On October 29, community members created a collective “stone soup” story using a 3d image of Stone Soup Cafe.
Fairbanks Community of Writing 2016 Food Story
On October 29, at the Noel Wien Library, UAF’s English Department’s CoW, a playful acronym which stands for Community of Writing, organized an event for Fairbanks to create and share food stories. You can interact with some of the narratives of 2016 CoW by exploring the image above. Touch the image and move around the cafe. Click or tap the icons to see or hear the stories.
More than 125 people came to our event, and we collected more than 50 stories through our workshops. These stories took the form of comic strips, interviews, felt landscapes, journal entries, and letters to inmates.
We are so proud by what our community can do through the values of food and story–collaboration and connection.
For the past five years, the event has been hosted and run by volunteers–some affiliated with UAF, specifically the English Department and coordinated by myself and different leaders of organizations such as NaNoWriMo, the Fairbanks Correctional Center Women’s Writing Workshop, Permafrost literary magazine, Girls on Ice, and teachers and students of required writing classes at UAF.
For the last two years, we have held the event in the Noel Wien library which allows us to serve people there who often spend Saturdays in the library but who may not feel like events like this are put on especially for them. What stories do our neighbors have about food? What reminds us of home or family? Or, what about food makes us uncomfortable or feel left out? These questions were a part of our event this year. These themes are visible in our stories.
If you are interested in supporting future CoW in Fairbanks, contact Sarah Stanley, Director of University Writing at UAF. She welcomes anything you might share to keep the event important and happening.