Queer bodies converse: teaching creative writing in Lebanon

Abstract

ABSTRACT This memoir comments, in verse, on its author’s experiences of teaching creative writing at an Anglophone university in Beirut, Lebanon. The poem develops the premise that the creative writing classroom, especially in conflicted, perpetually unstable settings, functions as a third space or safe zone for personal growth through self-expression. I therefore examine the role of undergraduate life writing workshops, in particular, in providing a leeway for narrating, discussing, and reimagining painful experiences related to coming of age and/or coming out – in an otherwise conservative context where coloring outside the box is often actively discouraged. The memoir outlines a process of reclamation, whereby the act of owning up to one’s lived narratives, articulating and sharing them publicly, is the brave, first step in a process of healing, however partial it may be.