Unlock the Story is an experiment: two Manchester-based writers, Abiodun Abdul and chi emecheta, will present the beginnings of two very different stories. You, the audience, will then decide if you’d like to get the “key” to unlock more by donating to Commonword. Your choice to get the “key”; your choice how much to donate.
If this proves popular, we can set this up for more writers as an earning stream; fun for you, their audience; money for them. We could all do with more of both!
Event Time: 1 hour (including a Q&A)
Free, Suggested Donation £10
Book a Conference Pass & receive access to all Black Writers Conference events for just £30
Access: This event will have AI-generated auto-captioning. Please e-mail radhaika@cultureword.org.uk with any questions.
Bios
Abiọ́dún ‘Abbey’ Abdul is a Yorùbá-Nigerian writer who won various poetry awards throughout childhood. Fascinated by how grammar could be bent to facilitate new meaning and enhance creative expression, she has worked for several years in higher education as an English Language Lecturer & Assessor across the globe. She still enjoys composing poetry focusing as ever on social justice and topics celebrating our common humanity, which have been included in various anthologies. But most of her expressive writing is now creative non-fiction prose, and auto-ethnographical memoir in particular encompassing her schooling across three continents in Nigeria, the UK and Japan. It is a colourful blend of narratives and sociology, of young Black kids navigating a Scottish world, of warm embracing diversity and cold unsettling racism, and thus a universal story told in a unique context. Her upcoming project entitled ‘Yorùbá Yonder’ focuses on diasporic stories of global travels and worldly perspectives.
chi emecheta, Ensemble Associate for Manchester’s Quarantine theatre company, recently worked with local sound artist Jaydev Mistry on audio walk “The People of…” along Northmoor Road in Manchester’s Longsight neighbourhood. Also a striking visual artist, chi exhibited with local painter Christian Asare last summer in a pop-up gallery at Salford’s Islington Mill.
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