Missed the workshop? View the recording here.

Information shared during the workshop:

Struggling to process and confront anti-Black and anti-Asian racism within your social networks? Explore the healing power of creative writing!

• The July 11th creative writing workshop focuses on “Mental Health and Multiracial Solidarity.”

Mental health advocates Kelechi Ubozoh and Shizue Seigel, psychiatrist Ravi Chandra, and storyteller/medicine woman Tureeda Mikell discuss anti-Black/anti-Asian racism with tools for self-care, and creative writing for healing.

Participants will be invited to engage in creative writing exercises around questions like: What are you thinking and feeling right now? How were you personally impacted by George Floyd’s murder and subsequent events. Have you personally experienced or witnessed anti-black or anti-Asian racism? What was your response? How would you respond differently today? How do you respond to stress? What are you doing for self-care? How to deal with parents and peer pressure?

NOTE: The workshop will be hosted on Zoom and YouTube Live with a sliding scale fee of $5~$15 to help support our presenters, organizers, tech and labor costs. If you are interested in participating but are unable to afford the ticketing tier, please email programs@oacc.cc and we would be happy to work with you on making this event accessible.

This workshop is presented in partnership with Write Now! SF Bay, UC Berkeley Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, and Eastwind Books of Berkeley.

Recommended Readings from Eastwind Books of Berkeley.

THE ARTISTS

Photos from left to right: Kelechi Ubozoh, Shizue Seigel, Ravi Chandra, Tureed Mikell.

Kelechi Ubozoh is a Nigerian-American writer, mental health advocate, and public speaker. For nearly a decade, Kelechi has worked in the California mental health system in the areas of research and advocacy, community engagement, stigma reduction, and peer support. She began her career as an investigative reporter in New York City, and was the first student-reporter ever published in The New York Times. Learn more about Kelechi at KelechiUbozoh.com. Photo Credit by: Adrianne Mathiowetz.

Recent Works: L. D. Green and Kelechi Ubozoh, eds, We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices From Radical Mental Health – Stories and Research Challenging the Biomedical Model, North Atlantic Books 2019

Shizue Seigel is a Japanese American writer born just after her family’s release from WWII incarceration. She’s led community writing projects for Centers for Disease Control/UCSF, National Japanese American Historical Society, African American Arts & Culture Complex, and others. She was written or edited six books, and her memoir and poetry have been widely published elsewhere.  She directs Write Now! SF Bay, which supports Bay Area writers of color through workshops, events and anthologies.

Recent Works:

CIVIL LIBERTIES UNITED, Pease Press, San Francisco, 2019. www.peasepress/com

ENDANGERED SPECIES, ENDURING VALUES. Pease Press, San Francisco, 2018
“Who Do You Think You Are?”, L. D. Green and Kelechi Ubozoh, eds,

We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices From Radical Mental Health – Stories and Research Challenging the Biomedical Model, North Atlantic Books 2019

“Swimming in the New Normal,” Deborah Santa, ed, All the Women in My Family Sing, NTTB Press 2018

Ravi Chandra, M.D. is a psychiatrist and writer in San Francisco, and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Facebuddha: Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks is his full-length nonfiction debut, and is the winner of the 2017 Nautilus Silver Book Award for Religion/Spirituality of Eastern Thought. He is also the founder of SF Love Dojo, an organization teaching compassion and self-compassion.

Recent Works:

Tureeda Mikell, Poet, Story Medicine Woman, named, D’jeli Musa, Woman of Truths, called an activist for holism, is a Chi Gong Energy Therapist, lyricist, executive director of, Tree of Life Foundation Literacy Health Project, has published over seventy student anthologies of poetry for as risk youth via CA Poets in the Schools, throughout San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa and Jefferson Unified School Districts since 1989.

Recent Works: Synchronicity: The Oracle of Sun Medicine, Nomadic Press