Poet Amal Kassir will be taking part in the Anne Frank Tree Planting Ceremony on the UI Pentacrest at 5:00 pm on April 29. Prior to the ceremony, she has offered to lead a writing workshop for students in the School of Social Work.

Join Amal in a brave space, where we will be exploring our own stories for healing that may go beyond us, from within and back! Amal believes we have the capacity to control our narrative, the intrusions of pain and trauma, and give permission to the emotions that affect us. We have the ability to retell our stories any way we choose, and in this, we grow both our character and our writing skills, and develop ourselves as the main character of our own stories to heal. 

ABOUT AMAL:

Amal Kassir is a Syrian-American Muslim artist, performer, and educator born and raised in Denver, CO, to a German-Iowan Mother and a Syrian Father. She is an international spoken word poet, having performed in 10 countries and over 45 cities. She has conducted workshops, given lectures, and recited her poetry in venues ranging from youth prisons, to orphanages to refugee camps to universities to churches to community spaces for the public. She designed her own undergraduate degree called 'Community Programming in Social Psychology' and she is a major proponent in education and building individual agency in particularly underserved and vulnerable populations, especially through writing.

Amal says, “My teaching philosophy is tied to the meaning-making framework--that we have the capacity to control our narrative, the intrusions of pain and trauma, and give permission to the emotions that affects us. We have the ability to retell our stories any which we way we choose, and in this, we grow both our character and our writing skills. We will find a safe space within ourselves during our time together.”