News Details
Writing Workshop for Formerly Incarcerated Dec. 3
Oceanside Public Library, in partnership with MiraCosta College's Transitions Program and Service Learning Program, is hosting a free writing workshop for formerly incarcerated people on Saturday, December 3, at 12:00 p.m. This event will be held in the Civic Center Library, Courtyard and Community Rooms at 330 N. Coast Highway. Lunch will be provided by the MiraCosta Service Learning & Volunteer Center. Advanced registration is required. Register at https://tinyurl.com/45ftr34d.
The writing workshop will be taught by Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy. Dr. Roy is a professor of English Literature at California State University, Los Angeles, where he has taught for the past fifteen years. He is the founder of WordsUncaged, an organization that provides a platform for incarcerated artists and writers to engage with the public, through book publishing, art exhibits and digital media. WordsUncaged currently has programs in five prisons across California, and one on in Texas, serving over 2,000 incarcerated men and women since its inception. Bidhan is also the co-founder and faculty director of the first in-person BA degree at Los Angeles County Prison, Lancaster, and at California Institution for Women. He currently serves as Vice President of California Humanities, and is a board member of The Fair Chance Project, and rapper YG’s foundation, 4Hunnid Waze.
The workshop writing experiences serve as a vehicle for formerly incarcerated people to share their community cultural wealth and personal voice for advocacy. This workshop is designed to promote healing and transformation for those who have experienced incarceration by telling their stories in writing and to offer tools to help in the process. Workshop participants will receive a free copy of the book The Sentences that Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison, a project of Pen America. Dr. Thao Ha, Sociology Professor, and Beatriz Palmer, MA Director of Service Learning, will assist facilitating the connection of student work to employability and community engagement.
Oceanside Community Leader Kellie O. Davis will explore with workshop participants how to process trauma as they engage in writing. Ms. Davis has over 25 years of experience in the entertainment and journalism industries as a producer, content creator, writer, director, filmmaker, and creative developer. She is also a Trauma Incident Reduction facilitator, working with youth and adults who have been system-impacted through a trauma-informed lens. In 2011, a stage play Ms. Davis wrote, Transitions: A Trilogy of One-Act Plays, garnered five NAACP Theatre Awards nominations, winning Best Playwright Local and Best Ensemble. More recently, Ms. Davis has been working with programs like Designing Creative Futures, a job training internship program initiated by California Lawyers for the Arts, for formerly incarcerated people in Los Angeles and San Diego County who wish to pursue careers in the arts.
Registration is required. Register at https://tinyurl.com/45ftr34d or call (760) 435-5586 for more information. This workshop is the first installment of a larger project titled Stories of the Formerly Incarcerated: An Arts and Letters Showcase that is funded by the MiraCosta College Foundation Innovation Grant. Support for this program is also provided by The Friends of the Oceanside Public Library. The Oceanside Public Library aims to empower the community by promoting literacy, information access, civic engagement, cultural inclusiveness and openness to new ideas. Visit www.oceansidepubliclibrary.com for more info about Library programs and services.
