Annual ONLINE symposium, organised by the Centre for Creative Ethnography, Queen’s University Belfast

The annual symposium Around the Fire, organised on Friday 31/05/2024 by the Centre for Creative Ethnography, Queen’s University Belfast, invites academics and students who are engaged in creative writing experiments to read and listen to each other’s work. In the spirit of sharing stories around a campfire, the contributors will take turns to perform a diversity of pieces. Works can include, but are not limited to, poems, songs, short stories, plays, fragments of longer novels and scripts. Performances can also include visual elements (graphic novels, sketches, paintings, photography) and sound (music, soundscapes, film, audio fragments). The performance style is optional, as long as attention is paid to the mode and quality of delivery and the opportunities and limitations of the digital environment. We welcome experimentation and cross-pollinated genres.

Each contributor will have up to 15 minutes. Throughout the day, there will be several opportunities for intimate discussion, when contributors will be asked to select a themed break-out room, focussed on themes such as ‘love for writing’, ‘interdisciplinarity’, ‘rhythm and metaphor’, and ‘what’s the point of all of this for academia?’.

Ursula K. Le Guin creative performance: Susan Wardell

One longer slot of 40 minutes will be devoted to one of CFCE’s annual events, the ‘Ursula K. Le Guin creative performance’. This is an invited performance, named after the well-known American writer, poet, and polemist Ursula K. Le Guin who died in 2018. The event aims to celebrate her life as a writer and inspire others to follow in her creative footsteps. At this year’s Around the Fire symposium, the performance will be delivered by one of CFCE’s affiliated scholars, the anthropologist, writer, artist, and poet Susan Wardell. Susan is based at the University of Otago, in Aotearoa New Zealand and her research interests cluster around care, affect, embodiment, health and disability, and digital worlds. Awarded nationally and internationally for poetry, essay, and flash fiction, she is Poetry Editor for the Anthropology and Humanism journal, and chair of the prize committee for the SHA Ethnographic Poetry Prize.

This year’s first Around the Fire Symposium is organised by CFCE affiliates Kayla Rush and Maruška Svašek.

To participate as presenter and audience, please register through this Eventbrite link to gain access to the Zoom link.

Around the Fire Programme