Writing Workshops
My workshops work to encourage women, men, and children to engage with the practice of letter writing, a form of writing that promotes reflection, awareness, and connectedness with ourselves and others. The framework of workshops is focused on enhanced listening, learning, engaging, acknowledging, and reflection of our inner selves, our personal stories and experiences, our contemplations and memories on struggles and joys, hopes and losses, traumas and dreams, love and death, and other experiences that define our humanity.
The workshops take place in a shared safe space toward meaningful reconnections with ourselves and others. This pedagogical, memories-based, narrative activity runs in single or multiple sessions with individuals and groups. Sessions begin with the introduction of theoretical and historical notions around writing. Practical activities are integrated into discussions. Collaborations in 2023 were held at Le Monastère des Augustines (Québec City) and La Maison de la Culture de Côte-des-Neiges (Ville de Montréal).
Mission Statement: The workshop series, "Writing and Wellness" encourages the fundamental practices of listening, learning, engaging, acknowledging, and reflecting through the art of letter writing and the telling and sharing of life experiences with the aim of better reconnecting with ourselves and others.
Recent Events
October 2021
LETTERS - A Performance on Love Letters and Migration
Baffignac, Tarn, France
This short film features the reading, narration, music and dance of love letters written in a transnational context involving a young woman's migration to Montreal, Canada and her fiancé in Venice, Italy in the years 1948-1949. The letters come alive through readings in Italian and French performed by Sonia Cancian and Michel Peterson. The performed letters are drawn from the book, With Your Words in My Hands: The Letters of Antonietta Petris and Loris Palma, by Sonia Cancian (McGill-Queen's University Press 2021). The performance was held at La Grange, a culture and arts centre in Baffignac, Tarn in France in October 2021.
April - June 2021
Workshops and Discussions
PHI Centre, Montreal, Canada
When was the last time you sealed a reflection in a letter? What if, we harnessed time for a moment, and took our favourite ink and paper to write a (love) letter—a letter that gives voice to the stories of our freedoms, our joys, and our fears. What stories would we tell?
Stories are powerful gateways for understanding the experiences of others. Led by Dr. Sonia Cancian, A (Love) Letter to You - Letters.to.a.Stranger explores narratives of human intimacy and presence composed in handwritten and email correspondence in an era dominated by social media, virtual worlds, and isolation.
*Participants were encouraged to describe an experience, a reflection, story, a dream, a wish to an unknown correspondent (a stranger) by dropping one off in person at PHI Centre Reception, or by sending a scanned, photographed, hand-written or typed letter to phi.letterstoastranger@gmail.com.