Dear friends,

I'm not technically bound to an academic calendar anymore, but those rhythms are deeply ingrained at this point. Once the summer is underway, my consulting work tends to quiet down, and this year I'm trying to use that change in pace to shift my brain into the slower mode of reading, thinking, and writing. What's more, I'm attempting to do this in collaboration with others—a lovely, energizing, anxiety-provoking prospect.

I often dislike collaborative writing, if I'm being honest. Writing is a little bit like running for me—something I need to do, crave doing, but cannot stand doing with someone else. A lot of it, in both cases, is fear of judgment. I'll be too slow as a running partner; my writing will be vapid and pointless. But part of it is also control. Both running and writing are spaces that are profoundly mine, where I don't have to worry about anyone's feelings but my own.

But this summer, I have two very different collaborative writing projects underway. The first is part of a research grant from the Wallace Foundation titled Navigating Justice and Harm in the Art of Community Storytelling. For this, I'm working with longtime friend and colleague Ashley Cheyemi McNeil to develop a paper that puts some theoretical analysis around the work we've been doing related to the complexities of sharing stories—the ways that storywork can bring healing and move us toward justice, while knowing that they may also surface pain. This is some of the first theory-based writing I've done in many years, and it feels at once familiar and disorienting to open up that way of thinking again, especially in collaboration. It feels quite vulnerable to try and press into the most complex edges of my thinking alongside someone else, but it also makes a process that is often solitary feel exhilarating and companionable. I can't wait to see where our thinking takes us.

The second project is more experimental. Brandon Walsh and I have been crossing professional paths since 2012, and in that time I've admired the ways he weaves so many strands of work and life—scholarly writing, music, pedagogy, video games, administration, parenting. I've edited his writing, and he's given feedback on mine, so we know one another's work quite well. While chatting on slack, we both found that we wanted to write about writing—or maybe, to think about writing and what it means at this particular moment in time, and for both of us, one of the best ways we think is through writing. We decided to explore our thinking by writing back and forth, by hand, in a physical journal—so that we have to wait to receive the other's thoughts before jumping in with our own. It makes each entry both time-bound and ephemeral, connected to the moments that pen touched paper.

So here we are: writing to each other to understand what makes writing important and human and worth doing. It’s an indeterminate project. We don't have a clear sightline on what we're aiming for; we're writing this way to see what happens, and thinking a lot about time and friction and audience. Everything about the approach is experimental and relational, which—in a moment when we're all getting bombarded with flat, AI-generated writing—feels worth trying.

Brandon and I keep nervous-laughing about how much anxiety we both feel about this. Will my handwriting be legible? Will I have anything worthwhile to say? As we spend time in the project I'm imagining that these worries may soften into something interesting. Why do we both have such a strong affective response to this approach? How will it change the way we write?

On the project side of things, in addition to my Wallace-supported work with Full Spectrum Features and JusticexDesign I'm also continuing to work on ACLS's Doctoral Futures initiative; conducting a program evaluation for a Mellon-funded project at Texas A&M's Race and Ethnic Studies Institute; and supporting prospective grantees as part of the Mellon Foundation's Public Knowledge Program. I've also had the privilege of speaking at the University of Alabama and (virtually) at Stockholm University.

And, I'm doing my very best to slow down as I travel and spend time with friends and family. Whatever summer looks like for you, I hope it brings moments of delight and connection.

—Katina

Brandon and I are planning to share parts our writing as we go. If you'd like to see updates, consider subscribing to Brandon's blog.