June 28th, 2.30pm – 3.30pm at Centre A
Featuring Taslim Jaffer
Expressive writing is a powerful practice used in therapeutic and rehabilitative settings to support emotional processing, self-reflection, and healing. In this guided workshop, participants are invited into a safe, supportive, and creative space where writing becomes a tool for working through complex feelings and lived experiences. Research has shown that expressive writing can help reduce physical symptoms, strengthen the immune system, and increase overall life satisfaction.
Led by Taslim Jaffer, an experienced facilitator who has taught writing-for-healing workshops in addiction treatment centres and psychiatric units, this session draws on proven writing prompts that help participants translate personal experiences into poetry and prose. No prior writing experience is required, but only a willingness to explore and reflect.
This workshop is also especially supportive for caregivers and parents who often carry the emotional weight of supporting others. Through guided writing, participants are offered space to process stress, grief, resilience, and compassion, fostering renewal and emotional well-being.
Whether you are seeking personal healing, creative expression, or a moment of pause and reflection, this workshop offers a meaningful opportunity to write, connect, and restore.
Taslim Jaffer is a writer, editor and writing instructor with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from University of King’s College. Her bylines appear in Maclean’s, CBC, WestCoast Families, and Peace Arch News & more. She is the winner of the 2022 Creative Nonfiction Collective/Humber Literary Review contest and recipient of a 2021 Silver Canadian Online Publishing Award. She is co-editor of the anthology, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity and Home (Bookhug*Press, 2024), which won a Gold Foreword INDIE award. Taslim has been teaching memoir and expressive writing in community and rehabilitative settings for over a decade and was the 2025 City of Richmond Writer-in-Residence. Her work-in-progress is an essay collection exploring themes of identity, cultural inheritance, liminal spaces and parenting.
Centre A, 268 Keefer St Unit 205, Vancouver, BC V6A 1X5
We would like to acknowledge that our festival takes place on the unceded traditional territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Səl̓ílwətaɬ and xʷməθkwəy̓əm First Nations.
LiterASIAN 2026 