Reading Toward Writing: Session One

Join Writer-in-Residence, Heather Canlas-Rigg and Alana Traficante for an evening reading group that explores personal essays, memoir and criticism.

Both writers, editors and curators, Canlas-Rigg and Traficante have been sharing books, images and ideas since they met at Gallery 44 in 2018. Reading is the foundation of both their writing practices, alongside their relationship to artworks, labour, and thinking and being in the world. For the first session of Reading Toward Writing, participants will share and discuss excerpts from Emma Healey’s 2022 memoir, Best Young Woman Job Book, as well as two essays that offer insights into writing as both practice and labour. 

“After a few weeks of not using my mind to make money, my thoughts take on an unprecedented depth of colour. I experience a kind of being alive that almost no one ever gets to, and that fact hovers around me, moves with me when I move. My body is a machine whose primary function is to generate tiny, crucial revelations. Time moves through me without consequence. I’m always noticing my breath.” 

—Emma Healey

Join us to find out how she got there!

Core Reading 

• Best Young Woman Job Book, Emma Healey (2022)

Supplementary Readings

• Alexander Chee, “The Rosary” (2018)
  From How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, excerpt here 

• Erica N. Cardwell, “Art, Politics, and the Architecture of the Everyday” (2024)
  From Wrong Is Not My Name: Notes on (Black) Art

Participants are invited to read as much or as little as they like in advance, this will be an informal discussion. Upon registration, more information on how to get the books will be provided. 

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Heather Canlas-Rigg is an independent curator and writer based in Toronto. Her practice is rooted in investigating how artists employ the materiality of camera technologies to interrogate imperialist structures, and in thinking critically about institutions.

Alana Traficante is a writer, editor and curator, and the Executive Director at Gallery 44.