In the 2017-2018 academic year, myself, Dr Naomi Richards, and Dr Elizabeth Reeder held a series of reading and writing workshops centered around the topic of death and dying. We each facilitated a couple of workshops. A fellow PhD student, Solveiga Zibaite also facilitated a workshop. They brought together a diverse group of people all with an interest in this topic. Each workshop was different in the focus, genre of texts, tone, and discussions had, which allowed us to cover a wide breadth of different sub-topics within death and dying.
We decided the workshops had been such a success that we wanted to reach out to a wider audience in the form of a symposium. We finally have been able to make that happen and will be hosting what will hopefully be the first in a series of symposia on death and dying.
If you’re interested in an afternoon of creative writing, reading, and discussions on death and dying come and join Death Writes at the St. Mungo Museum on the afternoon of 14th May. This symposium funded by the Arts-Lab and Glasgow End of Life Studies Group, will focus on the reading and writing aspects of the multi-faceted topic of death and dying. This will develop and hone critical and creative skills through close reading a range of texts as writers. These considerations and understandings of how diverse texts are constructed can thereafter be applied to our own writing and thinking, led by creative writers, a poet, an anthropologist and a philosopher. The workshops will help us to consider how we might write well about death and dying and other difficult, complicated subjects. These skills are applicable to a range of difficult subjects and facilitate writing in ways that will better communicate emotionally complex or sensitive subject matter to diverse audiences. Death related objects will also be provided by the Glasgow Open Museum to act as tactile prompts for writing.
You’ll have your choice of two workshops to participate in, which will include discussion around a short reading and some creative writing practice. Each workshop has a different focus within the larger umbrella of death and dying. If this sounds like something you’d like to join, please see the link below for more details and to sign up. We hope to see you there!
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/reading-writing-death-dying-symposium-tickets-58635986815
Twitter: @DeathWrites