Chismes Con Safos: Speculative Storytelling as Collective Resistance

Rosanna Alvarez

The Brower Center - Kinzie Room

In a time when our stories—and our futures—face increasing attempts at erasure, Chismes Con Safos: Speculative Storytelling as Collective Resistance invites participants into a vibrant creative space where community-rooted narratives become tools for liberation. Guided by Rosanna Alvarez—Chicana writer, scholar-artist, and founder of Ocote Libre Press—this workshop blends culturally grounded storytelling practices with speculative worldbuilding.

Participants will explore how personal memory, cultural knowledge, and everyday conversations—our chismes, our cuentos, our testimonios—hold the seeds of radical imagination. Through guided prompts, reflective writing, and gentle community dialogue, attendees will practice transforming lived experience into visionary narratives that challenge authoritarianism and reimagine what justice, belonging, and liberation could look like in the futures we are actively shaping together.

There will not be table space provided in our Writers' Workshop venues, so in addition to bringing paper and a pen, we recommend bringing a book or other hard surface to write on.

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Host or Publisher Bay Area Book Festival