Creative Windows
Dream Foundry is very excited to announce a new program we’re launching this year, Creative Windows. If you remember the Official Media Exploration Club (OMEC), this is that with a makeover. If you don’t, you’re in for a treat!
Beginning in September, groups and organizations from across all of SFFdom, fans and creators alike, are going to join us in Creative Windows: Ghosts of the Past. We’ll explore four different works that all connect to our theme, come together to discuss them, then create responses and reflections with a series of supportive challenges that encourage experimenting with our craft. We have four works selected for our Ghosts of the Past theme.
Prose
September 6 – October 17, led by LaShawn Wanak
Beloved
Toni Morrison’s magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel–first published in 1987–brought the unimaginable experience of slavery into the literature of our time and into our comprehension. Set in post-Civil War Ohio, it is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave who has risked her life in order to wrench herself from a living death; who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad. Sethe, who now lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing apparition who calls herself Beloved.
Sethe works at “beating back the past,” but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly: in her memory; in Denver’s fear of the world outside the house; in the sadness that consumes Baby Suggs; in the arrival of Paul D, a fellow former slave; and, most powerfully, in Beloved, whose childhood belongs to the hideous logic of slavery and who has now come from the “place over there” to claim retribution for what she lost and for what was taken from her. Sethe’s struggle to keep Beloved from gaining possession of her present–and to throw off the long-dark legacy of her past–is at the center of this spellbinding novel. But it also moves beyond its particulars, combining imagination and the vision of legend with the unassailable truths of history.
Graphic Novel
October 18 – November 28, led by Sloane Leong
Infidel
A haunted house story for the 21st century, INFIDEL follows an American Muslim woman and her multi-racial neighbors who move into a building haunted by entities that feed off xenophobia.
Bestselling editor Pornsak Pichetshote (Swamp Thing, Daytripper, The Unwritten) makes his comics writing debut alongside artist extraordinaire Aaron Campbell (The Shadow, James Bond: Felix Leiter), award-winning colorist and editor José Villarubia (Batman: Year 100, Spider-Man: Reign), and letterer/designer Jeff Powell (Scales & Scoundrels).
Podcast
November 28 – January 9, led by Sharang Biswas
Forest 404
Can you feel loss for something you’ve never known? An environmental thriller starring Pearl Mackie, Tanya Moodie and Pippa Haywood. With theme music by Bonobo. #Forest404
Game
January 10 – February 20, led by Ciaran Roberts
Night in the Woods
College dropout Mae Borowski returns home to the crumbling former mining town of Possum Springs seeking to resume her aimless former life and reconnect with the friends she left behind. But things aren’t the same. Home seems different now and her friends have grown and changed. Leaves are falling and the wind is growing colder. Strange things are happening as the light fades.
And there’s something in the woods.
Beginning September 6, we’ll spend six weeks reading, playing, or listening to each of these works and discussing them on the Discord. At the end of the six weeks period, our intrepid discussion leaders will host a one hour virtual discussion in Dream Foundry’s community room. Our discussion leaders include LaShawn Wanak and Sloane Leong. The creative response phase of the program will begin in 2022, so stay tuned for those details when we get closer!
But wait, there’s more: Dream Foundry is teaming up with a variety of SFFH industry organizations and local community centers to have additional activities and events. We have local libraries holding in person discussion groups, other groups putting together panel discussions, and more! Some of our partners include:
If you are a school, library, genre magazine, convention, or other group and are interested in being one of our partners, reach out to leaders at dreamfoundry dot org and include “Creative Windows” in your subject line. Our goal is to reach out to everyone who’s a fan or creator of SFFH and have them join us in creating windows across media formats.