&Now 2019 Conference

This project explores innovative literary approaches to writing about trauma (emotional/physical/sexual/psychic/spiritual), as well as the strategies that help us thrive during the complex writing process, which includes sending pieces out that face rejection and a publication experience that enables strangers and family access and insight into the various projects. Audre Lorde illuminates, “In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear- fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live.” How does writing through trauma change our visibility and explore accountability?  We will consider the larger structural institutions and systems that impact identity formation and what is safely sharable or representable, as well as the interpersonal dynamics that shape our sense of selves. Investigating the distinction between secrecy and privacy, this project is about the risk and precipice of writing through the unsaid. Panelists will reflect on topics ranging from assault and familial loss to racial and queer identities. Within this context, panelists will explore the desire for vulnerability and the process of self-editing as well as work that has influenced them. This conversation will generate a safe space to examine the complexity of emotional self-censorship and serve as a catalyst for activating linguistic agency and self-care.