Sundress Academy for the Arts Presents “Writing About Our Relationships to the Places We Inhabit”

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is excited to present “Writing About Our Relationships to the Places We Inhabit,” a workshop led by Shlagha Borah on November 8^th, 2023, from 6:00-7:30 PM. This event will be held over Zoom. Participants can access the event at tiny.utk.edu/sundress (password: safta).

In this workshop, participants will read and write about our relationships with the spaces they exist in. They will examine how places shape individuals, especially when they perpetuate violence or oppression in some way. Participants will look into our domestic, public and ecological surroundings to reimagine their environments beyond pastoral poetics. They will then question/explore the idea of “home,” situating themselves in their geographical histories and exploring how it informs the way they view the world. Which place are we running away from? Where do we run towards? The workshop will look at poems by Tarfia Faizullah, Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Tishani Doshi.

While there is no fee to participate in this workshop, those who are able and appreciative may make donations directly to Shlagha Borah via Venmo @shlaghab.

Shlagha Borah (she/her) is a queer, multi-genre writer from Assam, India. Her work appears/is forthcoming in Salamander, Nashville Review, Identity Theory, Longleaf Review, Variant Literature, South Dakota Review, Passengers Journal, Rogue Agent, Hunger Journal, and elsewhere. She is pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and is an Associate Poetry Editor at Grist. She has received support for her work from Brooklyn Poets and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She is the co-founder of Pink Freud, a student-led collective working towards making mental health accessible in India.

This event is brought to you in part by grants provided by the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry and the Tennessee Arts Commission.