We award Outstanding TLA Organization of the Year to Community Building Art Works, a visionary non-profit organization making a huge difference in the world. Each week, CBAW offers lots of workshops in writing, visual arts and more for veterans and active military, their families and communities, and the general public. These workshops not only build connections, creativity, and mutual understanding and support, but help thousands of people struggling with emotional and physical injuries caused by trauma. CBAW is guided by a board of veterans from all four branches as well as established artists, military family members, and professionals.
We are proud to have Seema Reza, CBAW founder and CEO here. Seema is a poet, essayist, and deep-down TLAer – she served as chair of our TLA Network board and several Power of Words conferences, and also earned a BFA and MA from Goddard College on TLA. She began working with service members at the Walter Reed Army Medical center in 2010 and went on to create CBAW with Joe Merritt, an artist and facilitator who is medically retired from the United States Marine Corps.
Seema Reza says, “When you’ve experienced things that are out of the ‘norm’, it’s easy to feel totally isolated. Our programs give people the tools and space to talk about these things, first with people who feel the same way and then to people in their lives who are potentially very different from them. It’s how we begin to heal the fissures, and find ourselves experiencing belonging.”
Outstanding TLA Organization of the Year: Community Building Art Works, presented by John L. Swainston, a proud veteran, at the 2023 Power of Words conference
Here are the first five things I explain to writers who join my monologue play lab:
Your character may be inspired by you, but she is not you.
These monologues are not true stories told live without notes, like The Moth––your monologue will not be performed by you. It will be performed by an actor.
Your stories matter, and we will support each other to craft meaningful, powerful short monologues from your rough drafts and revisions––whether or not you have experience writing for the stage.
Our showcase will entertain, move, enlighten and inspire our audience.
Our showcase will help you see how your script is working, and whether or not you will make more changes for future production or publication.
The playwright Sarah Ruhl expresses beautifully the desire we bring to our seats in the theater before the curtain rises: “the theater is one of the few places left in the bright and noisy world where we sit in the quiet dark together, to be awake.”
Teaching Play Labs for writing stage monologues lets me pass on my passion for theatrical experiences to writers of all backgrounds. The form of monologue I teach is specific to theater––whether it’s happening on a real-life stage or a Zoom set. Stage monologues are not storytelling, like the Moth––true stories told live without notes. The playwright is not the “I” of stage monologues. The writer creates a character for the stage who is not her, but might be inspired by her life.
In theater, we embrace the what if of enchantment. We suspend our disbelief so we can be we involved in the spectacle. “The more you go to a theatre,” the playwright Lynn Nottage says, “the more you hear stories you aren’t necessarily familiar with, the more open you become.“
In writing monologues for the stage, a story begins as words on the page. The next stage of development is to have the monologue performed by an actor in front of an audience. In this monologue showcase, class participants who have been developing monologues over six weeks have the chance to see their writing performed by an actor for an audience so they can see, hear and feel how well their script is working, and discover whether or not revisions are needed.
As Maya Angelou says, “Our stories come from our lives and from the playwright’s pen, the mind of the actor, the roles we create, the artistry of life itself and the quest for peace.” In fact, a quest is what all of writers in my play labs experience. Each writer is on a quest for something vital and necessary. Let me give you a sense of how the entirety of a showcase becomes a chorus of voices of distinct characters, by offering one line from each monologue from my last showcase’s plays:
I have sought peace from the moment I first knew violence. It was August 3, 1960. I was slapped on my Black behind by a white man in a white mask while naked and wet, from the placenta you created for me to live inside your body.
Mother nature has taught me that a woman’s body sure has some power.
I didn’t come here to talk, or hear you defend yourself. I’m not letting you off the hook.
I was stunned. I never saw that coming. But boy did I act – I swung my backpack at him and got out of there as fast as I could.
Because I did what you said. I took a risk. I went where you told me to go last night.
I’m not sure I can do this! What if I forget everything I practiced?
Kelly DuMar, M.Ed. is a poet, playwright, and workshop leader who generates enlivening writing experiences for new and experienced writers. Author of four poetry collections, Kelly’s poems, photos and essays are published in many literary journals. Kelly is also author of Before You Forget— The Wisdom of Writing Diaries for Your Children. Her award-winning plays have been produced around the US and Canada, and are published by dramatic publishers. She founded and produced the Our Voices Festival of Women Playwrights at Wellesley College for twelve years, and she is a past president of Playwright’s Platform, Boston. For the past seven years, Kelly has led the week-long Play Lab Intensive at the annual conference of the International Women’s Writing Guild. Kelly is a certified psychodramatist, former psychotherapist, and Fellow in the American Society for Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama. Kelly hosts the monthly Open Mic with Featured Author for the Journal of Expressive Writing. You can learn more about Kelly, at www.kellydumar.com.
Everyone who begins a memoir does so in the hope that through telling their story, they will come to understand their lives more fully. And the process is valuable, whether or not the goal is a published book.
Purposeful memoir as a contemplative practice is different than journaling, because it’s more intentional: as we follow the spiraling elemental journey of purposeful memoir, we explore our lives in a fairly methodical fashion, starting with the Earth years of childhood, moving on through the Water years of adolescence and young adulthood, exploring the passions and challenges we face at all stages of life (Fire) and engaging in deep reflection, from our current vantage point, of the patterns in our lives, and how our experiences lead us into finding meaning and purpose for our lives going forward (Air).
The practice of purposeful memoir is multifaceted and multi-temporal, spiraling through past and present in an effort to create, through the process of writing, a solid foundation for the future. It’s also multidimensional: we can’t really understand our individual lives if we don’t take into account our time and place, the broader social and physical landscapes that shaped us.
Through years of leading individuals and groups on this elemental journey of purposeful memoir, I’ve come to realize that this process has alchemical power. Through writing our life stories, we have the potential to transmute the inevitable sorrows and pain of existence into something more positive—the philosopher’s stone of understanding, which truly is worth its weight in gold.
The alchemical gold we seek in purposeful memoir is understanding—of self, society and world.
In writing my own memoir (a process that took about eight years and went through many changes in direction), I came to realize the value of the various trials and tribulations that life had put me through as an adult. As I wrote inWhat I Forgot, “I came from a family, and a culture, that always tried to avoid shocks of any kind—that held comfort as the highest value.”
But my most important teachers, like Gloria Anzaldúa, “always insisted that we need precipitating shocks to push us to move in new directions and grow.” Like Rumi, who famously observed that “the wound is the place where the light enters you,” Anzaldua valorizes pain as a source of wisdom and healing.
I didn’t really understand this until I went through the process of purposeful memoir and discovered that I was able to transmute my struggles—for example, the end of my marriage and my frustration with my career—into a deeper understanding of myself and my culture.
On a planetary level, it was only by wrestling with the scary reality of climate disruption that I was shocked into remembering my deep childhood connection with and love for the natural world, which I had been socialized into forgetting. Purposeful memoir enabled me to rekindle my fiery passion for the natural world, and thereby find a renewed commitment to environmental stewardship, the sense of purpose that had been so strong in me as a child.
The alchemical gold we seek in purposeful memoir is understanding—of self, society and world. The elemental journey—exploring childhood (Earth), youth (Water) and the passions and trials of all life stages (Fire), through a spiraling process of deep reflection (Air)—leads us to an understanding of what we value and want more of in life, and what negative baggage we want to jettison as we move forward.
In my Alchemy of Purposeful Memoir workshops, I offer opportunities to explore different stages of your life from the vantage point of positive qualities like Joy, Love, Strength, Courage, all of which are presented in my latest award-winning book, Purposeful Memoir as a Quest for a Thriving Future.
My writing catalysts are meant as provocations and stimulations rather than instructions; thus you can’t get it wrong.
Each workshop session starts with Lists, a tried and true way to call up and organize a lot of memories from different stages of your life. These lists can be returned to again and again as sources of memories that can be developed into the stories of your life.
Next, the Scene catalysts invite you to develop an item on your list into a full-fledged story, using as much detail as possible. Should you decide to begin weaving your stories into a longer, more fully developed account, these short scenes can serve as narrative entry points. At this stage, the assumption is that you are writing as an explorer, looking to generate new material and find out what gold may be stored in the nuggets of your memories.
To this end, I use the focused free-write approach, inviting you to write freely, in short timed bursts of anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, not worrying about form or grammar. Write to find out what you know, and to get images, sensations and emotions down on the page. You’ll have plenty of time later to expand, revise and refine the scenes that come up for you through this free-form initial process.
After the Scene catalysts come the invitations to Alchemy,where we explore the potent boundary between what is and what could be. It’s a powerful practice to give yourself permission to imagine paths not taken; to wave your magic wand and create different outcomes at key turning point moments in your life story.
Although it is important, ultimately, to speak your truth in memoir, there are times when venturing into fiction will help you understand your truth more deeply. When we invite some alchemical magic along on the journey of purposeful memoir, sparks start to fly and we find the courage to reach down and bring to light the more profound revelations of our life story.
Finally, each session ends with a catalyst for Reflection, inviting you to do some informal writing reflecting on the mini-journey of exploration you have just taken. In my training as a writing teacher through the Bard Writing & Thinking Institute, process writing is a key strategy: we are encouraged to reflect in writing on the written inquiry we’ve just undertaken. I give specific catalysts for these reflections, which are meant to be open-ended starting points that you can take wherever your thoughts lead you.
All of these catalysts are meant as provocations and stimulations rather than instructions, and thus you can’t get it wrong. The only requirement is that you undertake your alchemical journey of purposeful memoir with an open heart and the sincere intention to probe your life experience deeply and honestly, using writing as your vehicle and these catalysts as your guide.
In a profound sense, we are the world.
Although the journey of purposeful memoir starts from personal experience, all of us exist as individuals embedded in the larger social and planetary spheres that surround us. We are the world, in a profound sense that most of us are only just beginning to realize. The process of purposefully revisiting our lives through writing memoir is thus a form of world-making: as I re-member my life, I re-member the world.
At each step of the journey we have a choice in how we approach this work: will I write to bemoan my hardships and mistakes, or will I write to share what I have learned from my life, for the benefit of others coming along behind or alongside me on the trail? In either case, we are not shying away from the tough passages in our lives, but the emphasis is on transmuting our negative experiences into the philosopher’s stone of understanding, with which we can brighten our own lives, going forward, and perhaps provide some wisdom that will lighten others’ lives as well.
The alchemical journey of purposeful memoir starts with the personal, and radiates out into the political and planetary spheres. Saluting the positive and transmuting the negative, we can and will transform our collective relation to the world we make together. It’s my conviction that as more of us undertake this journey, we will improve the well-being of the entire Earth community.
Come write with me, and see for yourself! Register here.
I am overjoyed to begin this year as your new TLAN coordinator and am grateful for your kindness and grace as I transition into this new role. Joining TLAN is especially important now as we frequently witness words evolve and change in our society saturated by incessant information. Thus, I am excited to serve you and the vision of TLAN, and I look forward to what this new year brings…
Like workshops and classes! With your time divided among so many different things, why not dedicate some of it to igniting your passions and nourishing your hopes? This year, TLAN is offering a variety of opportunities sure to benefit you personally, professionally, and communally. Start the year off with one of our January offerings:
Pathways To Wholeness: Mindful Writing Toward Momentous Leaps Of Meaning with Marianela Medrano
Flash Fiction Forms: Exploring Elements Of Craft Through Archetypes & Metaphors In Dreams, Tarot, & Fairy Tales with Riham Adly
This Is Who I Am: Exploring Personal Identity Through Poetry And Art with Angie Ebba
What Next? Launching Your Work In The World with Caits Meissner
Again, thank you for welcoming me to TLAN! Please do not hesitate to contact me with any thoughts, questions, or general chit-chat at tlan.coordinator@gmail.com.
Save 20% off the regular fee on each of these New Year’s offerings – three amazing classes taught by a trio of transformative language artists, plus a brand new weekend retreat with master teacher Caits Meissner and a wonderful weekend retreat with TLAN favorite Jennifer Browdy.
Medrano is a Dominican writer, poet, and psychotherapist, with aPh.D. in psychology, whose practice includes Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness, Transpersonal & Integral Psychotherapy. Medrano has extensive training in Mindfulness Based-Stress Reduction with Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli, and Mindful Eating with Jan Chozen-Bays and Char Wilkins. She has taught at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, now Sophia University, in Palo Alto, California, and as a visiting scholar at Goddard College.
Her work as a poetry therapist was recognized with an outstanding award from the National Association for Poetry Therapy. in 2007. She is also a mentor/supervisor for the International Federation of Biblio/Poetry Therapy.
Through the Palabra Training Center, she offers on-site and remote programs for individuals and groups in poetry therapy, applying literature and psychology to help participants forge their own paths to wholeness. She also presents, with poet Annie Finch, Woman, Poetry, and Spirituality at the Garrison Institute. Her Four Pathways to Wholeness workshop has been presented at the Expressive Therapies Summit in NYC, the Association for Contextual Behavioral Studies World Conference in Seville, Spain in 2017, the National Association for Poetry Therapy Annual Conference, and the Mount Carmel College in Bangalore, India.
Her individual publications include: Oficio de Vivir (Buho,1986), Los Alegres Ojos de la Tristeza (Buho,1987), Regando Esencias/ The Scent of Waiting(Alcance,1998), Curada de Espantos (Torremozas, 2002), Diosas de la Yuca, (Torremozas, 2011), Prietica (Alfaguara, 2013). Rooting (Owlfeather Collective, 2017). Her poetry has been translated into Italian and French. In 2015 she did a TEDTALK at Ursuline College.
In 2013 Adly’s story, “The Darker Side of the Moon” won the MAKAN award. She was short-listed several times for the Strand International Flash Fiction Contest. Riham is a Best of the NET and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work is included in the “Best Micro-fiction 2020” anthology. Her flash fiction has appeared in over fifty journals such as Litro Magazine, Lost Balloon, The Flash Flood, Bending Genres, The Citron Review, The Sunlight Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Menacing Hedge, Flash Frontier, Flash Back, Ellipsis Zine, Okay Donkey, and New Flash Fiction Review among others. Riham has worked as an assistant editor in 101 words magazine and as a first reader in Vestal Review magazine. Riham is the founder of the “Let’s Write Short Stories” and “ Let’s Write That Novel” in Egypt. She has taught creative writing all over Cairo for over five years with the goal of mentoring and empowering aspiring writers in her region. Riham’s flash fiction collection “Love is Make-Believe” was released and published in November 2021 by Clarendon House Publications in the UK.
Ebba is a queer disabled writer, educator, and performer who has taught writing workshops and performed across the United States. She has poetry published in Closet Cases, Queering Sexual Violence, and several literary magazines. She’s also a published essayist with a focus on writing about health and disability, body positivity, and relationships. Angie teaches poetry and writing online and in person. Angie believes strongly in the power of words to help us gain a better understanding of ourselves, to build connections and community, and to make personal and social change. Angie can be found online at rebelonpage.com.
Caits Meissner is running a very special offering for the Network in late January – don’t miss her weekend workshop (space is limited), What Next? Launching Your Work in the World. Meissner is the author of the illustrated hybrid poetry book Let It Die Hungry (The Operating System, 2016), and The Letter All Your Friends Have Written You (Well&Often, 2012), co-written with poet Tishon Woolcock. The recipient of multiple artist residencies and fellowships, including the BOAAT Writers Retreat and The Pan-African Literary Forum, Caits is widely published in literary journals including The Literary Review, Narrative, Adroit, Drunken Boat and The Offing. She has taught, consulted, and co-created extensively for over 15 years across a wide spectrum of communities, with a special focus on imprisoned people, women, and youth. Caits holds a BFA in Communication Design from Pratt Institute, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. She currently serves as the Prison and Justice Writing Program Manager at PEN America.
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, PhD is the founder of Transformative Language Arts, the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam’s Well, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. A beloved writing workshop facilitator and writing and Right Livelihood coach, she offers writing workshops widely, particularly for people living with serious illness, adults in transition, humans looking for greater connection with the earth, and poets and writers seeking their most courageous voice on the page and in their lives. She loves life-giving collaborations, including YourRightLivelihood.com with Kathryn Lorenzen, Bravevoice.com with Kelley Hunt, and TheArtofFacilitation.net with Joy Roulier Sawyer. She offers weekly “Care Packages for a Creative Life” through her Patreon page, and her long-time blog, “Everyday Magic” at CarynMirriamGoldberg.com.
Born hard-wired to make something (in art, music, and especially writing), Caryn’s long-time callings include writing as a spiritual and ecological path, yoga, cultivating a loving marriage, family, and community, and helping herself and others make and take leaps into the miraculous work of their lives. For over three decades, Caryn has worked with many arts and ecological/bioregional not-for-profit organizations as a grant-writer, fundraiser, staff or board member, and consultant on collaborative and community arts, group process, and better meetings. She lives in the country on land she and her husband, ecological writer Ken Lassman, have put in a conservation reserve and are restoring as prairie and woodlands.
Jennifer Browdy PhD is a professor of comparative literature and media arts at Bard College/Simon’s Rock and the Bard Open Society University Network. She coined the term “purposeful memoir” in her award-winning writer’s guides, Purposeful Memoir as a Quest for a Thriving Future (2022 Nautilus Gold Award) and The Elemental Journey of Purposeful Memoir: A Writer’s Companion (2017 Nautilus Silver Award). Her memoir, What I Forgot …And Why I Remembered, was one of six memoir finalists for the 2018 International Book Awards. The editor of three anthologies of global women’s writing and the online magazine Fired Up! Creative Expression for Challenging Times, she offers workshops in purposeful memoir along with coaching, manuscript review and publishing services at Green Fire Press. She is also the co-founder and host of the online community for writers, Birth Your Truest Story.
Join us in early December when TLA Network founder, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, and her colleague Kathryn Lorenzen offer an intimate, two-hour workshop focused on supporting you to make a living from the transformative language arts. Register now for Your Calling, Your Livelihood, Your Life: Making a Living from TLA, offered on Saturday, December 3, 2022.
Transformative Language Arts can be your way to make a living, follow your calling, and fill your life with meaning, connection, and even joy. You’ll write and map what’s calling at large and in particular, how to focus in on what the timing is right for now, and what next steps to consider. You’ll also explore what self-care and a community ethic of supporting each other can look like for you and yours. Finally, there will be time to talk about your questions and possibilities.
This wonderful workshop is sliding scale and has been offered as a fundraiser for the Network – your generosity will make a difference!
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, PhD, is the founder of Transformative Language Arts, author or editor of 24 books of poetry, fiction, memoir, and more, and with Kathryn Lorenzen, she leads Your Right Livelihood: The Work Art and Service You Love (YourRightLivelihood.com). A long-time community workshop facilitator and coach, she makes her living working with many communities and individuals, giving talks and readings, and collaborating with other Transformative Language Artists. Her other projects include Art of Facilitation classes with Joy Roulier Sawyer and Brave Voice writing and singing retreats with Kelley Hunt. More and her blog at CarynMirriamGoldberg.com
Kathryn Lorenzen is a career coach, creativity coach, songwriter, and poet. Her songs have appeared in feature films and TV series, and she writes for both self-expression and social change. With an earlier career in copywriting and marketing communications, she is now a career coach to freelance writers and artists seeking livelihood in support of their art. Kathryn now partners with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg as co-leader of Your Right Livelihood (YourRightLivelihood.com), and you can find more about Kathryn at KathrynLorenzen.com.
Presenting a showcase of recent work created by Kelly DuMar’s TLA Network class, Your Memoir as Monologue. We hope you will join us tomorrow, Wednesday, October 12, 2022, from 7-8:30PM EST.
In writing monologues for the stage, a story begins as words on the page. The next stage of development is to have the monologue performed by an actor in front of an audience. In this monologue showcase, class participants who have been developing monologues over six weeks will have the chance to see their writing performed by an actor for an audience––you.
Stella Adler called theater the “seeing place”––the place we come to see the truth about our lives and social situation. Oscar Wilde called theater “the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” And August Wilson was, “fascinated by the idea of an audience as a community of people who gather willingly to bear witness.” We invite you, our audience, to share in making dynamic theater with us, by being present for this showcase of brand new stage monologues. This intimate and powerful experience will present writing by class participants––read by actors––is part of the critical page-to-stage development process that all new plays need. Please join us, and share the vitality of your presence and your witness as our much-appreciated audience.
The show is free and open to the public – although donations are always welcome! – and will take place via the online video conferencing platform Zoom. A link to the show will be sent out the day of the event.
About the Director Kelly DuMar, M.Ed. is a poet, playwright, and workshop leader who generates enlivening writing experiences for new and experienced writers. Author of three poetry collections, girl in tree bark, Tree of the Apple, and All These Cures, Kelly is also author of Before You Forget— The Wisdom of Writing Diaries for Your Children. Kelly’s award winning plays have been produced around the US and Canada, and are published by dramatic publishers. She founded and produced the Our Voices Festival of Women Playwrights at Wellesley College for twelve years, and she is a past president of Playwright’s Platform, Boston. For the past seven years, Kelly has led the week-long Play Lab Intensive at the annual conference of the International Women’s Writing Guild. Kelly is a certified psychodramatist, former psychotherapist, and Fellow in the American Society for Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama. Currently, Kelly serves on the board & faculty of Transformative Language Arts Network. You can learn more about Kelly at www.kellydumar.com.
About the Actors
Jamila Capitman, MA. is a Staff Counselor at Simmons University, a Youth Development Specialist and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultant with VISIONS Inc., Jamila is the former Director of Multicultural Student programming at Milton Academy and was an educator in the Boston Public Schools. Jamila is an actress, playwright, and producer/director, with a Master’s degree in Drama Therapy from Lesley University who works on various creative independent projects that center her passions for beauty, justice, and transformative healing.
Franci DuMar is a member of the playback theatre troupe, True Story Theater, in Arlington, MA. She has trained, performed, taught and conducted playback theatre in a wide variety of community and therapeutic settings over the past ten years. She has a Master’s Degree in Expressive Arts from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, in drama therapy and mental health counseling. She lives in the Boston Area.
Tonya Quillen is an Actor, Licensed Psychotherapist, Trainer of Psychodrama, Sociometry and Group Psychotherapy, Clinical Supervisor, and an Executive Leadership Coach. Prior to pursuing her career as a Psychotherapist, Tonya performed professionally for many years. She graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy where she double majored in Theatre and Voice and then continued her studies at Florida State University. After completing graduate school and training as a Psychodramatist, Tonya co-founded a Playback Theatre troupe where she served as Artistic Director, Conductor, Actor and Musician. Tonya also develops scenarios and enacts characters in role-training workshops for law enforcement officers, threat assessment professionals, and security operations personnel to provide them with the experience needed to effectively interact with, and interview, persons of interest.
Elizabeth Rose spent a considerable part of her life as an actor, both in film and industrial work along with local theater in Massachusetts. In addition, Elizabeth has written both screenplays and theatrical works as well as a popular blog that captures the life of a midlife woman. She works as an editor supporting other writers, and as a mediator, helping couples end their marriages while sustaining their families. She also works with couples who choose to stay together and want to explore new ways to communicate and strengthen their relationship. She is a Mother, Partner, Friend, Sister, Daughter, Dancer, Dog and Cat lover. Elizabeth lives in Ojai with her husband, spirit cat and soul dog.
Riham is an award-winning fiction writer and editor from Giza, Egypt. In 2013 her story “The Darker Side of the Moon” won the MAKAN award. In 2019 she was long-listed in Brilliant Flash Fiction’s food-themed contest and in 2020 her story “How to Tell a Story from the Heart in Proper Time” was a winner and was included in the 2020 Best Micro-Fiction Anthology. In 2022 her story “Two Peas in a Pod” won second place in the Strand International Flash Fiction Contest.
Riham was nominated for the Pushcart in 2019 and was nominated for Best of the Net in 2019, 2020, and 2021. Her flash fiction has appeared in over sixty journals such as Litro Magazine, Lost Balloon, The Flash Flood, Bending Genres, The Citron Review, The Sunlight Press, Flash Fiction Magazine, Menacing Hedge, Flash Frontier, Flash Back, Ellipsis Zine, Okay Donkey, and New Flash Fiction Review among others.
Riham’s was the first female from Africa and the Middle East to have a debut flash fiction collection published in English. Her collection “Love is Make-Believe” was published in November 2021 by Clarendon House publications in the U.K.
Riham has worked as an assistant editor in 101 words magazine and as a first reader in Vestal Review magazine. She’s worked as a writing coach and developmental editor accepting mainly manuscripts by local writers for whom English is their second language.
Riham offers her signature workshops “ Flash Fiction: Writing From the Subconscious” and “ Flash Fiction: Writing From Where We Dream” through various platforms, including the TLA Network. She is also the founder of “ Riham’s Cairo Book Club” and the “Let’s Write Short Stories” workshops in Egypt.
My colleagues at the gallery find it amusing that I stand in awe and silent dialogue before Majd Kurdieh‘s paintings or look around for new ones each week. The merchandise promoting his work has grown from cards and mugs, to include fridge magnets, coasters, and now T-shirts, which are all displayed at the entrance of the quaint café attached to the gallery. Kasha who works there informs me when new products arrive and translates the Arabic script for me.
Kurdieh is a Syrian refugee and currently lives alone in a small house with just two rooms in the mountainous area of Lebanon, close to the Mediterranean Sea. His art practice dominates his life and in his free time, he enjoys fishing. His images are whimsical and childlike and include Arabic text inspired by his love of books, poetry, and music.
Majd Kurdieh
The animated characters Kurdieh created, the Fasaeen – which means ‘tiny people’ in Arabic – are a boy (Fasoon) and a girl (Fasooneh). They look deceptively innocent and have an unusual gang of friends, including a hyena and a monster. Kurdieh calls the gang ‘the very scary butterfly gang’ and each painting offers a narrative of how they work together, to steal sadness from the world and replace them with flowers. The butterfly, Kurdieh explains, is a fragile creature, so our instinct is to approach it delicately, afraid to harm it and in this context, he uses the word ‘scary’. His message is that we should approach each person in our lives with that kind of fear – of knowing that unless we are cautious, we can do them harm.
The Fasaeen are often painted with missing arms, which to me suggests a feeling of helplessness and perhaps the artist’s as well, but Kurdieh’s intention is to portray connection; that when two people truly connect, they must connect with their hearts. The little girl is the leader of the pack and he relates most with her. The characters act as a conduit through which his stories flow and he says that they seem to control him. The narrative develops as the painting progresses and he does not begin with the end in mind.
Majd Kurdieh
I am unsure exactly what it is that draws me to his work. I wonder if it is my Syrian roots on my father’s side or the simplicity of his work that makes one feel that if he can paint, well then, so can I. Perhaps it is the stories of war, displacement, and trauma that have come knocking on my door since I began my clinical placement as a student of Art Psychotherapy. Something in me awakened as they revealed their stories, the impact of war, the senseless loss of lives, and the strength of the human spirit to survive. They had left in a hurry and were not prepared for what lay ahead.
Irrespective of our circumstances or where we live, there is a need to know in our innermost being, who we are, and where we belong, and in the comfort and safety of that knowledge we no longer just survive, but we begin to thrive. Majd Kurdieh stays anchored to his roots through the stories and poems of his favorite authors. Books occupy a big part of his home and are a tangible reminder of where he came from.
The initial paintings of Kurdieh seem hurried and the words of the poem look as if they were placed without much thought of alignment. Some of the words in a few paintings have even been crossed out with a line running through them, as if the artist is granting permission to make mistakes. The rawness of his work is appealing. I was intrigued to learn how his method of drawing the monster morphed intentionally from the way he draws the dove. Nuances like this draw the viewer in for a closer look at Kurdieh’s work, and new layers of meaning are revealed.
The first series, ‘Stealing Sadness’ showed the characters outlined with bold black lines. The removal of those boundaries in his second series ‘Surrender to Love’, was a simple but inspired way to visually free the characters of the restrictions they faced, and empower them to do more.
For the past two years, I have been facilitating creative art and writing workshops in collaboration with an art gallery in Dubai, and of all the artists I have seen exhibited here, Majd Kurdieh and his series ‘Stealing Sadness’ remains my favorite.
Kurdieh’s poems written in Arabic on the paintings are replaced in later work with more concise statements like “the country is the wound and you are the honey”. Other than the motley crew of animals, most of the repeated motifs in his paintings are from nature and include the sun, moon, clouds, flowers -particularly the poppy.
Majd Kurdieh
Majd Kurdieh
There is an invitation to look at what is within us in his paintings and the condition of the heart appears to be a popular theme. An elephant with the heart of a butterfly has the message, “If your heart is as light as a butterfly, anyone can fly”. In another, the elephant is seen to have the heart of a fish.
Kurdieh is in no way bitter about the path that has led him to Lebanon. Art making and poetry have served to channel his pain through the Fasaeen, transforming it into a message of hope and optimism. He is the best-selling artist at the gallery here in Dubai and his work is gaining global attention and popularity.
Majd Kurdieh
The very scary butterfly gang Kurdieh says, lives in the hearts of each one of us and the artist poignantly tasks us with the responsibility of finding ways to take away the sadness from the lives of people and make the world a better place.
Renu Sarah Thomas is an Art Psychotherapist (British Association of Art Therapists – BAAT) and workshop facilitator. She has several years of experience in introducing and conducting programmes that promote the personal, social, and emotional well-being of individuals in Dubai, India, and Scotland and adapting these programmes to suit the cultural climate of the region.
She is a self-taught artist and although Renu finds pottery making and acrylic painting centering and enjoyable, it is through writing that she has found liberation and empowerment. Her growing areas of interest include displacement and trauma and through her spontaneous creative art and creative writing workshops, she passionately encourages people to pursue some form of creative expression, embrace their authentic selves, and intentionally find their purpose.
Born in India and raised in England, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia, Dubai has been her home for the past 20 years.
In the midst of a very hot summer here in the eastern continental United States, it is ever more clear how needed and significant our collective voices are in this time of increasing political turmoil, attacks on our constitutional rights, escalating war, and the climate crisis.
The decision to remain hopeful in the face of so much challenge is a powerful tool – as radio host Krista Tippett recently shared in a New York Times interview: “I talk about hope being a muscle. It’s not wishful thinking, and it’s not idealism. It’s not even a belief that everything will turn out OK. It’s an imaginative leap, which is what I’ve seen in people like John Lewis and Jane Goodall. These are people who said: I refuse to accept that the world has to be this way. I am going to throw my life and my pragmatism and my intelligence at this insistence that it could be different and put that into practice.”
We invite you, the poets, journalists, writers, novelists, songwriters, playwrights, and other brilliant wordsmiths, to join us as we set our sites on hope, speak truth to power, and harness our collective courage to step beyond what has been familiar and comfortable to move much more quickly and in much bigger ways. The time is now.
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