Language and Relationship: Games for Relationship, Writing, and Embodiment

Instructor: Brynn Fitzsimmons

A free virtual community workshop. Open to adults and teens. To register and reserve a spot, email us at: adastrawritingproject@gmail.com

While it’s easy to see writing as something we do in our heads, the stories we tell, the way we tell them, and the way we think about our relationship to them all happens in relationship and through our bodies. We’ll explore these and other aspects of writing, language, and community through a roleplay game called Dialect: A Game About Language and How It Dies. The game will ask us to notice language and how it evolves, creates, and reflects relationship or community, and, ultimately, how it dies. We will explore the concept of “lost in translation” within the world of the game and rethink the role of language in our own lives, sense of self, and community. The workshop will consist of both gameplay as well as guided writing exercises that will help us translate gameplay experiences back into the rest of our lives. There are no Gamemaster’s for this game, but if you are interested in helping to facilitate a group (familiarize yourself with the game beforehand in order to help keep gameplay moving), please email bfitzsimmons@ku.edu.

Brynn Fitzsimmons is a second-year PhD student in English – Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Kansas. Her research interests include medical rhetoric (invisible illness and trauma), feminist studies, and community-engaged pedagogy. She has helped lead Storyboard, a board game storytelling program at the Olathe Juvenile Detention Center, since 2017.