OVERSPILL: the poetics & politics of writing the self
When: Saturday, June 27, 2026, 9:30 AM - 8:00 PM
Where: Arts One (various venues), Mile End Campus, QMUL
Speaker: Anne Boyer; Sita Balani; Lola Olufemi; Donna Marcus Duke
Overspill asks what it means to write from the self in a moment when personal narrative is everywhere: demanded by institutions, shaped by platforms, and commodified as authenticity. Bringing together writers and artists across fiction, non-fiction and poetry, the symposium explores the politics and poetics of writing the self...
Overspill asks what it means to write from the self in a moment when personal narrative is everywhere: demanded by institutions, shaped by platforms, and commodified as authenticity. Bringing together writers and artists across fiction, non-fiction and poetry, the symposium explores the politics and poetics of writing the self, tracing what exceeds the individual—oppression, labour, class, injury, care, infrastructure, and the conditions that make a life narratable at all.
​Through discussions, workshops & an open mic reanimating collective archives, centring practices of listening and configuring the ‘auto’ as always plural, we consider the ways individual accounts can become a shared method. Traversing inheritance & fabulation, madness, imperialism, ecologies, trans collectivities & more, Overspill explores the role of writing from the self in generating solidarities and ‘imagining otherwise.’
Organised by Subtexts (interdisciplinary PhD committee), in collaboration with Mental Health Social Justice Network and Centre for Contemporary Writing, QMUL.
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Speakers include:
Anne Boyer
Sarona Abuaker
Sita Balani
Lola Olufemi
Donna Marcus Duke
& June Archbold
(School of Cvntology)
Mental Health Social Justice Network
Entrar Afuera
Pratyusha
Katy Lewis Hood
Maxe Crandall
Remi Graves
Hesse K.
& more...