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In the time of coronavirus

A collection of stories submitted by the public on their experience of living through the time of the Coronavirus pandemic.
We are now safely through the first phase of response to coronavirus in New Zealand and people are reflecting on what this major and previously unimaginable global catastrophe has meant for us, as individuals, in the 21st century. Globally the losses and the scale of human suffering have been very great. This forum offers a space to reflect upon the experience and to consider questions such as: What are we learning from the pandemic? What might we need to remember and preserve? Through the alert levels our prime minister said repeatedly, ‘Stay safe, be kind.’ What was your experience, what did you observe, what mattered and how might we re-imagine a better direction going forward? If you would like to contribute to the re-collective effort please send me your reflections, observations, journal entries, stories to my contact page... just a page of A4 writing, with a title and a brief bio and they will be added to the repository of important writings flowering in this space.

The search for knowledge is.. an exercise in reminiscence, that is, an effort to recall and recollect that which we once knew.

Ahsivai Margalit quoted in Richard Horton, “The Ethics of Memory,” The Lancet, 6 June 2020

Art instead of words by Michelanne Forster

16/6/2020

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​Michelanne is a playwright and author. Her work has been performed  by theatre companies throughout New Zealand, and in the UK, USA and Australia. 

 
During lockdown I painted. I started playing with drawing and painting  as a hobby, something fun to do in my spare time after moving from Auckland to Nelson in 2016. Now, four years later I am enrolled as a Master of Fine Arts student at Massey University on the Wellington campus. My studio is in the old Dominion Museum, somewhere  between what my husband remembers as the Egyptian mummy display and the  hanging whale skeleton. When lockdown commenced the university  shut down and our access swipe cards stopped working. Luckily our tutors warned us this was on the cards and I'd taken most of my art supplies home. I set up a studio in the back bedroom which I shared with my thirty year old son who was between jobs.
 
Our lockdown  family was me, my husband, my younger  son  and my two new kittens from the SPCA. Surprisingly,  aside from a constant low-grade worry about my elderly parents in California, I felt fine. 
 
Do I still feel fine? About New Zealand, yes. About the country of my birth, no. The news there grows darker and more surreal with each passing day. These paintings, done in lockdown  start with cats and end with racism. In between you'll see a Covid fireball heading into a New Zealand landscape, but thank god, it never lands.

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Writing Memoir
Defining Memoir
The Participatory Model
Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
​From Writing Course to Book Publication
Your Writing Space
​Writing on a Theme
Reviews of Memoir
Writers Stories
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Copyright © 2017 Deborah Shepard
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact