. The following points are possible topics for article submissions:
- Which social theories are useful when researching time?
- How is time documented in observation protocols, interviews or non-verbal data?
- How is time constructed in different types of research?
- On which implicit theories of time are classical studies based?
- How can we analyze changes in social time structures and people’s perception of time?
- How can we investigate time as an instrument of power?
- What are appropriate methods of investigating time-related orientations and time experience?
- Are biographical and creative methods useful when researching time, for example in accelerated academia?
- How can we conceptually and empirically explore the nexus of institutional time orders and individual time experience?
- How can we use time as an indicator of social inequality?
- What is the potential of longitudinal studies in order to investigate questions on time?
We welcome methodological reflections on the indicated and related questions on qualitative time research. You can also submit short field reports, which reflect methodological questions on time and the practical handling of it. Scientists who have not yet worked explicitly on time-related questions are welcome to reflect their field and their research regarding time and its relevance.
Publication Process
All abstracts can be submitted in English and/or German. The review process includes the following steps:
- Abstracts of approximately 200 words should be submitted by the 1st of October 2018. They should be sent to the guest editors: elisabeth.schilling@fhoev.nrw.de, alexandra.koenig@uni-due.de and maggie.oneill@York.ac.uk.
- All abstracts will be peer reviewed with decisions on acceptance to be made by the guest editors within one month (November 1, 2018).
- In the case of acceptance, the authors will be invited to submit a full paper (March 1, 2019).
- All submitted papers will be subject to a double-blinded peer review process.
- The publication of the special issue is planned in January 2020.
The special issue builds on discussions within the research network group
“Being young— growing older: changing time concepts”, which has been funded by the German Research Foundation since 2017. A final conference is planned for 2020, which provides the opportunity to discuss the articles from this FQS special issue with their respective authors.
Author Guidelines
Abstracts and contributions (including “Reports From the Shopfloor”), should follow the FQS guidelines for authors (http://www.qualitativeresearch.net/index.php/fqs/about/submissions#authorGuidelines).
Contact
Please submit your abstract and send any questions you may have to Elisabeth Schilling
(elisabeth.schilling@fhoev.nrw.de), Alexandra König (alexandra.koenig@uni-due.de) and maggie.oneill@York.ac.uk.
References
Breidenstein, Georg (2006). Teilnahme am Unterricht. Ethnographische Studien zum Schülerjob. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1977). Algérie 60. Structures économiques et structures temporelles. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.
Burzan, Nicole & Schöneck, Nadine M. (2014). Zeit. In Günter Endruweit, Gisela Trommsdorff & Nicole Burzan (Eds.), Wörterbuch der Soziologie (pp. 638-639). Konstanz: UVK.
Carmo, Renato Miguel; Cantante, Frederico & de Almeida Alves, Nuno (2014). Time projections: Youth and precarious employment. Time & Society, 23(3), 337-357.
Deleuze, Gilles (1995). Negotiations, 1972-1990. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Dressel, Gert & Langreiter, Nikola (2008). Wissenschaftlich Arbeiten – schneller, höher, weiter? Zum (Un-)Verhältnis von Arbeit und Freizeit in den (Kultur-)Wissenschaften. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(1), Art. 38, http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-9.1.313 [Date of access: May 22, 2018].
Elias, Norbert (1992). Time. An essay. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fischer, Wolfram (2018). Zeit und Biographie. In Helma Lutz, Martina Schiebel & Elisabeth Tuider (Eds.), Handbuch der Biographieforschung (pp.461-472). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Foucault, Michel (1972). The archeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon.
Foucault, Michel (1975). Surveiller et punir. La naissance de la prison. Paris: Garrimard.
Foucault, Michel (1982). The subject and power. Critical inquiry, 8(4), 777-795.
Hannken-Illjes, Kati; Kozin, Alexander & Scheffer, Thomas (Eds.) (2007). Time and discourse. Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 8(1), http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/view/6 [Date of access: May 22, 2018].
Heitkötter, Martina; Jurczyk, Karin; Lange, Andreas & Meier-Gräwe, Uta (Eds.) (2009). Zeit für Beziehungen? Zeit und Zeitpolitik für Familien. Opladen: Barbara Budrich.
King, Vera (2017). Die Macht der Dringlichkeiten: vom Umgang mit der Zeit:gesellschaftlicher Wandel und psychische Verarbeitungsmuster. Frankfurt: Forschung, 1, 40-45, http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/year/2017/docId/43715 [Date of access: May 22, 2018].
Kölbl, Carlos & Straub, Jürgen (2001). Historical consciousness in youth. Theoretical and exemplary empirical analyses. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 2(3), Art. 9, http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-2.3.904 [Date of access: May 22, 2018].
Liao, Tim F.; Beckman, Joshua; Marzolph, Emily; Riederer, Caitlin; Sayler, Jeffrey & Schmelkin, Leah (2013). The social definition of time for university students. Time & Society, 22(1), 119-151.
Lutz, Helma; Schiebel, Martina & Tuider, Elisabeth (2018). Einleitung: Ein Handbuch der Biographieforschung. In Helma Lutz, Martina Schiebel & Elisabeth Tuider (Eds.), Handbuch der Biographieforschung (pp.1-8). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Münch, Anne (2014). “Also dieses enge Korsett ist nicht mehr da.” Zur Zeitsouveränität im Alter. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 15(3), Art. 19, http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-15.3.2167 [Date of access: May 22, 2018].
O’Neill, Maggie (2014). The slow university: Work, time and well-being. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 15(3), Art. 14,
http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-15.3.2226 [Date of access: May 22, 2018].
O’Neill, Maggie; Martell, Luke; Mendick, Heather & Müller, Ruth (Eds.) (2014). The slow university. Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 15(3), http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/view/50 [Date of access: May 22, 2018].
Pipkin, Ronald (1982). Moonlighting in law school: A multischool study of part-time employment of full-time students. Law & Social Inquiry, 7(4), 1109-1162.
Rabenstein, Kerstin (2018). Monitoring von Arbeitsprozessen im Unterricht der autonomen Schule als Bürokratisierung von Lernbiografien: Eine explorative Instrumentenanalyse. In Elisabeth Schilling (Eds.), Verwaltete Biografien (pp.27-40). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Roberts, Brian (2011). Interpreting photographic portraits: Autobiography, time perspectives, and two school photographs. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(2), Art. 25, http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-12.2.1687 [Date of access: May 22, 2018].
Rosa, Hartmut (2015). Social acceleration. A new theory of modernity. New York, NY: Columbia University Press
Rosenthal, Gabriele & Bogner, Artur (2017). Biographies—discourses—figurations: Methodological considerations from the perspective of social constructivism and figurational sociology. In Gabriele Rosenthal & Artur Bogner (Eds.), Biographies in the Global South. Life stories embedded in figurations and discourses (pp.15-49). Frankfurt/M.: Campus.
Schilling, Elisabeth (2005). Die Zukunft der Zeit: Vergleich von Zeitvorstellungen in Russland und Deutschland im Zeichen der Globalisierung. Aachen: Shaker.
Schilling, Elisabeth & Kozin, Alexander (2009). Migrants and their experiences of time: Edward T. Hall revisited. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 10(1), Art. 35, http://dx.doi.org/10.17169/fqs-10.1.1237 [Date of access: May 22, 2018].
Vostal, Filip (2016). Accelerating academia. The changing structure of academic time.Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wingard, Leah (2007). Constructing time and prioritizing activities in parent-child interaction. Discourse & Society, 18(12), 75-91.
Zimbardo, Philip & Boyd, John (2008). The time paradox: The new psychology of time that will change your life. New York, NY: Free Press.
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4. Summer Lecture Series at The National Archives: Mapping movement: people, place and power
Booking is now open for The National Archives’ Summer Lecture Series. In July and August 2018, we will welcome five leading academics to explore contested spaces over time. Underpinned by the collections held at Kew, the lectures will examine issues from land dispute and migration to human stories of place and identity. The series is generously sponsored by the Friends of The National Archives and supported by the Royal Historical Society.
5 July Resisting boundaries: landscape and memory in early modern England, Professor Andy Wood (Durham University) – Book your place
19 July Medieval migration: mapping the foreigner 1300-1550, Professor Mark Ormrod (University of York) – Book your place
2 August Pakistan after Partition: the British High Commission 1947-65, Professor Ian Talbot (University of Southampton) – Book your place
16 August Preserving the evidence: the trials of an early modern map, Sonja Schwoll (The National Archives) and Susan Littlewood –Book your place
30 August Great escapes: The story of MI9’s secret maps, Dr Barbara Bond – Book your place
Each lecture will be podcasted and made available online after the event. Find out more about the Summer Lecture Series.
Nicola Frost | Academic Communications and Impact Officer
The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU | 0203 9089 300 (ext. 2759)
Sign up for our research newsletter
Follow our research Twitter account @UkNatArcRes
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5. Edinburgh International Book Festival: In Light of What We Write
NEW VOICES FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA AND SCOTLAND
Tue 14 Aug 18:30 – 20:00, The Spiegeltent
First presented in Cape Town in February 2018, In Light of What We Write brings young Scottish and Southern African artists together to create cutting edge, multi-discipline work. In the centenary year of Nelson Mandela’s birth, this specially created second chapter, led by co-curators Linda Kaoma and Michael Pedersen, captures the vibrancy and accessibility of the literature scene, giving voice to the concerns and dreams of our future generations. In partnership with British Council #SouthernAfricaArts.
* Tickets go on sale at 8:30am on Tuesday 26 June *
https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/in-light-of-what-we-write
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6. Newsletter Biography Institute 2018/2
June 2018 (PDF-version)
As a result of the new privacylaw, we kindly ask you if you would like to receive our newsletter. For unsubscribing, please send us an email at d.veltman@rug.nl. If you do not wish to receive this newsletter anymore, we thank you for your attention.
Conference Brochure Different Lives
Together with the Biographers International Organization and the Biography Society, the Biography Institute organizes the conference Different Lives: Global Perspectives on Biography in Public Cultures and Societies (19-21 September). The conference brochure can be downloaded on the website of the conference or you can order one via mail. Tickets for this conference are still available at a reduced tariff of 40 euros. It is also possible to subscribe for the social program, for Nigel Hamilton’s masterclass for PhD- and research master students on September 19 or for Richard Holmes’s keynote on September 20.
Biography Institute hosts research seminar Biography & History
The course will be given by members of the Biography Institute during the first semester of the next academic year. For more information about enrollment (also for contract students) and the content of the seminar, see the flyer and the section courses on the website of the Biography Institute.
Hans Renders and Nigel Hamilton present The New ABC of Biography In The New abc of Biography – an abc of the genre, with 26 entries – two biographers and teachers take us on a tour, from A for Authorization (a very misunderstood concept, in the authors’ view) to Z for Zigzag to the End. In trenchant, witty entries they explore the good, the bad and the plain ugly in modern “life writing” and the portrayal of real lives today – and how, across history and continents, we got here. The book, which is going to be presented during the conference ‘Different Lives’, will be published at Amsterdam University Press.
Antoon Ott will write the biography of Nanne Ottema
On initiative of the Ottema-Kingma Foundation (OSK), Antoon Ott will write a biography of Nanne Ottema, under supervision of prof. Hans Renders en prof. Goffe Jensma. Ottema was a wealthy notary, collector, art historian, publicist, director, politician, campaigner for natural and cultural heritage, museum founder and philanthropist. He assembled a large art collection, including in particular many examples of the art and craft of Friesland and of Asia. Part of his collection was incorporated into the ceramics museum Princessehof, which he founded in 1917. On his death he left the collection, together with his other possessions, to the Ottema-Kingma Foundation. Antoon Ott (1972) is advisor on the intersection between art and law. More information can be found here.
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IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/
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7. ‘Africa Writes’ 2018, 29 June –1 July at the British Library
Africa Writes 2018
Date: Friday 29 June – Sunday 1 July 2018
Venue: British Library, 96 Euston Rd, London NW1 2DB
Event webpage: http://www.royalafricansociety.org/event/africa-writes-2018
Africa Writes returns for an exciting summer weekend at The British Library and Rich Mix London, celebrating the best of contemporary literature from Africa and the diaspora.
DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAMME
We’re excited to announce our headline events for the festival, where poetry takes the spotlight with Warsan Shire in Conversation, Yomi Sode’s sizzling performance of COAT at The British Library and Octavia Poetry Collective’s Wakanda-themed party at Rich Mix London, plus a whole weekend of African literature joy!
Tickets: http://bit.ly/AW2018Headliners
Coat
Friday 29 June, 20:00 – 21:00 (doors at 19:30), British Library
£12
Picture this: Nigeria. A grandmother passes. London, a son cooks a pot of stew for his mother hoping to uncover hidden stories and unanswered questions.
Drawing on themes of immigration, identity and displacement, Coat is a one-man show written by poet Yomi Sode which tells honest and emotional story of Junior. Born in Nigeria, he leaves at age 9 and heads to London, leaving behind a life that he loved and is settled in. Whilst cooking up a stew on stage, Sode confronts the difficult realities of growing up in south London as a young man, and the expectations of family, blending poetry and drama in a unique performance style rich with lyricism, humour and hard truths.
Book: http://bit.ly/AW2018Coat
Octavia Poetry Collective Presents: Africa Writes 2018 Party
The Year of the Womxn
Saturday 30 June, 20:00 – 00:00, Rich Mix
£10 / £8
Following 2017’s sold out R.A.P Party, Africa Writes returns with the official festival party hosted by Octavia Poetry Collective. Join us for a Wakanda-themed evening of poetry, music and dancing into the night /future where we’ll showcase and celebrate the words, the art, the song of womxn from Africa and the diaspora. Taking their name from the American science fiction writer Octavia Butler and inspiration from Black Panther, Octavia present an evening celebrating The Year of the Womxn featuring art displays, DJs and a line-up of poets – Theresa Lola, Momtaza Mehri, Sarah Lasoye, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Hibaq Osman, Rachel Long, Belinda Zhawi, and Amina Jama, and a speech by special guest Bernardine Evaristo.
Book: http://bit.ly/AW2018Party
Warsan Shire in Conversation (Sold Out)
Sunday 1 July, 17:30 – 18:45, British Library
£15 / £10
We’re delighted to welcome back Warsan Shire to Africa Writes as our headline writer. Shire is a Somali-British poet and writer based in Los Angeles. Raised in northwest London, her debut pamphlet, ‘Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth’ (flipped eye publishing) was published in 2011. Since then, Shire was awarded the inaugural African Poetry Prize in 2013, appointed as the first Young Poet Laureate for London (2014) and selected as Poet in Resident for Queensland, Australia (2014). In 2016, her work was featured prominently in Beyonce’s visual album Lemonade. She is the first writer under 30 to headline Africa Writes.
Shire’s poetry highlights themes of migration, identity and sexuality amongst others. She also curates and teaches classes around the intersections of art and healing. Shire will join us in conversation with Sheila Ruiz to discuss her work, process and inspiration.
More info: http://bit.ly/AW2018Warsan
Festival Weekend Pass £18 / £12: http://bit.ly/AW2018Tickets
A rich and vibrant daytime programme of book launches, panel discussions, performances, masterclasses, education events, family workshops and an international book fair.
To receive priority booking for headline events, join the Royal African Society: http://bit.ly/RASmembership
To be the first to hear about the programme, join the Africa Writes newsletter: http://bit.ly/AWmaillist
Website: africawrites.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/AfricaWrites
Twitter: twitter.com/AfricaWritesUK
Instagram: www.instagram.com/africawritesuk
Africa Writes 2018 is supported by Arts Council England, Miles Morland Foundation and hosted and supported by the British Library.
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Last updated: 15 June 2018
