Writing into Grief with Bushra Rehman

This class is open to those who identify as BIPOC, Queer or both. To attend, please complete the form at the Ticket Link.

“When mothers are planted, daughters begin a furious blooming.”

Initiation, Kamilah Aisha Moon

“If I must die, you must live to tell my story…” Refaat Alareer

Grief leaves us speechless, throws us into the depths of silence. There are never the right words to say to those who are grieving. Or to explain to others the depths of our own grief. Grief is a door we are pushed through into a new world, a world we must live in. We are never the same. How do we write from these new selves? How can we lean into our writing practice to not only survive the storms of grief, but also the storms that are unleashed in those who we grieve alongside? How have writers before us grappled with personal and collective grief? How can we bloom furiously?

In this workshop, students will find inspiration from writers who have broken through the boundary of wordlessness, and join each other in our grief journeys, if only for a moment. We will center the work of Palestinian writers and allies and write of our own grief, side by side, and not so alone.

20 percent of proceeds will be donated to Meca for Peace.

Bushra Rehman’s dark comedy, Corona, was chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite books about NYC. She is co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the collection of poetry, Marianna’s Beauty Salon, described by Joseph O. Legaspi as “a love poem for Muslim girls, Queens, and immigrants making sense of their foreign home—and surviving.”

Her new novel, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, is a modern classic about what it means to be Muslim and queer in a Pakistani-American community.