Writing and Resistance with Tolka Journal

Join essayists Noreen Masud and R Alice for an in-depth conversation on the relationship between creative non-fiction and activism.

Both writers have been published in Tolka, a biannual journal of creative non-fiction that has been publishing since 2021. Noreen Masud’s essay, published in Issue Eight, is a wide-ranging and polemical reflection on the success of Fossil Free Books, as well as on literary activism and Palestinian solidarity more broadly. R Alice’s essay, published in Issue Nine, is a deeply evocative personal essay about flights; planes, kites, drones and missiles in the skies over Palestine, and the reality of life on the ground below.

These writers approach writing about activism and resistance in two distinct ways; R Alice reflects on her experience as a human rights activist in a conflict zone, while Noreen Masud utilises writing itself as a form of activism. This event will explore these approaches, as well as interrogating what it means to be a writer or indeed any kind of artist in these divided and turbulent times.

Noreen Masud is a lecturer in English literature at the University of Bristol. Her memoir-travelogue, A Flat Place (Hamish Hamilton) is described as love letter to Britain’s breathtaking flatlands, and a reckoning with the painful, hidden histories they contain. The book was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Noreen appeared on the Tolka Podcast to discuss her Issue Eight essay in depth. You can find that here. R Alice is an emerging writer of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Profiles and Tolka.

The event will be chaired by Catherine Hearn, a founding editor of Tolka. She is also the Communications and Impact manager at Skein Press, which curates and publishes thought-provoking stories not commonly featured in the literary arts in Ireland. Catherine holds an MA in Gender Studies from the University of Utrecht, where her research focused on postcolonial feminism and anti-imperial masculinities.

This event will probe the audience to consider the places that activism and writing meet, places such as Bristol and Gaza, Pakistan and Dingle. The conversation will cover the myriad crises that we are facing – climate breakdown, human rights abuses, fascism, income inequality and neoliberalism – to interrogate whether books, to paraphrase Noreen’s essay, actually can ‘change the world.’

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