Researching and Writing Difference with Roanna Gonsalves

As writers, we must consider questions of freedom of speech and expression as being inextricably linked to questions of responsibility, positionality and context. These are ethical questions but they are also questions of power, of literary craft, skill and imaginative labour.

In order to tell the stories of our time in nuanced and fresh ways, we need to address these questions as we create work outside of our own lived experiences, whether this difference is related to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, disability, linguistic background, religious background, the rural-urban divide or any other category of identity.

This course with Roanna Gonsalves aims to use the tools that literature provides to think through the fraught issues of cultural appropriation, ethical writing, and freedom of speech and expression. Through a combination of experiential learning, discussion, and practical writing exercises, participants will work intensively through the day towards a strengthening of their thinking and writing by deepening their understanding of their own writerly positions in the contemporary world.