- 2021 Workshop Schedule
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- November 2021: Historia & Decolonial Love: On Writing What Haunts You w/ Lis P. Sipin-Gabon
November 2021: Historia & Decolonial Love: On Writing What Haunts You w/ Lis P. Sipin-Gabon
The postcolonial feminist scholar Chela Sandoval theorizes decolonial love as a hermeneutics of social change; that is to say, “writers who theorize social change understand ‘love’ as a hermeneutic, as a set of practices and procedures that can transit all citizen-subjects, regardless of social class, toward a differential mode of consciousness and its accompanying technologies of method and social movement” (Sandoval in Methodology of the Oppressed, published in 2000). What is a differential mode of consciousness? What is decolonial love? And how does this help you write what haunts you?
The Spanish word historia is also the word for story. In this workshop, I will help guide you on the arduous, sacred process of finding your own portal to write what haunts you through a differential mode of consciousness and the act of decolonial love. Calling upon our ancestors, we will work together through the creative play of oración to channel the imagination of our past lives and the energies of the duende that follow us. Come with an open heart and spirit. This workshop will involve interactive readings and hearty discussion.
The goals of this workshop:
- opening an ancient portal within you to access the duende (creative energy) that follow you
- write, create, imagine, shadow work, and channel (writing what haunts you)
- building community through the act of decolonial love
- asking tough questions, writing down tough truths
- finishing the workshop by creating an altar/shrine that gifts the creative work produced in this class to the ancestors/creative energy of the moment
Materials: Pen, paper, and any art materials you'd like to work with.
Bio:
LIS P. SIPIN-GABON (formerly published as Melissa R. Sipin) is a writer with Dissociative Identity Disorder and C-PTSD, hailing from Carson, California. They won Submittable’s Eliza So Fellowship (2017), Poets & Writers’ McCrindle Fellowship (2016), Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open (2013), and the Washington Square Review’s Flash Fiction Prize (2014). They co-edited Kuwento: Lost Things, an anthology on Philippine myths (Carayan Press 2014), and their work is in LitHub, Salon, Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, Guernica Magazine, 580 Split, and SLICE Literary Magazine, among others. As cofounder of TAYO Literary Magazine, they partnered with CUNY’s The Feminist Press to help establish the Louise Meriwether Debut Book Prize, the first book contest dedicated to Women of Color/Nonbinary of Color writers. Their fiction has won scholarships and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Kundiman Fiction Retreat, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and they are represented by Sarah Levitt at Aevitas Creative Management. They are hard at work on a novel inspired by their great-grandmother’s capture in WWII Philippines and their recovery of repressed memories as a survivor of intergenerational trauma. They also daylight as the Critical Care Medicine Division Coordinator in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine at Stanford University’s School of Medicine.
Their most recent essay, “On Living: A Manifesto of an Incest Survivor” was selected by American historian Nell Painter for MacDowell’s “Conversations on Social Justice,” a collection of artwork in response to our current historical times during a global pandemic.
Logistics:
- This workshop runs from November 1, 2021 - November 30, 2021.
- Workshops consist of one video per week for each week in the month. Videos are 45-60 minutes long, and are shared on a private YouTube account.
- Class discussions are held via Slack.
- All readings, creative prompts, and shared artwork will be exchanged via a private Google Drive folder.
- All workshops are designed for you. Dedicate as much or as little time to the workshop per week as you'd like.
- This workshop is taught in English, but collective.aporia offers subtitles for the workshop videos in over 60 languages. If you have questions about language accommodations, please feel free to email us at collective.aporia@gmail.com.
Donations:
Collective.aporia believes in paying working artists fairly for their time and work. As a diverse international collective, we also believe strongly in valuing fair exchange—whether that be monetary, energetic, or otherwise.
Because of these beliefs, our workshop donations all begin at a $40 base rate with the option to give additional donation amounts, if you’re able. Seventy percent of the donations go to facilitator, and the remainder goes back into collective.aporia for operational expenses.
Participants also have the option to donate money towards the community scholarship, which provides opportunities to folks from these communities to attend workshops at no cost.
Please check out this page to learn more and/or apply for the scholarship.
We understand that not everyone has the financial means to donate $40. In the spirit of collaboration and exchange, we have developed a work exchange initiative that allows folks to choose what kind of work they would like to trade for free entry into the workshop. Examples of this work include writing blog posts, creating and sharing social media content, editing video subtitles, etc.
Thank you for your generosity!
[Image credit: Lis P. Sipin-Gabon]