Bishop and Belcher
On August 24 and 31, we are running Shut Up and Write, Toronto as part of the festival Bricks & Glitter. Our events are open to all, as always—and in line with the focus of Bricks & Glitter, we especially welcome two-spirit, trans, and queer people. This in part speaks to the roots of our group, which has always had strong involvement by queer and/or gender non-conforming people––as organisers and participants.
THE DRILL: We gather together with our laptops and/or notebooks and pens. We each have something we need to write, whether it be a poem, essay, grant application, part of a novel or a script or a dissertation or a zine, etc. We write for 25 mins at a time, with social breaks in between.
Shut Up and Write meet ups place the typically solitary activity of writing into a more social space. Here, everyone writes and there are no audiences. We’re all practicing peers, regardless of our credentials, our genres, and whether we self-identify as writers.
To learn about our weekly meet ups (or promote your own!), join Shut Up and Write, Toronto and GTA. For FAQs, visit https://shutupandwritetoronto.wordpress.com/faqs/. Feel free to post questions to this Facebook event too :)
BRICKS AND GLITTER: "We are a trouble of queers who believe in creativity and collectivity, in imagining together a world worth living in. Intersectional by default and critical by necessity, we are trying to create a space for us all of us, to world build together, and to practice the future in the now. Bricks & Glitter is a community arts festival, celebrating two-spirit, trans and queer talent, ingenuity, caring, anger, and abundance." https://bricks-glitter.com/
VENUE: The Bishop and Belcher is at the corner of Church and Hayden Streets (but enter off Hayden Street). We will meet in the back area (near the kitchen doors), which has various seating booths. The venue is a pub with breakfast and lunch menus. Wifi is available. There are electrical outlets (but if you're using a laptop, it's still best to charge it beforehand). You may wish to bring headphones in case you find any background noise distracting.
ACCESSIBILITY: — The venue has been included as an accessible venue on the blog AccessTO. Details, including some measurements, are here: http://www.accessto.ca/home/2014/04/27/the-bishop-and-belcher. In the past, we have seen a wheelchair user and a walker user at the venue — This event is free. You can order food or beverages but this isn't essential — Please refrain from wearing scents — The nearest subway is Bloor-Yonge and Green P parking is available on Church Street.