Janice Lee's Blog, page 2

$35 – $65

12-2PM PDT
Saturday, November 5, 2022

Online event

Sink into the season of shadow work with Janice Lee, who’ll guide us through a ritual for release, so we can better embody the magic of now.

Letting go isn’t about eliminating desire, ambition, or hope, but about unattaching ourselves from those hopes, about no longer clinging to a sense of control, about no longer seeing the world in a linear way. When we cling to the hope of a “better future,” we long for a sense of control that has never and will never exist. We only see what’s wrong now and wait for a future that is yet to come. We use all of our present energy waiting or trying to fix things because we are clinging to certain notions of justice or loss, but when we let go, we can live in the present moment, live with presence and awareness, have gratitude for everything that exists now, and imagine new futures that don’t depend on replicating the energies of the systems we seek to dismantle or the patterns we seek to heal from.

Letting go means breathing, living with open arms, allowing for openness and vulnerability and possibility, and accepting what is while still creating the impossible. This workshop, led by Janice Lee (published writer, teacher, shamanic healer) will consist of a guided meditation, a freewriting session, and a communal ceremony (that will be finished on your own).

Book Release at Skylight Books

1818 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027

In conversation w/ Andrea Quaid

More details TBA

A small group of six participants will spend two full days at Oregon’s beautiful Rockaway Beach, (only 1.5 hours away from Portland) in a house overlooking the ocean and the famous Twin Rocks and with a gorgeous deck to engage in some trauma informed guided workshops. In the retreat, co-facilitated by faculty, writers and professionals trained in understanding various manifestations of trauma and institutional betrayals we will immerse ourselves in deep discussions, meaningful writing, and thoughtful reflections on academic trauma, micro-aggressions, betrayals and healing. The co-facilitators will use anti-racist and justice-oriented approaches to the workshops and the goal of the retreat will be to focus on academic well-being and wellness by building some intentional community and coalition building to break through the isolation of experiencing academic trauma in the academy.

Lunch and light refreshments will be included and we will set aside some time to take a stroll on the beach (weather permitting).

10:30am – 5pm (includes lunch)

The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong. It is part of our own self and we are a part of its suffering wholeness. Until we go to the root of our image of separateness, there can be no healing. And the deepest part of our separateness from creation lies in our forgetfulness of its sacred nature, which is also our own sacred nature. –Thich Nhat Hanh

Identity is the factoring out and performative denial of our own perceptual immersion or entanglement with forces that generate and undo the boundaries with which we mark ourselves as different from others. – Bayo Akomolafe

How do different bodies and worlds articulate each other, or, how do we learn to be affected? How might writing, both private and public open up space while processing trauma or grief?

In the first segment of this workshop will explore how the presence of unresolved corporeal history and the impossibility of articulation or expression lead to new encounters in language, and encourage you to imagine new futures that don’t depend on replicating the energies of the systems we seek to dismantle or the patterns we seek to heal from. We will investigate and reframe our relationships with our trauma, imagine identity and being through the lens of assemblage and permeability, and explore new and porous ways of working towards individual and collective healing through writing prompts, guided meditation, and personal medicine work.

In the second segment of the workshop (post lunch) we will have some deep and honest conversations about locating the sites and various manifestations of our academic traumas and betrayals. By sharing our own stories and identifying our common struggles, we will work towards processing some fundamental questions. How do we protect ourselves? How do we strategize to move forward in ways that are meaningful for us? How do we build coalitions and acts of resilience that allow us to break through our isolations and heal? We will also discuss some opportunities and venues for public writing and publishing.

More info and to apply for retreat.

Thursday, August 11 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

What came first, the home or the desire to invade? A seasoned invader with multiple home invasions under their belt recounts their dark victories while offering tutelage to a new generation of ambitious home invaders eager to make their mark on the annals of criminal history. From initial canvasing to home entry, the reader is complicit in every strangling and shattered window. The fear is inescapable. Examining the sanctuary of the home and one of the horror genre’s most frightening tropes, Michael J. Seidlinger’s Anybody Home? (Clash Books) points the camera lens on to the quiet suburbs and its unsuspecting abodes, any of which are potential stages for an invader ambitious enough to make it the scene of the next big crime sensation. Who knows? Their performance just might make it to the silver screen. Seidlinger will be joined in conversation by Janice Lee, author of Separation Anxiety and Imagine a Death.

Aug 10 7-9PM

Harmony
221 SW Wade
Estacada, OR

More details

7-9PM

More details TBA

6PM
Corporeal Writing

More details TBD

Thursday, August 4 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
1005 w. burnside st. / portland, or 97209

In 2014, after the release of his debut novel, writer and publisher Kevin Sampsell switched gears and turned to a new creative obsession: making collage art. Initially influenced by the wild cutup language of William S. Burroughs, Sampsell soon discovered countless modern collagists that inspired him to take his art further and further from where it started. I Made an Accident (CLASH) showcases over 200 of Sampsell’s collages, exploring a range of styles: hilarious sight gags, subtle cultural jabs, elegant mysteries, colorful surprises, fragmented hauntings, and gloriously strange accidents. Janice Lee’s Separation Anxiety (CLASH) is a complex and entangled text that explores inherited trauma, the presence of ghosts, interspecies communication, the dream world, grief, and human/animal separation. Weaving wisdom from her shamanic practice and the interstices of language, and in the difficult moments anticipating the deaths of her beloved dog companions, Separation Anxiety marks the first collection of poetry from the acclaimed prose writer and is a meditation on inhabitation and existence beyond the human. Written over the course of eight years, Jay Ponteri’s Someone Told Me (Widow and Orphan House), combines associative self-portraiture, lyric essay, literary criticism, and memory-based work. The experimental prose toggles between descriptions of daily domestic life, responses to art — such as Richard Linklater’s Boyhood and Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things To Me — and dreams of artists and the art they make, including Robert Walser, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Anne Frank. Core themes include race, gender, heteronormativity, loneliness, shame, gentrification, attachment, parenthood, grief, and traumatic birth.

Event Details at IPRC Website

Eventbrite – RSVP

*This event is in-person. Masks + Proof of Vaccination Required. See more about the IPRC’s COVID Policy here.

July 9th 7-9pm

Please join the IPRC for the first reading of our Ledger Editions Readings. We’ll be joined by poets & writers Warren C. Longmire, Jeff Alessandrelli and Janice Lee. This event is made possible with support from the Kinsman Foundation.

More details TBD