Exploring “haunting” as a metaphor for social justice in narratives of violence, loss, and trauma, this public reading by two authors—one a writer of fiction and one a writer of creative nonfiction—will explore the theme of "Ghost Stories as Social Justice." Weaving grief, terror, and the art of storytelling with the desire to know the unknowable, we will demonstrate and explore the concept of haunting as memory and how haunted memories can live in our bodies but also transform trauma through narrative avenues of healing while leading to social justice by giving voice to the voiceless. Social justice for survivors and victims of violence may be illuminated and represented through the power of trauma narratives weaving the real and the speculative in innovative and experimental ways. As witnesses, storytellers, and survivors, we are all haunted by our past, but crafting a narrative gives us agency to shape our present as it silhouettes our future.

Please join us for this special event, a non/fiction reading followed by a brief Q and A to discuss narrative craft, writing methods, and the ghost-story as a literary genre in fiction and creative nonfiction, where the “ghost” is both a metaphor and a cultural phenomenon related to unanswered questions, the limits of knowing and unknowing, and the gift of “haunting.

Aimee Parkison is Professor of Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University.  She has published eight books of fiction and earned an MFA from Cornell University. Parkison is widely published by journals such as North American Review, Puerto del Sol, Five Points, Bellingham Review, Notre Dame Review, Salt Hill, Western Humanities Review, The Normal School, Feminist Studies, and others. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships and has been widely recognized for her experimental fiction about women and her revisionist approach to narrative.This summe Parkison is teaching a creative writing course called "Haunted Taos" at the Oklahoma State University's Doel Reed Center in Taos. 

Kristine Ervinis is an Associate Professor at West Chester University, outside Philadelphia. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature, with a focus in nonfiction, from the University of Houston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fourth Genre, Crimereads, Crab Orchard Review, Brevity, Passages North, and Silk Road. Her essay "Cleaving To," was named a notable essay in the Best American Essays 2013. Kristine was just eight years old when two men abducted her mother from a shopping mall in Oklahoma City, drove her to a distant oilfield, and murdered her. Ervin's debut memoir Rabbit Heart, weaves together themes of power, gender, and justice into a manifesto of grief and reclamation.