A note from Firefly’s BIPOC wing
An assortment of ceramic mugs in different brown, red and orange hues. Photo by Pramod Tiwari.
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Hello Bright Lights!
Asifa, Kim, and Mary here—we make up the BIPOC wing of Firefly, happily taking over the airwaves to tell you a bit about what we’ve been up to.
We’re coming up on two years since launching the BIPOC Writing Space and we have some big feels.
It’s hard to articulate how much solidarity and community we feel when we step into a space where we see ourselves reflected back. We love seeing little boxes of various-hued faces on screen. This is a rare and wonderful opportunity that we don’t take for granted.
Kim here…
I love the feeling of solidarity and acceptance I feel when each person’s writing is heard in these spaces. Often what emerges feels deeply personal and yet universal as well. It’s such a great feeling to read or hear a piece of writing and see heads nodding or comments in the chat like “ah yes - I know that feeling.”
Our experiences as BIPOC people can be so very different from each other, and yet there’s this deep recognition and witnessing that happens when we’re together.
It’s me, Asifa…
I feel so honoured to witness writers grow and deepen into their own voices in the BIPOC Writing Space.
At the start of each session, we acknowledge how being a person of colour means we often have to choose between safety and freedom. This acknowledgment gives writers permission to choose how they show up for their writing together that day.
Our hearts have filled with joy watching writers begin to dip their toes into freedom because of the safety they’ve felt in the group!
And now Mary…
One of the highlights from this space for me was our open mic night last year.
One person joining from Hawaii said they’d never read their writing to anyone EVER but felt that this space felt safe enough to do it. One thing I know for sure is that it is easier to jump when you know there is a soft place to land.
For many BIPOC folks, their world doesn’t have many soft places to land and so sometimes, we decide not to jump. My big wish for everyone who steps foot into this space is to give them the feeling of soaring. Whatever that looks like for them.
Over the past two years our BIPOC programming has grown so much.
It started with one small group workshop, Exploring Our Racialized Identities, which was launched by our predecessor Jenna Tenn-Yuk. Then when Covid started, we added a BIPOC Stay at Home Retreat, and later our drop-in program, BIPOC Writing Space, which grew fast from one to two sessions a month.
We also ran two online BIPOC Open Mic Nights, and then dreamed up New Suns, a speculative fiction workshop for people of colour. Last weekend, we had our first in-person BIPOC Urban Retreat..
The three of us keep meeting (which we do—often!) and talking and dreaming forward to the next few years. We see so many ways that the BIPOC wing of Firefly can grow as we hope to reach more and more racialized writers, and as we all grow into and grow with our writing voices.
The incomparable Octavia Butler once said, “Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.”
Yes, yes, yes. We feel that when we’re doing this work.
Warmly,
