CityLife has been busier than ever. Since 2020, we have presented at 11 academic events in the UK, EU and Hong Kong, submitted a PhD thesis about our stories, and been working on the follow up print anthology to our 2015 collection EastLife: An Anthology of Life Writing. Now, we are finally able to share with you the printed version of our Lockdown Stories!
The book launch will be at Toynbee Hall this Wednesday 12th April, 6.00-7.30pm. We will hear readings from Lockdown Stories and finally be able to chat and reconnect over drinks and snacks, after a long time of running the project remotely. We are delighted to be able to meet in person again and have invited all our community to celebrate with us – writers from the University of East Anglia and the University of East London, the storytellers from previous years, and of course our staff, will all be there. If you’d like to come, send us an email here, and scroll to the bottom of this post for venue details.
We are incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to keep connecting emerging writers and community elders through creative writing all during Covid, and we’ve worked hard to bring you this anthology of life writing created by our community of writers and storytellers. Thanks to Toynbee Hall for connecting us with East London elders, and to the University of East Anglia and University of Brighton for publishing us.
This June, you will also be able to find us at the British Academy Summer Showcase running a workshop about how we do ethical life writing in the community. The British Academy’s funding is what enabled us to undertake this phase of the project in the first place, so we are glad to be able to participate. If you want updates on our coming events, workshops and publications, follow us on Twitter.
