T123.
Writing Disaster: Imagine, Reveal, Reckon, Repair
Thursday, March 24, 2022
9:00 am to 10:15 am
What role can writers play in an era of compounding environmental disasters? Some writers use their craft to bear witness to an increasingly unlivable world; others go further, not only addressing the connections between hazard and harm, violence and vulnerability, but also taking action to repair and compelling others to do the same. These writers will discuss how our work makes possible (or fails to make possible) ways of reimagining how we can evolve in this moment of unprecedented urgency.
Participants
Lacy M. Johnson is a Houston-based professor, curator, activist, and is author of the essay collection The Reckonings, the widely acclaimed memoir The Other Side, and Trespasses: A Memoir. She teaches creative nonfiction at Rice University.
Emily Raboteau is the author of a novel, The Professor's Daughter, and a work of creative nonfiction, Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, winner of an American Book Award. She is a professor in the MFA program at the City College of New York.
Kerri Arsenault is a book critic, teacher, book editor at Orion Magazine, contributing editor at Literary Hub, and author of Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains.
Cinelle Barnes is the Philippine-born author of Monsoon Mansion and Malaya: Essays on Freedom and editor of A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the New American South. She's received support from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Capita, VONA, and the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund, among others.
