This January I spent two weeks in Taipei as writer in residence at 臺灣文學基地 / the Taiwan Literature Base. This was a joint residency alongside Wind&Bones co-director Dr Will Buckingham. We called our joint residency Interweavings | 經緯 because we work closely together as writers and writing activists, and so our work is often interwoven. We’re also interested in how, as both individuals and societies, we are woven of multiple stories and multiple voices. And one of the many things that interests us about Taiwan is that this is a place woven out of many histories, languages, and stories.

Each weekend we delivered a public and open-to-all event. The first of which was a creative workshop exploring how our identities, both individually and collectively, are woven of multiple threads. In this workshop we focussed on weaving and reweaving three threads — with writers telling stories about their pasts, presents, and futures — as a way of thinking about our individual and collective identities. This was led as a bilingual workshop in English with Mandarin translation from Greg Laslo, and participants were invited to write in any language they wished. We loved meeting all of the creatives, writers and storytellers who joined us for the ride.

After another week of writing we finished off our residency with a public reading. We shared a series of brand new fiction including short stories, flash fiction and an extract from our co-authored crime detective novel. We also shared updates about our exciting Taiwanese/Scottish Gaelic translation project Taigael: a Mothertongue Manifesto and some Taiwanese to English translation. We even had an impromptu reading in Taiwanese!

It was great to write, research, see friends and explore more of Taipei. You can read more about the Taiwan Literature Base here.