“Dreaming Liberation” Workshop with Eli Clare

In celebration of his new book Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming, the UIC Disability Cultural Center, Access Living, Women & Children First Bookstore, and the UIC Women's Leadership & Resource Center are thrilled to welcome activist and writer Eli Clare to UIC!

Join us for an afternoon of reading and interactive small group discussion about dreaming liberation. We will engage in both silly and serious ways with dreaming as a skill we can learn and need to practice together. 

Lunch will be served with gluten-free and vegan options. 

This workshop will be held mostly in-person, with limited spots. We are also able to offer a Zoom option for 10 folks! 

Please RSVP using this Google Form. 

About Eli Clare

White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare lives near Lake Champlain in unceded Abenaki territory (also known as Vermont) where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing. He has written two books of essays, the award-winning Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure and Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, and a collection of poetry, The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion. His newest book, a mixed genre volume titled Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming, was released in September 2025. Additionally he has been published in dozens of journals and anthologies.

Eli works as a traveling poet, storyteller, and social justice educator. Since 2008, he has spoken, taught, trained, and consulted (both in-person and remotely) at well over 150 conferences, community events, and colleges across the United States and Canada. He currently serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Disability Project at the Transgender Law Center and is also a Disability Futures Fellow (funded by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation). Among other pursuits, he has walked across the United States for peace, coordinated a rape prevention program, and helped organize the first ever Queer Disability Conference.

About Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming

A queer disabled love song to trees and beavers, tremors and dreams, Unfurl explores the pulsing core and porous edges of survival, sorrow, and dreaming. Blending poetry and creative nonfiction, emotion and activist thinking, Eli Clare invites us to unfurl ourselves into the lovely multitude of genders beyond the binary of woman and man, the fierceness of street protest, and the long slow time of granite. He sings to aquifers. Wrestles with the aftermath of child abuse and his family’s legacy as white settlers occupying Dakota homelands. He leans into history. Calls the names of the living and the dead. Connects his own tremoring body to a world full of tremors—earthquakes, jackhammers, quaking aspens. Unfurl reveals deep queer kinships between human and more-than-human, sentient and nonsentient. At every juncture, these poems and essays embrace porousness and the power of dreaming. Ultimately, Unfurl is an invitation to rebellion and joy. Learn more about Unfurl on the Duke University Press website

Audience note:

This event centers the experiences of disabled people or people exploring their relationship to disability, but all are welcome to join (nondisabled folks, students, faculty, staff, and community members). If there is a lot of interest, we will prioritize UIC-affiliated people, but community members, please RSVP!

Covid safety information:

UIC does not require masking, but we are still masking indoors as an accessibility measure for chronically ill / immunocompromised folks and those living interdependently with them. Please wear a mask if it’s accessible for you! We’ll have extras on hand. People will likely be unmasked to eat lunch; we’ll have takeaway containers for anyone who wants to stay masked. 

Access information:

CART (live captions) and ASL will be provided, along with access copies of workshop materials. WLRC is wheelchair accessible and has detailed accessibility information on their website. Please skip the cologne or perfume to make this a fragrance reduced environment!

Contact dcc@uic.edu or 312-355-7050 with any questions or requests.

But wait, there’s more! Eli will also be giving a reading of Unfurl at Access Living on March 31 at 6:00pm.