In these times of fierce division and never-ending destruction, the work of building intentional spaces of care and belonging isn’t just important, it is vitally urgent. And I remind myself that the work that we do at Living Hyphen – of cultivating and fostering a culture of courageous and tender storytelling amongst racialized communities – is revolutionary work.

At Living Hyphen, we approach storytelling as a connection both to ourselves and to others. We approach storytelling as a pathway to healing. We approach storytelling as a key to unlocking just and equitable futures.

That’s why over the last few years, we have been partnering with school boards across Ontario, with settlement agencies across the country, and with cultural institutions across North America to train educators, settlement workers, and frontline staff to centre storytelling in their work in ways that are decolonial, intersectional, anti-oppressive, and most importantly, rooted in care.

I am struggling to find the words to capture the profound grief and the seething rage I feel about the tragedy that occurred at the Lapu Lapu Festival, while also trying to hold the immense complexity that I know underlies this act of violence. I weep with my Filipino/a/x community in K'emk'emeláy̓/Vancouver and all across the diaspora and homeland whose families have been broken and whose sense of safety has been seriously shattered. I weep for the loss of precious life, the loss of dreams, the loss of futures, the loss of possibilities.

PACBI leads the cultural, academic, and sports boycotts of Israel’s 76-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid, and is a founding member of the broader Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, led by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest Palestinian coalition in historical Palestine andin exile.

In total solidarity with the people of Palestine, we commit to the underlying guidelines of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel:

• boycott any cultural product or event funded, commissioned, and/or sponsored by an official Israeli body

• not collaborate with or take money from Israeli institutions

• refuse "normalization" efforts seeking to justify Israel's violence or present a false symmetry between oppressed and oppressor

• advocate for others to similarly divest from Israel, end support for the oppression of Palestinians, and pressure Israel to comply with international law

"It's up to authors to spark the imagination of their readers and to help them envision alternatives to how we live.”

Ursula K. Le Guin shared these words in 2014 as she accepted the National Book Foundation’s medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and we’ve been sharing it in almost all of our writing workshops and storytelling gatherings this past year. While she speaks specifically of authors, we know that this sentiment extends to any and all creatives who are telling stories in their own magical ways.

The past year has continued to awaken us to a heightened sense of harm and violence across the globe. From the devastation of living through a climate crisis to the despair of witnessing multiple genocides unfold before our eyes, we at Living Hyphen feel the immense weight and urgency of our times. We take seriously our role and responsibility as storytellers to push for justice. And we know the power of our stories to heal relationships, to resist systems of oppression, and, as Ursula K. Le Guin urges, to envision and create alternatives to how we live.