Stories Spark Change: An evening with adrienne maree brown

Stories Spark Change: adrienne maree brown in conversation with Keneisha Charles on January 26, 6:00 - 7:30 pm ET, 2023

Join internationally renowned author adrienne maree brown and student leader and poet Keneisha Charles for an in-depth conversation about healing, pleasure, accountability and building a world based on consent.  If you are a Black, Indigenous or racialized artist who would like to perform at the event, you call to submit your poetry by January 16 at the form in this link.   (external link) 

Stories Spark Change Organizing Committee: Toronto Metropolitan University, Laurier University,  Carleton University, University of Guelph, University of Toronto, York University and Western University.

Stories Spark Change is part of Consent Action Week, an educational initiative held during the last week of January at universities across Ontario. The week is an opportunity for campus communities to create a dialogue about consent, pleasure, relationships and increase understanding of sexual violence. It's also an opportunity to raise awareness of both on and off-campus services. The Ontario University Sexual Violence Network created Consent Action Week. 

About Keneisha Charles:  (they/them) is an organizer and artist who strives to dream and co-create liberation through all they do. As a fat, Black, queer, non-binary, autistic, second-generation Caribbean, intersectionality is at the heart of their praxis. Their community work centres around Black liberation, collective care, environmental justice, disability justice, queer-trans liberation, and gender equity. As a poet, storyteller, and musician, they’re also passionate about the role of art in revolution. Their present work with the Consent Action Team helped launch #HighSchoolToo, a national student-led network that works to end sexual violence in secondary schools. They’re currently completing a Bachelor of Social Work degree with a double minor in Caribbean Studies and Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University.

About adrienne maree brown: adrienne maree brown is a writer. She is currently the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute.

adrienne is the author of Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation (external link) , We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice (external link) , the NY Times Bestseller Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (external link) , the radical self/planet help book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (external link)  published by AK Press in 2017. She is also the co-editor of the anthology Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements (external link)  with Walidah Imarisha, published by AK Press in 2015.

Her upcoming books include Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation (external link)  (AK Press, April 2021), Grievers (co-launching the Black Dawn Imprint of AK Press, Fall 2021), and Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Stories and Poems (AK Press, Winter 2021).

She has helped to cultivate work and thinking about Octavia Butler and Emergent Strategy, gathering a loose knit global network of people interested in reading Octavia’s work from a political and strategic framework. This is currently practiced through Octavia’s Parables (external link) , a podcast in which adrienne and Toshi Reagon read Octavia Butler’s work chapter by chapter. adrienne is also working with a large team to produce a tarot deck honouring Octavia’s wisdom.

In terms of writing, adrienne blogs regularly on this site, wrote the Pleasure Dome  (external link) column at Bitch magazine, and is a contributing editor for YES! magazine (external link) . Most of her writing these days is for book projects – and a lot of it is fiction!

adrienne was award the Auburn Institute’s Spiritual Resilience Fellowship in its inaugural year.

She attended the Clarion Sci Fi Writers Workshop (external link)  and the Hedgebrook Writers Residency (external link)  in 2015, and Voices of Our Nation (external link)  in 2014 as part of the inaugural Speculative Fiction Workshop. She was a 2013 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow (external link)  and a 2013 and 2015 Knights Arts Challenge winner, writing and generating science fiction in and about Detroit. She was the Ursula Le Guin Feminist Sci Fi Fellow (external link) , and a Sundance/Time Warner 2016 Artist Grant Recipient (external link) .

adrienne studied with generative somatics Teacher Training  (external link) for a decade to deepen her healing, doula and facilitation work. She is part of the Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (external link)  team, at the intersection of political education, community organizing, somatics and black love.

adrienne was the facilitator of the founding year of the Detroit Narrative Agency (external link)  (DNA), supporting Detroiters to shift the narratives of the city towards justice and liberation. She has facilitated the internal healing and visionary development of organizations throughout the movement (most recently BYP100, Movement for Black Lives, the Rising Majority and Black Lives Matter. She has also worked with Building Equity and Alignment for Impact Initiative (external link) , Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, Chorus Foundation, Correctional Association of NY, Young Women United, Positive Women’s Network, Black Mesa Water Coalition, INCITE!, the Young Women’s Empowerment Project in Chicago, New Orleans Parents Organizing Network, ColorofChange.org and Detroit Summer).

adrienne was a co-facilitator for the Detroit Food Justice Task Force (external link) , facilitator for Detroit Future (external link) , and the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition (external link) , as well as part of the faculty for the Center for Whole Communities (external link) . She partnered with Engage to facilitate a year-long Community of Practice on Networks and Decentralizing Leadership, 2011-2012.

adrienne was the executive director of The Ruckus Society (external link)  from 2006-2010, and sat on their board through 2012. She was also a National Co-Coordinator for the 2010 US Social Forum (external link) . Though she no longer does board work, adrienne is proud to have spent time on social justice organization boards including The Ruckus Society, Allied Media Projects (external link) , Third Wave Foundation, and Common Fire (external link) , as well as many others.

adrienne began her work life at the Harm Reduction Coalition, and was a co-founder of the League of Pissed Off/Young Voters (and co-editor of How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office), a graduate of the Somatics and Social Justice Cohort, Somatics and Trauma year-long, Rockwood’s Art of Leadership year-long training, and Robert Gass’s Art of Change year-long training, adrienne is obsessed with learning and developing models for action, community strength, movement building and transformation.