The annual online 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?’