Cook Us Up A Feast for All Our Senses
Announcing the February/March Age of Empathy prompt challenge
Dearest AoE readers and writers! We’re excited to announce our first prompt challenge for 2022 and we invite you all to participate.
I’m sitting alone in a bakery engulfed by the scent of freshly baking pastries. My coffee still steams, bitter and black, the perfect complement to the cinnamon bun I nibble in between sentences, so sweet it sticks to my teeth.
The sun is not yet up, so the tumbling snow is all but invisible except where the street lights illuminate it in flickers of white. Across the street, someone has strung up wicker globes that dangle and sway like enormous glowing acorns in the gale.
I adore getting up early and staying up late.
The world feels more spacious when not everyone is awake. Into the relative silence, my imagination expands, subterranean and spreading like fungi. Ideas fruit here and there: fresh-baked fantasies and delicious dreams.
Alongside my coffee, I’m sipping adrienne maree brown’s revolutionary collection, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. The cozy space — complete with jazz, all tinkling piano and swooping voices — is a perfect compliment to her radical thoughts:
“I love all the ways we are sensual. I like to smell good, taste everything yummy, feel how alive skin is, listen to sounds of breath and pleasure, see the beauty of flesh and bones. Laugh uncontrollably. Play. Feel alive.
My body has the capacity to sense immense pleasure, and as I get older I keep intentionally expanding my sensual awareness and decolonizing it so that I can sense more pleasure than capitalism believes in.” (pg 4)
She advocates for a kind of ethical hedonism as the antidote for an oppressive system built around hoarding, “creating a false scarcity and then trying to sell us joy, sell us back to ourselves.” (pg 15)
In short, savouring the pleasures of our bodies might be one of the most simple and accessible yet revolutionary acts. A way to reject a system that leaves most of us behind.
Radical Pleasure
AoE invites you this month to write a personal essay or creative nonfiction about a ‘radical’ pleasure you’ve experienced. A pleasure that reminded you we’re made for freedom and joy.
Maybe you can still taste the cookies you pilfered from the cupboard as a kid. Perhaps you regale us with the tale of the first time you went downhill skiing and felt as though you flew — until you tumbled into a tangle of skis and limbs, anyway.
It might be a ritual that sparks your spirit: the candles you light before you slide into the bubble bath, the fuzzy robe that welcomes you afterward, and the feeling of serenity sandwiched in between.
Slipping into our senses can awaken long-forgotten recollections, so don’t be surprised if you start talking about Aunt Judy’s famous cake and winding up realizing she was your pleasure guru all this time.
Your story can be fun, silly, outrageous or sexy but above all, please let it be sensual! Let us sniff, sip, and relish your evocative prose.
The Fine Details
Along with the usual Nonfiction tag, please use Radical Pleasure so we can sort it properly.
The prompt runs from now until March 15th.
Winners will be announced the following weekend. In addition to having your winning entry highlighted in the newsletter and pinned to our home page, we’ll send a sensory treat your way!
We won’t be editing the entries, so make sure you ask a writing pal for help. Here are a few incredible resources to up your creative nonfiction game:
From yours truly, on noticing the details in the first place:
From Aimée Gramblin, on putting pen to paper:
If you’re not yet a writer for AoE, please refer to our submission guidelines to get started:
We look forward to reading your submissions. Thank you, as always, for your continued support.
Stay safe!
With sincerest gratitude,
Danielle Loewen, Aimée Gramblin, Dayon Cotton, and Nia Simone McLeod
Danielle Loewen loves to write lyrical essays rife with detail. You can find her creative nonfiction here.
