WORKSHOP: Queer Baiting and the Stray Bullet

Event Information

writing workshop with Allia Sadeghipour

The queer friend who turns out to be a bisexual. The fabulously promiscuous gay friend who jumps from relationship to relationship. The friends who are clearly more than “friends.” The fabulous drag queen who rocks the ball but doesn’t allow drag kings on stage. The perfect LGBTQ+ couple who are killed by a random stray bullet. We recognize that film and media are hyperrepresentations of our reality and world, but we are all completely exhausted by the LGBTQ+ tropes, and, yet, we sit there wondering when? When will there be more accurate representation? When will we see the development of a character in addition to a gender identity? When will we truly see mirrors of ourselves on screen?
Gatekeepers of the industry homogenize gender and create tantalizing scenarios to attract members of the LGBTQ community but leave us feeling empty and often disconnected from the characters on the screen. They do so as “a way of appealing to [LGBTQ+ audiences] without alienating their main audience,” and yet, they still create alienation causing many to feel that there is a lack of our representation, that LGBTQ characters are less valuable, less relatable, and less worthy of being at the forefront of compelling stories. Stories that need to be told, seen, and heard. In this workshop, we will discuss, dissect, and revaluate these tropes in order develop true characters. Most importantly, we will write! We will write about ourselves, our characters, and our stories. We will give birth to believable characters that break boundaries and propel stories. Our stories and representations are necessary for a changing world, and we will be damned if another bullet stands in our way.

BIO
I am doodling Iranian-American with a Surrealist outlook. I co-parent the Women Writing Berlin Lab (WWBL), co-founded the Berlin Diaspora Society, and teach workshops for GLADT, WWBL, and the Feminist Film Week. I won the Sherry Debrowski Prize for Best Feminist Multi-Genre Fiction writer in 2009. Since then, my work has been featured in: The Wild Word: “Dream a Little Dream” (2018), Berlin and Her Places (2018), The Bear: October’s Favorite Storyteller (2018), KCRW’s “Holiday Storytelling Special” (2018), The V Series Poetry Anthology (2019), Berlin Untelevised (2019), Coven: Lymph (2019), Venus: Revolution (2019), What’s Afghan Punk Rock Anyway?! (2019), The Ghosts of Berlin: Der Geister von Berlin (2019), Literarische Diverse (2019) and much more.