167: Incorporating anti-racist practices into writing workshops and joyful creation with writer, Isabel O’Hara Walsh

Artist Soapbox * Audio fiction + Creative Process

Isabel O'Hara Walsh leads writing workshops through the Redbud Writing Project. Redbud offers classes virtually and around the Triangle on topics like Writing the Novel, Experimental Fiction, and one that Isabel and I talk about, Joyful Creation – how to get your writing juices flowing when staring at that blank page.

Isabel shares about their experience incorporating anti-racist practices into the workshop and feedback processes. An important resource in helping to shape this framework is the book The Anti-Racist Writer’s Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom by Felicia Rose Chavez. Chavez’s book challenges, in her words, “art’s politics of power and privilege” and lays bare the ways that traditional – read: white-supremacist – methods of running workshops work to silence the voices of writers of color and writers with other marginalized identities.

Isabel and Mara Thomas also discuss another Artist Soapbox favorite when it comes to rethinking the feedback process: Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process. Lerman’s work helps tailor the feedback process to help the creator retain agency over their work and create an environment where they get the feedback they’re actually looking for rather than an onslaught of unfiltered opinions.

BIO:

Isabel O’Hara Walsh (she/they) is a writer, teacher, and practicing witch. A graduate of the MFA program in fiction at North Carolina State University, Isabel teaches fiction writing at the Redbud Writing Project, has published short stories in Pastel Pastoral and The Metaworker, and is at work on her second novel. Through her business EdgeWise Witch, Isabel offers transformative 1-1 and group work sessions that incorporate Tarot, writing, and other ritual to clarify the right path forward for her clients.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

IG: @isabeloharawalsh

Website: redbudwriting.org | www.edgewisewitch.com

MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE:

The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom by Felicia Rose Chavez

Critical Response Process by Liz Lerman

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