Events & Workshops

Please be mindful of your time zone as all times listed are Saskatchewan time. Find your time zone here: https://dateful.com/time-zone-converter

Accessibility measures in this event:

• Live auto -captions through Zoom during the live event
• (TBD) A read-along copy of the presenters talk available during the live event only
• Presenter self-descriptions
• This event will be recorded, captioned, and made available for 30 days (until December 5, 2024) on the SWG YouTube channel following the event: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRAIIcrpQW0NcY6ZM0GGSzw
• Transcript of the event available upon request

To register for this online event, please visit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wW46018BTPmyYHSXofWgLg

First Draft: Conversations on Writing is an online talk series that dives into themes that affect our writing lives. Writing helps us to understand things and to communicate these findings to our audience, even if our audience is ourselves. Sometimes we are driven by these themes, other times they’re the things that hold us back – what we learn through the process can be revolutionary. The quest to be understood unifies all writers.

This event features a 15-minute talk presented by Cat C. Haines. Following the talk is an interview conversation with Kai Cheng Thom to dig deeper into the event theme.

Participants are welcome to submit questions in advance of the event to swgevents@skwriter.com.

Writing Desire

 “(everything that is written exists)” - Monique Wittig

In this talk, which explores Haines’ body of writing spanning academia, Minecraft, and zines, she discusses how she uses desire, affect, and auto-theoretical writing as a means to not only understand and theorize around her experiences, but create new embodied possibilities in the material world. Through a discussion of the archive, the politics of citation, and the limit(lessness)s of our affective imagination, this talk affirms writing as a means of world-building, and joy-making.

Presenter

Cat C. Haines is an autistic and transsexual dyke, an academic/artist/activist weirdo, and the author of “Trans Feminist Self Help Zine: Volume 0” with Graviton, in which she critically examines her post-surgically constructed body and sexuality. Cat’s interdisciplinary work is grounded in a trans feminist analysis of power, dyke politics of liberation, and an auto theoretical drive that seeks to ironically (miss-)interpret second-wave feminist texts towards trans liberation. Cat has an MA in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Regina.

Host

Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performer, facilitator, somatic coach, lasagna lover and wicked witch based in tkaronto/Toronto. She is the author of six books in various genres, including the Publishing Triangle Award-winning essay collection on Transformative Justice, I HOPE CHOOSE LOVE, the New York Times-featured picture book From the Stars In the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, and the recent Canadian bestseller Falling Back In Love With Being Human. Kai Cheng is the recipient of the Writers' Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Writers, and her work has been translated into many languages worldwide. A regular contributor to Canada's queer newspaper Xtra, she wrote a hundred editions of the advice column Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse, and she currently writes the political opinion column Dangerous Space. 

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