Community Empathy Write Year Two: What Can Be Learned by Writing into Friendship and Social Mobility

Fri, September 20 | 11:15 AM EDT–12:15 PM EDT
Topic: Art, Conceptual | Knowledge Level: Intermediate

Heather Sloane Cleary, PhD, S. M. Foysol Ahmed, MSW, Talacia Coleman, MSW, Chantal Crane, MSW, Gwendolyn Hooks, Busisiwe Nkosi, and Tamara Peacock

Dr. Cleary and a selection of fellow participant researchers/writers will discuss the preliminary findings from a six-month creative writing project focused on the importance of friendship to social mobility. Fearless Writers was created as a way for university and high school students to work together to disrupt social separation caused by oppressive housing policies known as redlining. Inspired by a Zora Neale Hurston scholar (Rae Chesney) talk at the BGSU Black Issues Conference in spring 2023, the friendship between Hurston and Langston Hughes was used to “activate” the Community Empathy Write (CEW). This community writing project was grounded in history, theory, and both research and writing group method. This project was also inspired by recent groundbreaking research by Raj Chetty and colleagues published in Nature (2022) looking at the importance of friendship to economic mobility. The CEW prompts were informed by participant writers and community stakeholders who were engaged in phases of the writing. Each month, the community of writers were given three prompts, two poem/writing (one Zora, one Langston) and one news story distilling social science research about friendship. The presenters will discuss creative writing as a method to explore collective community experience of friendships. Participants of the conference will have the opportunity to hear a sample of short pieces written by members of the writing research community and learn more about the prompt development. The audience will have the opportunity to write into a prompt, share, and receive strengths-based feedback to get experience with the writing group method. Participants will learn about how the CEW fits into other community writing projects around the country and a movement within medicine nurturing empathy for patient experience called narrative medicine.

Trigger Warning: This presentation contains information (written, spoken, or visual) that may be triggering or (re)traumatizing to attendees.


Presentation Objectives
  • Provide an overview of community-engaged writing and collaborative autoethnography method to collectively explore the connection between friendships and economic mobility from personal experience wisdom
  • Describe the benefits of university/public school partnerships in elevating youth narrative about important social justice topics
  • Demonstrate how poetry can be used as data and part of legitimate participatory inquiry about social justice concerns
About the Presenters
Heather Sloane Cleary, PhD

Heather Sloane Cleary is an associate professor in the social work program at The University of Toledo. She is the co-creator of the Fearless Writers program, which is a poetry-informed, participatory action, autoethnography research project that explores injustice through intergenerational creative writing.


S. M. Foysol Ahmed, MSW

S. M. Foysol Ahmed is a recent MSW graduate and was accepted to start his PhD program at the University of Kentucky in the fall 2024. Foysol joined the Community Empathy Write from Bangladesh. He has worked in Bangladesh advocating for climate and environmental justice. While completing his MSW from The University of Toledo, he worked with the HTSJI on anti- trafficking initiatives.


Talacia Coleman, MSW

Talacia Coleman is a recent MSW graduate who was an intern for Fearless Writers and participant in the Community Empathy Write. Talacia is the Assistant Director of Victim Services at the YWCA in Toledo, Ohio.


Chantal Crane, MSW

Chantal Crane is a therapist who specializes in eating disorders. She is a long-time volunteer for Fearless Writers, and this is her second Community Empathy Write. Chantal is a self-published poet of the collection of poems, Goodbye, Terraceview, available on Amazon.


Gwendolyn Hooks

Gwendolyn Hooks is a doctoral student at The University of Toledo in Counselor Education and teaches classes at The University of Toledo. She is a licensed counselor in Michigan and works as project manager at the VA center for Clinical Management Research. She has a goal of increasing equity in quality mental health access.


Busisiwe Nkosi

Busisiwe Nkosi is an MSW student, was an intern for Fearless Writers, and is a participant in the Community Empathy Write. Busi is an international student from South Africa who hopes to duplicate the IHTSJ Conference in her country after completing her MSW.


Tamara Peacock

Tamara Peacock is a full-time substitute teacher for Toledo Public Schools. This is her second Community Empathy Write. Tamara was a participant in two teacher writing retreats put on by Fearless Writers during COVID shutdown.