Fragmentation as narrative cripping: a creative writing workshop with Char Heather

Thursday 28 September (1700-1800)

Fragmentation is a common enough occurrence in texts that grapple with, or are informed by, chronic illness. Across memoir, autotheory and fiction, texts are pieced together in a fragmentary mode. When the narrative arc worships the beauty of causality, coherence and closure, what can the fragment do to disrupt these notions? What is refracted when we hold a shard to the light?

Moving away from a postmodernist view of the fragment, this workshop examines a crip methodology of fragmentation, informed by chronic illness and the texts that communicate its experience.

Bio:

Char Heather is writer, researcher and workshop facilitator. They run 'the remote body', a digital space for arts and writing events that centre crip, chronically ill and disabled people. Their work has appeared in SPAM, The Polyphony, FDBNHLLT and Lighthouse Press among others, with creative critical work forthcoming with Lassitude Zine and Futch Press. Char is a PhD candidate at the University of York, researching chronic illness informed texts in relation to narrative shapes beyond the arc.