Writer friends RESIDENCy
June 13 – 27, 2024
Ashwini Bhasi
Ashwini Bhasi is a bioinformatician and interdisciplinary artist from Kerala, India. Her hybrid work merges scientific data, prose and visual poetry to explore the lived experience of chronic pain and disability. Ashwini is the recipient of the Shaw Memorial Poetry Prize from Dunes Review, the Voices of Color Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and the Room Project Fellowship. Her work can be found in Michigan Quarterly Review, DIAGRAM, Frontier Poetry, Honey Literary, RHINO, Kweli, The Offing and elsewhere. Musth, the winner of the 2020 CutBank chapbook contest, is her first poetry collection.
Artist Statement:
As a scientist and artist with multiple chronic conditions, I find myself drawn to create art that makes the invisible suffering of chronic pain and disability visible. I am currently working on a hybrid book-length collection that merges scientific data, poetry, and visual art to document the emotional and visceral experiences of chronic pain. During the residency, I will focus on creating a set of prose poems that document my decades long journey filled with misdiagnosis, dismissal and mistreatment of Deep Infiltrating Endometriosis (DIE) and Temporomandibular Disorder (TMD).
Community Engagement
