Amy Ching-Yan Lam is an artist and writer. She has shown projects internationally, both solo and as part of the collective Life of a Craphead. Her exhibitions and performances have been presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada; Seoul MediaCity Biennale, South Korea; and Eastside Projects, UK; and she has participated in residencies at Macdowell and Delfina Foundation. Her poems have appeared in publications from Book Works and Montez Press, and a chapbook The Four Onions was published by yolkless press. Her debut book of poetry is forthcoming from Brick Books in April 2023. She lives in Toronto, which is Mississauga Anishinaabeg land, as well as the territory of the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat. Lam was born in Hong Kong.
Approaches to Art Writing with Amy Ching-Yan Lam
AMY CHING-YAN LAM
October 22, 2022
A reimagined iteration of our Studio for Emerging Writers program, Approaches to Art Writing is a series of workshops that will be available to the general public. Workshop facilitators, dates, and details will be released consecutively, with sessions to take place between April and October, 2022.
To attend, please book via Eventbrite. This event will be limited to 5 people, and will be conducted via Zoom. Please send a short writing sample (to info@artspeak.ca) if you have one on hand. If there is more interest than can be accommodated, then participants will be selected on the basis of their writing samples. Notification to confirm workshop participation will be sent by Monday, October 17.
Never Edit / Over Edit
October 22, 11am–1pm PST / 2-4pm EST
With Amy Ching-Yan Lam
Liujin sat down, stupified, at the desk, and said to the wall in front of her, “Look at how lonely I am.” But without knowing why, she wrote in the letter, “…Mama, life here is rich and colorful!”
— from Frontier, Can Xue
The experimental fiction writer Can Xue has said that she writes one paragraph a day and that she rarely goes back to edit: she only continues forward, slowly. Whether or not this is exaggeration, you can see this reflected in her books, which are formed out of intricate chains of description and logic: places and characters contradict themselves yet everything has unrelenting momentum. For most writers, though, Can Xue’s approach is probably impossible.
In this workshop, Amy is interested in thinking about editing together: what is the process of editing yourself vs the process of writing? What are some ways to attend to the feelings that come up when reading your own writing? What does it mean to edit too much, or edit too little? What can we learn from other writers’ methods while respecting our own?
More info on the workshop via the Eventbrite.