New Narratives, Left to right: Eileen Myles, Jacob Wren, Maria Fusco and Lynne Tillman. Photo courtesy of the Western Front.

Building on the West Coast literary movement known as New Narrative, There are reasons for looking and feeling and thinking about things that are invisible brings together four writers at the edge of literary and contemporary art writing in the voices of Maria Fusco, Eileen Myles, Lynne Tillman, and Jacob Wren.

As a literary genre, New Narrative addresses the structure of narrative by experimenting in fragmentation, poetic strategies, and autobiographical allusions. As a formal conceit, New Narrative is an embodied form of writing, a type of creative non-fiction that relies on presence as much as memory.

As a weekend of readings and responses in Vancouver, British Columbia, There are reasons for looking and feeling and thinking about things that are invisible aims to re-contextualize the field of contemporary art writing as both a form and a labour of creative production. Developing alongside poetry, literary, and art histories, the field of art writing is in itself a spectrum of craft and praxis to be discussed and reflected upon critically.