A Public Panel with Susan Brison, Shivanee Ramlochan, Una, and Winnie M Li

Clear Lines is pleased to invite you to the second public event in our ongoing collaboration with The SHaME Project at Birkbeck, University of London.

• Online via Microsoft Teams until 6:30pm
• FREE to attend, but pre-booking is essential: https://shame.bbk.ac.uk/events/literature-and-sexual-trauma-authors-writing-their-lived-experience/

A distinguished panel of award-winning authors will speak about transforming their own lived experiences of sexual violence into different forms of literature. Memoirist and academic Susan J. Brison, poet Shivanee Ramlochan, and graphic writer Una will speak with our Writer-in-Residence, novelist Winnie M Li, for an authentic discussion about trauma, writing, and recovery.

The act of writing has long been a vital means of self-expression when confronting the trauma of sexual violence and abuse. As artists and communicators, perhaps writers are uniquely placed to illuminate the psychological landscape behind this kind of lived experience.  But the journey from the raw experience of victimhood to authoring one’s own narrative can be different for each individual. By bringing together a poet, graphic writer, memoirist, and novelist we hope to understand how these various forms of creative writing allowed each survivor to tell their stories of sexual abuse/assault in different ways.

Like all SHaME events in this series, this evening is designed to bring survivors and activists into conversation with interdisciplinary scholarship in the field of sexual violence.  Expect a wide-ranging dialogue, followed by an audience Q&A. Some of the questions addressed will be:

• What literary and ethical choices do authors face when drawing upon their own life experiences of sexual harms?
• How can a particular form of writing allow each survivor to convey the mental health and bodily impacts of trauma, and the recovery from it?
• How does one emotionally navigate the reception and reaction to your writing going public?
• How can creative writing illuminate the experience of sexual violence in ways that academic, legal, or medical studies can’t?

Clear Lines is the UK’s first-ever festival dedicated to addressing sexual assault, abuse, and consent through the arts and discussion. Since its founding, Clear Lines has run two multi-day festivals in 2015 and 2017 and a series of regular events, but remains a grassroots, voluntary organisation.

You can watch the video of our previous March 3rd event here: https://shame.bbk.ac.uk/blog/sexual-violence-and-criminal-justice-approaches-in-psychology-history-and-literature/

April 8, 2021