Conjuring Other Ways Home: Writing on Black Adoption

 

Conjuring Other Ways Home is a three-part writing program centered on black adoption. We will focus on loving and writing through our personal stories of being black and navigating adoption. It is an invitation to explore and interrogate ways we talk about, don’t talk about and could talk better about this experience. Taking place during Adoption Awareness Month, Conjuring Other Ways Home creates space for new kinds of adoption awareness. Register now.

WHO THIS IS FOR

Conjuring Other Ways Home is for people who self-identify as black or African American and have a personal experience of adoption. This includes adopted people, first/birth parents, adoptive parents, current and former foster youth, parents whose children are or have been in foster care, and foster parents. The workshops are designed for high school age and older.

WHAT WE’LL DO

We will focus on loving and writing through our personal stories of being black and experiencing adoption. We will consider ideas like black identity, adoption themes, imagination, place making and ties to origin stories. To inspire our work, we will use a variety of materials to inspire our work like history, information about adoption in Minnesota, photography, essays and archived interviews. We encourage you to commit to all three workshops. But if your schedule only permits you to show up during one session, come. We want you in the space. You will still get a full experience.

FACILITATORS

Each workshop will be facilitated by a teaching artist who is also a black adoptee: Shannon Gibney, Keno Evol and Lisa Bremmer

ACCESSIBILITY

The Illusion Theater is wheelchair accessible. For other accommodations please contact: Keno Evol at KenoEvol@gmail.com

PROGRAM ORGANIZERS

Black Table Arts is an emergent art organization that seeks to conjure other worlds through black art by connecting creatives and cultivating volume in black life. The Adoption Museum Project is a social change organization using the power of museums to create greater justice in adoption.

CLOSING EVENT

On Tuesday, Dec/12, the public will be invited to participate in a gathering to engage and continue conversations started in the writing workshops and more largely unpack themes explored during the program. There will be guest speakers and an invitation for art sharing. All ages, free of charge. More details coming soon.

QUESTIONS

Please contact either Keno Evol at KenoEvol@gmail.com or Laura Callen at Laura@adoptionmuseumproject.org

TEACHING ARTISTS

Shannon Gibney

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color (Carolrhoda Lab, 2015), a young adult novel featuring themes of transracial adoption that won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award in Young Peoples’ Literature. Gibney is faculty in English at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, where she teaches critical and creative writing, journalism, and African Diasporic topics. A Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow, her next novel, Dream Country, is about more than five generations of an African descended family, crisscrossing the Atlantic both voluntarily and involuntarily (Dutton, 2018). Gibney was adopted by a white family in 1975, and writes frequently on topics of transracial adoption.

Lisa Marie Brimmer

Lisa Marie Brimmer (she/her) is a Queer, Black, Transracial Adoptee artist. She has been published in Ishmael Reed’s Konch Magazine, Gazillion Voices, On the Commons Magazine, Burn Something and the anthology Walk Towards It. She has also been featured on Minnesota Public Radio and KFAI. Learn more: lisamariebrimmer.com & @2speakease.

Keno Evol

Keno Evol is the founder and executive director of BlackTableArts. An arts based org centered on conjuring other worlds through black art by connecting creatives and cultivating volume in black Life. BlackTableArts is a home for black arts in the twin cities. BlackTableArts powers community through the Black Lines Matter writing program taking place at The Loft Literary Center, The Free Black Table Open Mic taking place at the illusion theater and curated events that center black social politics and black creativity.

Black Lines Matter is the first public, multi-generational, multi-experience writing classroom covering black protest poetry in the state of Minnesota.

Evol won first Place in the 2017 Sonia Sanchez-Langston Hughes Poetry Contest. Evol is a six year educator having taught at nineteen institutions across the state of Minnesota. Evol has received the Verve Grant, And the Beyond the Pure fellowship for his work. He has been published in Split This Rock, Radius Lit and Vinyl

DATES
Nov. 6th, Nov. 13th, Nov. 20th
TIME
Each workshop runs 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
LOCATION
Illusion Theater, Minneapolis
COST
All workshops are FREE.
TO REGISTER
Click Here Registration is requested so that we can best prepare for the workshop, but it’s not required.