Decolonizing Time: Two Workshops on Embracing Alternative Timelines

In these two generative writing workshops, we’ll unpack a deceptively simple question: how do we measure time, and who decides?

Across cultures and histories, people have marked time in countless ways: lunar cycles, agricultural seasons, ceremonial calendars, migrations, tides, and harvests. The familiar Gregorian calendar is only one system among many. What might it mean to look beyond it, and what new ways of imagining time might open up if we do?

In Part 1 (Tuesday, March 24 at 6pm), we’ll look at alternate calendar systems from around the world — including lunar, lunisolar, and Indigenous seasonal calendars — and think about how different communities have organized life around cycles of land, food, ceremony, and movement. In what’s known as Australia, there are at least nine different calendars among various Aboriginal nations; in what’s known as Manitoba, Canada, Opaskwayak Cree Nation people use a 13 moon system; in what’s known as British Columbia, likewise Stó:lō Nation people name their 13 moons according to local land and waterway cycles. Together, we’ll discuss how these ways of marking time connect to broader questions about culture, land, and diaspora, before moving into generative writing exercises.

In Part 2 (Tuesday, April 7 at 6pm), we’ll take a more speculative turn. Drawing inspiration from futurist and diasporic traditions such as Sino-Futurism and other Global Majority futurisms, we’ll explore how writers imagine entirely new timelines and ways of inhabiting the future. What happens when we invent new calendars, new rhythms, or new measures of time? Through conversation and creative prompts, we’ll experiment with writing that bends, stretches, or reimagines time altogether.

Alongside writing and discussion, we’ll also host a small seed swap. Participants are encouraged to bring seeds they’d like to trade — though if you don’t have any to share, seeds will be provided.

Participants are welcome to attend either workshop independently. One registration gives you access to both sessions, so you’re free to join one or attend both. To ensure event attendance and to help us cover costs, the registration fee is $10. Please RSVP here to reserve your spot.

More about the facilitator: Cynthia Liu is a diasporic North American Chinese writer (she/hers). Her MFA receives support from a British Columbia Arts Council scholarship and she is a 2025-2026 Critical Play Lab Fellow in UBC’s Pop Culture Cluster. She has published prose in The Progressive, The Washington Post, two anthologies of genderqueer writing, and emerge24 and The Tusculum Review; her fiction received support from Artist Trust GAP Grant, the Jack Straw Writers Program, and the Elizabeth Mills Crothers Short Story Prize. Residency support includes time at Banff, Mineral Arts, Hedgebrook, and Vermont Studio Center. Screenwriting accolades include the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment New Writers Award and a Worldfest Houston Film Festival Bronze Award (for a romcom short released on dvd). She’s an alumni of Film Independent’s Project Involve and the Justice For My Sister BIPOC SciFi Screenwriting Lab. Cynthia is a settler on the unceded traditional territories and waterways of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

More about Upstart & Crow:

Upstart & Crow is a not-for-profit creative studio and literary incubator that champions writers, readers and stories, and the role they play in shaping our lives. We develop original programs, support artists and revel in creative projects focused on Literature In Translation / Climate Solutions / Poetry / Civic Dialogue / Community & Skills Building … all with the aim of elevating the role of literature and storytelling in our lives. Find us on Granville Island, Gibsons and online at upstartandcrow.com.

Accessibility:

The main studio of our shop is accessible for folks with mobility aids. There is a washroom on the main floor available for attendees.

Questions: hello[at]upstartandcrow.com.

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