Workshop Description

Not knowing has become difficult to admit. We are pressed to decide what we think, where we stand, whom to believe, and what something means, often before we have had time to understand. Literature can give us that time. We form impressions as we read, but need not settle them at once. We can dislike a character and remain in their company; believe a narrator, then begin to doubt them; hold conflicting accounts together; or discover, fifty pages later, that what seemed obvious no longer is. What comes next can alter what we thought we knew. Literature does not stop us from judging. It keeps judgment answerable to what comes next. A Place at the Roundtable asks what happens when we carry that attentional friction beyond the page.

Co-led by a scholar-practitioner and a fine craft wood artist, the workshop gathers participants around a table to sand and finish handcrafted hardwood eating boards. Working with grain, pressure, and resistance, we talk about judgment, curiosity, and what it might mean to allow another person - as with story - to remain unfinished in our understanding. The finished boards become part of a shared meal and then go home with their makers, along with this provocation:

What if we gave one another the same chance to keep unfolding that we give good story?

Limited to 10 participants.