Brainstarring: Meteors and Memory

a free Zoom event with Corporeal Writing’s Domi Shoemaker, Katie Guinn, and Lidia Yuknavitch
Saturday July 27th 2:00-4:00pm Pacific
(a recording will be made available afterwards to all registrants)

Meteor showers are celestial events that emerge from a radiant point in the sky. Among our favorites: The Lyrids, Aquarrids, Perseids, Orionids, Leonids and Geminids. (By the way: you can find a schedule of upcoming meteor showers here.). These space showers happen when the Earth passes through interplanetary debris, like comet particles. Which reminds us how it feels to enter memory, as if we go back into a kind of giant cosmic debris field filled with pieces, traces, retinal flashes, feelings, dream bits from our experiences.

Come play with Corporeal Writing’s Domi Shoemaker, Katie Guinn, and Lidia Yuknavitch in the realm of Meteors and Memory, where we will put our ideas into orbit and into dialogue, traversing cosmic writing portals together.

Domi J. Shoemaker is a gender-free writer who lives in Portland, Or. Domi spent several years with Tom Spanbauer's Dangerous Writers, and started the quarterly reading series, Burnt Tongue in 2012, just before snatching a gig with Lidia Yuknavitch for the launch of Dora: A Headcase. While finishing an MFA in Writing from Pacific University in 2015, Lidia asked Domi to help create the Corporeal Writing Seasonal Creative Lab Series. Domi is now the Seasonal Workshop Lead-Facilitator, Corporeal Center Manager, as well as prime holder of space.

Katie Collins-Guinn (she/they) is an artist, mother, designer, illustrator and writer, spouse, flower gardener, North Portlander and dirt digger. Her adult coloring book The Stoner Babes was published in 2018 with Microcosm Publishing, which celebrates diversity alongside the transcendental and medicinal qualities of cannabis. She’s spent time as a contributing freelance writer for the Portland Mercury and has been published in Pacific Stone Zine, Call Me [Brackets], Entropy, Nailed Magazine and others. She holds an undergrad degree of Fine Arts in Apparel Design. Katie oversees design elements, merchandise and other creative and logistical happenings at Corporeal Writing, and leads the young mammals collaborations. She co-parents 21 roses and counting.

Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the bestselling novels Thrust, The Book of Joan, The Small Backs of Children, and Dora: A Headcase, as well as the critically acclaimed anti-memoir The Chronology of Water (adapted for feature film directed by Kristen Stewart) and a study on war and narrative, Allegories of Violence. Her polyvocal book The Misfit's Manifesto is based on her TED Talk, "On the Beauty of Being a Misfit," now with over 4 million views. She is a three time Oregon Book Award winner, A PNBA recipient, and a grateful writer who has benefited from grants from Poets and Writers, Literary Arts, and The Regional Arts and Culture Council. She is the founder of Corporeal Writing in Portland, Oregon where she collaborates and agitates, and she teaches in the low residency MFA programs at Sierra Nevada University and Goddard. She lives in Oregon near water. She is a very good swimmer.