KAAN 2025: The Adoptee Consciousness Memoir Writing Workshop
Jun
21
to Jun 22

KAAN 2025: The Adoptee Consciousness Memoir Writing Workshop

Presenting at KAAN 2025 in Atlanta with Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello on June 21st, 4:15-5:30 and June 22, 9:45-11:00.

Writing can be an important tool to process the impact of adoption. The Adoptee Consciousness model, developed by Susan Branco, JaeRan Kim, Grace Newton, Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter, and Paula O’Loughlin in 2022, gave adoptees a language and framework to understand the five touchstones of adoptee awareness: status quo, rupture, dissonance, expansiveness, and forgiveness and activism. Using those “five touchstones within the spiral” as writing prompts, the workshop facilitators will guide participants to write a memoir in poetry and prose of their own adoptee journey of growth and change.

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BIPOC Adoptee VOICES Conference: Writing Workshop: Autofiction Your Life!
Jul
26
1:30 PM13:30

BIPOC Adoptee VOICES Conference: Writing Workshop: Autofiction Your Life!

Adoption is a fiction that incorporates a genetic stranger into a family as their own. Adoptees are told origin stories that they cannot verify. Our documents are very often edited into inconsequence and comprised of lies. In short, our lives are built upon fiction, so why not incorporate that into your writing? In this generative workshop, Alice Stephens will discuss why autofiction is the perfect vehicle for writing about adoption and explain how she uses it as she builds a collection of short stories. Writers will be led through warm-up exercises in preparation for writing an autofictional origin story.

Register for BIPOC Adoptee VOICES conference, July 24-27, 2025. Free to attend!

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Online Workshop: Written on Our Skins: Exploring the Stories Inked into Our Lives
Jun
8
2:00 PM14:00

Online Workshop: Written on Our Skins: Exploring the Stories Inked into Our Lives

Our tattoos often hold the stories we struggle to voice—especially as adoptees, where identity, loss, and resilience etch themselves into our bodies. In this intimate, adoptee-only workshop, we’ll explore the narratives behind our ink: the cultural symbols, the reclaimed names, the homelands we’ve never seen, or the families we’ve chosen. 

This is a generative workshop. Through guided writing prompts and shared reflection, we’ll translate these visual marks into powerful prose, poetry, or memoir. Whether your tattoo is a tribute, a rebellion, or a quiet prayer, this space honors its significance in your journey. 

Please have something to write with (pen, paper, word processing software, etc.). 

No writing experience necessary! Activities are geared toward all levels of writers.

Co-facilitated with Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka of Ajumama Workshop. Register here.

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