Our Response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak

As a precaution to help limit the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) and care for our community, Just Buffalo Literary Center has postponed a number of events, and we will follow the guidance of Buffalo Public Schools in terms of Just Buffalo Writing Center programming.

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Welcome to The Ground Beneath Our Feet—a digital collection of poems on climate justice by young writers involved with Just Buffalo's Writing Center. This collection was made in collaboration with Ujima Company's Dunbar Youth Theatre Arts Program as part of the Water in the Desert Project.

For the past year, JBWC writers, along with young artists from Buffalo Center for Art and Technology, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center and the Buffalo Public Schools, have been taking part in a community arts collaboration inspired by artist LeRoi Johnson’s exhibit currently on view at Burchfield Penney Art Center, LeRoi: Living in Color.

A conversation about writing, disability studies, and the politics of legibility with Youth Fellow Angelina Tang & project mentor Jessica Lowell Mason I want you, dear reader, to better understand those who perceive the world differently from you, and kindly be able to ask them, “So, what do you think?” - Angelina Tang “Is the way this narrative is constructed helping or harming those within the community being represented?” This is a question I think we, as writers, especially of fiction but within any genre, should be asking ourselves. - Jessica Lowell Mason

Presenting an excerpt of Autumn Flowers written by 2022 JBWC Youth Fellow Angelina Tang. Autumn Flowers is a story about being human. It is the journey of a girl who rises above her suffering and embraces herself, learning to accept her past and future; at the same time, it is an exploration of Chinese culture, flower language, and the effects of a schizophrenia diagnosis.