This event is open to Black* writers in Scotland at all levels of experience.
All SBWN events will adhere to our Safer Spaces Policy. You can learn more about our policy here.
The Physiology of Diasporic Writing with Taylor Le Melle
Saturday 2nd May
3pm – 6pm
Many Studios, 3 Ross Street, Glasgow, G1 5AR
Access info (docx – opens in a new tab)
For Black people who write
In this Loose Ends workshop Taylor Le Melle will discuss what could be called the physiology of diasporic writing. In other words, if we are motivated to write about or through or against the experiences which create diaspora (i.e. colonialism, migration, exile) then what do we know about how those experiences are seeded in our physiology? After all, writing is both a cognitive and a mechanical exercise. Knowing this, in the workshop we will explore some material (tea tasting) and kinetic (movement based) approaches to writing.
We’ll finish with food from about 5pm.
Access
- If you need financial support, bursaries are available for attendees:
- Travel: up to £50 per session (receipts required)
- Carer/childcare: £30 per half-day (counts as income to HMRC)
- Request a bursary by completing our form.
- In-person event – Venue access info (opens in a new tab)
- Please share any other access requirements with Martha.
Who it’s for + how to join
Email martha.adonai.williams@gmail.com if you would like to come along, so we get a sense of numbers.
*Please note, this workshop is for Black people only. By Black we mean anyone with African heritage or ancestry, including people of mixed heritage.
This workshop is part of Loose Ends: Explorations in Diasporic Writing Craft, a writing and peer-learning series curated by Martha Adonai Williams, which creates intentional space for Black diasporic writers to think together about craft in expansive ways, embracing interwoven storytelling traditions and the layered, in-between experiences of diaspora. The aim is simple: to build confidence in the work you’re already making (or want to make), in the company of others doing the same.
When we say “craft,” we don’t mean rigid rules or a checklist of techniques. We’re interested in craft as something alive and evolving – craft as the choices that shape a piece of writing, craft as a verb, craft as a vessel (both container and vehicle, that moves with and against currents and tides), craft as something resourceful and improvised, practice instead of perfection, writing as a tool as much as something to be refined.
If you’re feeling unsure about whether this is for you, that’s completely okay. You don’t need to arrive polished or certain. You’re welcome at any stage, in any form, whether you call yourself a writer or someone who writes sometimes.
About the facilitators
Martha Adonai Williams is a writer, facilitator, producer, community organiser, black feminist and friend. Her practice departs to and returns from black feminist world-making, always, with regular layovers in front of trash tv or in the garden. Her work considers the wilderness and margins as sites of resistance, refusal and homecoming. She works with writing and storytelling as therapeutic tools and as methods for community building. She curates SBWN’s Metaphors for a Black Future programme.
Taylor Le Melle began as a curator of film and performance and then began again as a writer of anti-modern art criticism and off-kilter catalog essays. She is now transitioning into writing artistic subgenres of fiction. She supports this work by also being a researcher into plants, property and physical experience—bodies, the social kind with reluctance, and the flesh kind with enthusiasm. Her methodologies are: archival research, herbalism, somatic bodywork, drawing, automatic writing and dream journalling.
The Writer right now is in the middle of what the inner circle is calling a Nervous System Upgrade. We found stray rats in the gear box and the doctor said she has to use her mouth if she wants to survive. She’s drinking a lot of wet flowers. It’s really true what they say: ‘You get on my last nerves’.
She was an editor (2015-2020) of speculative fiction and poetry for London-based independent press PSS and is a founding co-director of London-based not/nowhere, an analogue film cooperative whose primary occupation is with building infrastructure for filmmakers to produce and circulate obsolete moving image formats.
Having published in several monograph publications on contemporary artists and numerous critical reviews of contemporary art, her first published short story, ‘Untitled Seed for Ignota’ was included in Carrier Bag Fiction, an Ursula Le Guin tribute anthology by Spector Books. Other recent writing has been published by MIT Press, Mousse Publishing, Triangle Books, Koenig Books and Bookworks.
Organisers & Background
This event is organised by Martha Williams & members of the Saturday Morning Writers Group, in collaboration with Scottish BPOC Writers Network. Supported by Glasgow Life and Creative Scotland.
Loose Ends is an evolution of the Metaphors for a Black Future programme. Metaphors has always been about making and protecting space for writers to experiment and take a break from expectations of excellence. The programme has intentionally avoided craft workshops or genre specifics, wanting instead to encourage participants to find their own flow and loosen their idea of what they do and don’t do. While staying true to nourishing writers and supporting creative growth, the 2025-26 edition of Metaphors does a bit of a 180. This year is all about giving ourselves permission to be good, to welcome excellence when it comes.
