[opirgyork] Secrets, stories, scars, survival: FREE workshop THIS MONDAY!

[aruna at opirgyork.ca]

Join OPIRG York for a FREE incredible workshop with the amazing LEAH
LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA!

FREE for everyone!
Monday February 7th 2011
3pm to 6pm
York University
Student centre - RM. 430

Secrets, stories, scars, survival: Writing your dirty laundry and living
to tell.

Writing and telling our stories is an important part of surviving violence
for many folks who've lived through it. But when we sit down to write down
our stories, the process often feels more complicated and treacherous than
we thought it would be. How do we write about trauma when we freeze every
time we try? How much do we tell, and where? What the line between writing
for therapy and writing for performance? How do we risk telling
complicated stories of violence and survival within our communities that
we worry will be misunderstood? And how do we do all of this without
everyone including ourselves getting triggered?

In this workshop, we'll talk about ways to create safety to write and
speak; look at examples of diverse ways writers have chosen to write about
violence and abuse and everything that comes after; do some somatic body
exercises to create safety and embodiment while we write; and do some
writing and performance exercises!

Space is wheelchair accessible
For accommodation requests, please contact Aruna Boodram:
aruna at opirgyork.ca or 416.736.5724

About the facilitator:

LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA is a Worcester raised, Toronto matured,
Oakland-based queer Sri Lankan writer, performer and teacher. She is the
2009-10 Artist in Residence and part-time professor at UC Berkeley’s June
Jordan’s Poetry for the People and the co-founder and co-artistic director
of Mangos With Chili, North America’s only touring cabaret of queer and
trans people of color performing artists.

She is a commissioned performer with Sins Invalid, the national
performance organization of queer people with disabilities and chronic
illnesses. Her one woman show, Grown Woman Show, has toured nationally,
including performances at the National Queer Arts Festival, Swarthmore
College, Yale University, Reed College and McGill University.

The author of Consensual Genocide, her writing has appeared in the
anthologies Yes Means Yes, Visible: A Femmethology, Homelands, Colonize
This, We Don’t Need Another Wave, Bitchfest, Without a Net, Dangerous
Families, Brazen Femme, Femme and A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over The World.
She writes regularly for Bitch, Colorlines, Hyphen, Left Turn and
Make/Shift magazines. The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate
Violence Within Activist Communities, which she co-edited with Ching-In
Chen and Jai Dulani, will be published by South End Press in March 2011.
Her second book of poetry, Love Cake, and first memoir, Dirty River, are
forthcoming.

She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, focusing on
creative nonfiction and community-based teaching by writers of color. In
2009 she was honored as the Bent Writing Institute's 2009 Bent Mentor. She
is a track coordinator for the Creating Safer Communities track of the
2010 Allied Media Conference and an advisor on the Disability Justice
track. She frequently travels the country teaching and performing.

Co-Sponsored by the Centre for Women and Trans People At York University
and the York University Graduate Students Association