We are pleased to announce that our founders will be collaborating with Clarion West Writers Workshop to teach a combined panel & workshop titled, “Negritude in the 6th Dimension: An Afrofuturist Craft Excursion.” The panelshop will explore the concept of time through a Black Indigenous lens, particularly addressing Black time travel, healing and the a-linearity of time.

Voodoonauts founding principle is increasing access for Black science fiction and fantasy writers and as such there are scholarships available for BIPOC & Voodoonauts alumni. Allies can also donate a ticket for a BIPOC writer and BIPOC writers who don’t receive a scholarship can use the pay-what-you-can sliding scale model.

The panelshop will be three hours in total & participants will get to work with two of four founders: Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, LP Kindred and Hugh “H.D” Hunter.

Register for the panelshop on Clarion West’s website. The description of the workshops is below:

Negritude in the 6th Dimension: An Afrofuturist Craft Excursion.

Does time really heal all wounds? Is the role of the storyteller to be a time carrier? When history holds so much trauma, can Black characters have the freedom to time travel?

In this panelshop (a panel & workshop hybrid), we will approach time and craft through a Black Indigenous lens. We will not only explore reconstructions and deconstructions of time, but put ideas in motion during a generative session.

The panelshop will include a 45-minute panel discussion, and then we will break out into workshop groups.

Participants will get to work with two of the four panelists.

3 Earth hours (1pm-4pm EST/ 10am-1pm PST)

Workshops

Hugh “H.D.” Hunter’s voyage is No time to mourn. No time at all.

Time is said to be the healer of all wounds. In a world rife with Black pain, this serves as an important remembrance for coping. In a linear time construct, distance from painful experiences provides comfort, growth, and solace. But what about for those of us and our characters who experience a multiplicity of timelines simultaneously? What shapes do processing, healing, and accountability take in a lived experience where all time (or at least perspective of time) is concurrent? I say, come find out. Let’s explore together.

Inspirations: Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji, Watchmen HBO, Audre Lorde, Marvel MCU

Category: Craft, Character

Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s sojourn will be Body Time vs. Mechanical Time: Craft through a Black Indigenous Lens.

In Western countries, daily life is clock-bound. This attempt to calibrate and commodify time is inevitably linked to productivity and capitalism. Because “time means money,” every moment is dictated to us by a mechanical object on our arms or in our pockets. So, what can Black Indigenous conceptualizations teach the writer about time and about craft? In this breakout session, we will interrogate the philosophies behind “African Time” and “Body Time” and construct a pathway towards productivity-free craft.

Shingai Njeri Kagunda’s expedition is The Storyteller as Time Carrier.

Most black narrative structures descend from an oral storytelling tradition where stories were histories and memories carried and performed by the storyteller. What does it mean to literally hold time in the words we share? We carry those who left before us on our tongues, & as Afrofuturists, we imagine and project ourselves onto a future that is irrevocably tied to the past. For storytellers to be more open to time moving through us in uncanny ways, there must be an understanding that we are merely vessels. But time is a heavy thing to carry, & we must not forget how carrying joy is also carrying trauma, & carrying beauty is carrying pain, & the human body is a tiny fragile thing that makes us wary of the toll time-carrying takes.

In this workshop we will delve into constructing worlds haunted by the question: Does time tell our story, or do we tell time’s story?

Inspired by: Undone (Amazon), The Deep (Rivers Solomon), John Mbinti on African time.

LP Kindred’s pilgrimage is Black to the Future: The Perils of African and Diasporic Time Travel.

Michael J. Fox made time travel look fun in the ’80s and ’90s. Traveling to the past, accidentally seducing his mother, empowering his father, ensuring the birth of himself and his siblings, and generally changing his status in life… he also taught Black People Rock & Roll.

He draws inspiration from the works of Octavia Butler, Nisi Shawl, and Steven Barnes as jumping off points for imagining better yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows for Black People via temporal pilgrimage, timeline alteration, visiting alternate realities, personal chronokinesis, and trauma as time travel.