Exploring the connection between movement, senses, and imagination.

Desert Stories

I am very happy to announce that Desert Stories is here!

Desert Stories, a Sense Writing storytelling project with African refugees living in Israel, began in 2010 when I started to teach theater at an NGO in South Tel Aviv to a group of teenagers who had fled from the genocide in Darfur. Friendships developed and collaborations continued even after I left Israel and moved back to New York. For the last few years, I return to Israel twice a year, continuing the collaborations that started years ago, and starting new ones.

Today, the project has grown to include many volunteers collaborating with the growing refugee population in Israel. The storytelling workshops take place where refugees are -- in cities in Israel and at the Holot Detention Center in the Negev Desert. 

The stories that come out of the workshops were not limited to their journeys of survival or escape from the organized murder and dehumanizing dictatorships that threatened them but encompassed all their stories -- stories as people before the horror, stories as people after they left, stories as people.

For me, Desert Stories exposes the vulnerabilities for all of us who try to tell our stories.

-Madelyn Kent

No Popcorn Readings

Each semester or so, a reading to share our work with each other.