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Stories We Wear (Workshop)
June 11, 2022 @ 10:00 am - 12:15 pm CDT
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The East Side Freedom Library invites you to a creative writing, reading, and discussion workshop, Stories We Wear.
This event will be held in person at ESFL.
Depending on the weather and number of people, the workshop will take place on ESFL’s lawn. If we meet inside, masks and proof of vaccinations are required for all participants.
Join local poet, writer and activist Alison Morse on Saturday, June 11th, 10-12:15 a.m., for a workshop that invites solidarity with the workers who make our clothes. Share your experiences with your clothing and connect your clothes to two historic events for garment workers, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and the Rana Plaza collapse, as well as current activism on behalf of workers in today’s global garment industry. You do not need to be “a writer” to participate. Alison will guide you through discussion, creative writing examples, writing prompts and open writing time.
Photo credit to Bangladesh Garment Workers Solidarity
Bring your favorite writing implements and memories of a favorite garment and/or garment maker, or bring your favorite piece of clothing to the workshop. If you have an ancestor or current family member who worked or works in the apparel or textile industry, bring that information, too. Are you interested in links to readings and writing prompts before the workshop? Great! Email Alison at [email protected] by June 8 to sign up to participate in the workshop and to receive a set of readings.
Workshop participants will be invited to share your writing at a “hybrid” reading on Wednesday, June 15th, from 7-8:30 p.m., inside the East Side Freedom Library and live streamed for the public. You’re invited to bring one friend or relative to the reading. Light refreshments will be served. Masks and vaccinations are required for all in-person participants and audience members. You do not need to read publicly in order to take part in the workshop. You can choose to simply listen if you prefer.
Demonstrators mourn for the deaths of victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, New York, New York, 1911. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)
Alison comes from a family of immigrant garment workers in N.Y.C. She now lives in Minneapolis where she mentors poetry, fiction and memoir writers through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and the Rimon Young Artists program, and writes articles about labor rights issues in the garment industry. She is the author of the limited-edition poetry chapbook The Price of Our Clothes, and her poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies. She also wrote the flash-fiction collection If You Wave a Chicken Over Your Head (Red Bird Chapbooks), and won a Tiferet Fiction Award in 2012 for her short story “The Truth About ‘The Lead Plates at the Romm Press.'” Her ongoing poetry and teaching project about human rights issues in the garment industry has received support from the Rimon and Brin foundations.
Free and open to all