Courage to Write, Courage to Heal

Featuring: Keiko Honda, Kagan Goh, Steffi Tad-y, moderated by Tāriq Malik

Can one allow vulnerability, contradiction, and care to coexist with artistic excellence? This session brings together a panel of Asian Canadian writers whose creative lives have been shaped by experiences of mental illness, disability, and healing. Rather than framing writing as triumph over adversity, this conversation honours it as a practice of survival and meaning-making.

This panel of writers reflects on how lived experience has shaped their craft, transformed their understanding of productivity and success, and complicated conventional ideas of resilience.. and challenged them in the face of dominant narratives of resilience. They speak candidly about writing through pain, navigating institutions not built with disabled bodies or minds in mind, and finding language for experiences that are often silenced or misunderstood. This discussion invites audiences into a generous, necessary conversation about how literature can bear suffering without spectacle, particularly about how writing can be a companion in the long, nonlinear work of healing.

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Host or Publisher literASIAN Festival