Listening Legacies of Queerness, Science Fiction and Writing Gender is the first installation of a series hosted by b.Dewitt gallery with guest program curator Ama Josephine Budge expanding on themes explored by artist Gray Wielebinski’s in their first UK solo show “Shaved in Opposite Directions”. An invited audience will discuss the the reading: the introduction and one chapter of feminist science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, facilitated by science fiction writers and confidants Ama Josephine Budge and Sara Saab. We will begin with a collective listening of Grieving, Loving Ursula Le Guin by pleasure activist, writer and editor of Octavia’s Brood adrienne marie brown from her podcast with Autumn Brown, How to Survive the End of the World. Sara and Ama discuss love, legacy, representation and writing gender across intersections of white/POC/white-passing, queer/lesbian and non-binary dentities and the challenges, heartbreaks and inspirations of creating speculative written and visual art in an era of tick-boxes and trigger-warnings.

Reading List includes: 
ESSENTIAL - Pages 2-5 and 47-51 of chapter 7: The Question of Sex https://www.mlook.mobi/files/month_1203/80e49eb29e78d387d11eb2927ebb8b0dff842941.pdf)

And optional: Salt and Cement and Other Denials, by Sara Saab
https://lackingtons.com/2016/04/27/salt-and-cement-and-other-denials-by-sara-saab/

A Shoal of Lovers Leads me Home, by Ama Josephine Budge
http://www.anathemamag.com/#/issue-5-august-2018/

Sara Saab was born in Beirut, Lebanon. She now lives in North London, where she has perfected her resting London face. Her current interests are croissants and emojis thereof, amassing poetry collections, and coming up with a plausible reason to live on a sleeper train. Sara’s a 2015 graduate of the Clarion Writers' Workshop. You can find her on Twitter as @fortnightlysara and at fortnightlysara.com.

Ama Josephine Budge is a Speculative Writer, Artist, Curator and Pleasure Activist whose work navigates intimate explorations of race, art, ecology and feminism, working to activate movements that catalyse human rights, environmental evolutions and troublesomely queered identities. Ama is a PhD candidate in Psychosocial Studies with Dr Gail Lewis at Birkbeck. Her research takes a queer, decolonial approach to challenging climate colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa with a particular focus on inherently environmentalist pleasure practices in Ghana and Kenya. 

Supported by Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants