Hey, Thanks for stopping by and hanging out with me.
This website started first as a quest to understand what belonging meant to me as a foreigner and traveller and someone who just never really belonged. Then I got bored with my stories and started listening to your stories. You know what? Your stories are fascinating. So I kept listening and I kept writing and I kept thinking about what a writer does in this hyped-up anxious world of short attention spans and pinging social media.
The role of artists is not simply to entertain, but to encourage us to question and think differently. To ponder our pathways. To see the world in different colours or from a different perspective. To allow us to stop and breathe in a moment of internal silence. To Inspire.
So that’s what I try to do here. Inspire you, by painting your experiences and mine in bright magentas and cobalt blues and daisy yellows, so that they pop out at you and give you time to stop and reflect. Maybe the stories just make you smile, or maybe they remind you of something sad. That’s ok too. We need to live in the silent moments pale rose or washed out lime. Even black moments can later become gray or silver, like the changing colour of the clouds.
Your Stories are so intriguing that I launched Walking With Writers, a podcast about the writing life. I also started it because I love being outside and I just wanted to know how other writers and artists keep on going. It’s still a baby so be gentle with it.
I believe in literary citizenship and that we are, as individuals, responsible for making the changes that we want to see so I organized and set myself up to be the volunteer Writer In Residence at a school for refugee and migrant children. I also lassoed a few writing friends together and we started Wild Readings, a public reading series for the writer in everyone.
And then there are My Stories where I talk about the books I like and the glories of my writing life like rejection, head lice or moving countries.
Enjoy. Ponder. Be Inspired.
We’re all in this together. XX Kiki
Oh and the gorgeous new artwork for Writer Out Of Residence? The bright and intuitive Alana (Lani) Bosgra and she did it all with pencil crayons.
