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Find out more about what our Voices and Faces Project team is doing.

What makes our work at The Voices and Faces Project possible? Our deeply committed team. The inspired and inspiring community of writers and activists who take part in our award-winning testimonial writing workshop and narrative advocacy trainings.

And supporters and partners like you.

To date, over 1350 writers and advocates from four continents have taken part in our narrative justice trainings or The Stories We Tell — our signature testimonial writing program for survivors of gender-based violence and other human rights violations, created as a space for survivors of and witnesses to injustices to think in new ways about using personal stories to create political change…

In the United States today our politics are deeply polarized. The differences that divide us are great. The things that unite us feel fragile. And our ability to engage in a respectful dialogue with those we disagree with is challenged in unprecedented ways.

At The Voices and Faces Project— a non-profit storytelling project and testimonial writing program for survivors of gender based violence and other human rights violations — we recognize that participants in our programs bring different lived experiences and political ideologies to the table…

The Voices and Faces Project just returned from Tbilisi, Georgia, where we partnered with UN Women to pilot our newest narrative advocacy workshop series, Local Storytelling, Global Change: Using Narrative in the Fight for Gender Justice. Created for, and in dialogue with, the UN Women Georgia country office, Local Storytelling, Global Change was made possible through the support of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and IREX.

During this all-new, four-part workshop series, The Voices and Faces Project brought together a community of Tbilisi-based activists, allies, artists, and gender-based violence survivors seeking to think in new ways about the purpose and ethics of storytelling…

The stories we tell about ourselves and the communities we grow up in are powerful. No one understands this better than Chantale Zuzi, a leader in the refugee rights movement and the founder of Refugee Can Be, a non-profit organization that envisions and is working to create a world in which every refugee girl is a leader in her own right.

An alumnae of The Voices and Faces Project‘s testimonial writing workshop for refugee girls in Nairobi, Kenya, Chantale is using her powerful voice, face and story to create a more just and free world for refugee girls. Get to know Refugee Can Be…

Our lives are constructed through narrative. We live our stories, and then we tell those stories in a way that allows us to make sense of them. But how do we ethically share events that we’ve witnessed, but not lived? What unique challenges do we face when we write or speak our most painful truths? And how can gender-based violence survivors use their personal stories to create lasting political change?
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During Local Storytelling, Global Change: Using Narrative in the Fight for Gender Justice, The Voices and Faces Project will explore these questions in an all-new, day-long narrative advocacy training debuting at UN Women in the Republic of Georgia on September 30th.

The Stories We Tell, The Voices and Faces Project’s testimonial writing workshop for survivors of gender-based violence, is coming to Chicago November 16-17.

Developed to help those who have lived through or witnessed gender-based violence or other human rights violations use their voices, faces, and stories to call the public to greater compassion and — more importantly — social action, The Voices and Faces Project’s award-winning testimonial writing program is supporting a new generation of activists seeking to use story to create social change. We’re not just training writers. We’re creating a global community…

Developed to help those who have lived through or witnessed gender-based violence or other human rights violations use their voices, faces, and stories to call the public to greater compassion and — more importantly — social action, The Voices and Faces Project‘s award-winning testimonial writing program is supporting a new generation of activists seeking to use story to create social change. We’re not just training writers. We’re creating a global community.

We ground each of our writing workshops in a simple belief: That we are here to be heard.

During each immersive, two-day Voices and Faces Project writing workshop, a cohort of emerging and established artists, writers, activists, and survivors come together to read and discuss culture-changing literature from across history and various social justice movements… take part in a series of innovative, real-time writing exercises…

When Vera Klement died in October of last year, the art world lost a great talent. A survivor of the Holocaust and one of America’s most acclaimed painters, Vera’s art is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and dozens of other private collections and museums.

But for The Voices and Faces Project — and particularly our organizational founder, Anne K. Ream — Vera was more than an artist. She was a longstanding supporter, mentor and friend. In “You Are Beyond: Remembering Vera Klement,” a just-published New City essay on Vera’s life, legacy, and deeply empathic artistic vision, Anne writes:…

Our lives are constructed through narrative. We live our stories, and then we tell those stories in a way that allows us to make sense of them. But which stories do we choose to tell, and in what medium or format? How can we ethically share stories that we have witnessed, but not lived? What does it mean to center survivor narratives in the movement to end human trafficking? And why are “dangerous narratives” – stories that make people deeply uncomfortable – so critical to creating lasting social change?

In “Dangerous. Necessary. Narrative: The power, purpose, and ethics of storytelling in the movement to end human trafficking,” a featured panel discussion at World Without Exploitation’s Now to Next National Conference, Anne K. Ream, the founder of The Voices and Faces Project and author of Lived Through This, a memoir of her multi-country journey listening to gender-based violence survivors, will moderate a dialogue with Emmy Award-winning journalist Ruchira Gupta, author of I Kick and I Fly, a young adult novel centered on a trafficked girl;…

Developed to help those who have lived through or witnessed gender-based violence or other human rights violations use their voices, faces, and stories to call the public to greater compassion and — more importantly — social action, The Voices and Faces Project‘s award-winning testimonial writing program is supporting a new generation of activists seeking to use story to create social change. We’re not just training writers. We’re creating a global community.

We ground each of our writing workshops in a simple belief: That we are here to be heard.

During each immersive, two-day Voices and Faces Project writing workshop, a cohort of emerging and established artists, writers, activists, and survivors come together to read and discuss culture-changing literature from across history and various social justice movements… take part in a series of innovative, real-time writing exercises…and share creative work in moderated, expert-led workshopping sessions. Over 1300 writers from across the African and North American continents have graduated from our writing program….

On 5/29 Hideout Chicago — named one of America’s best live music venues by Esquire Magazine — and The Voices and Faces Project, a global testimonial writing program for survivors of gender-based violence and other social injustices, are coming together to host “Hear to be Heard,” a concert benefitting Center for Story & Witness, the next generation of The Voices and Faces Project’s award-winning programming.

With a lineup that includes legendary singer Katherine Davis, a 2017 inductee in Chicago’s Blues Hall of Fame; singer-songwriter Donna Herula, named Best Traditional Blues Artist at the 2022 Independent Blues Awards; and a special later-night set by New Heartaches, one of Chicago’s best-loved honky tonk bands, this will be a night of Americana you won’t want to miss…

Supporting the next generation of global activists as they think in new ways about the power, purpose and ethics of storytelling is at the heart of our narrative justice work at The Voices and Faces Project.

This week, we’re heading to Washington, DC to partner with IREX in support of their U.S Department of State sponsored Community Engagement Exchange Program (CEE). The CEE program was designed to enable a select, global cohort of civil society leaders to deepen their skills and knowledge base, serving as more effective advocates and leaders when they return to the countries in which they work and live…

At The Voices and Faces Project — a global storytelling initiative and testimonial writing program — we love celebrating the successes of our workshop alums and organizational allies. This month, there’s a lot to celebrate as the Skoll Foundation convenes the Skoll World Forum, a global, curated delegation of social innovators working to advance bold and equitable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.

This year’s delegation will include 5 persons near and dear to our organization: Anne K. Ream, founder of The Voices and Faces Project and co-creator of our testimonial writing program; Chantale Zuzi, a graduate of our writing program and the founder of Refugee Can Be; Monica Ramirez, founder of longstanding partner organization Justice for Migrant Women, where Anne serves as board president; Jimmie Briggs, a facilitator for our Voices and Faces Project workshops for…

No one individual or community could ever be the “face” of a feminist artistic movement that spans decades, and continents. But acclaimed artist Michaela Spiegel — the founder of Centre Pompadour, Europe’s only feminist artists’ residency — has crafted a series of video portraits that speak to the collective power of the artists, writers, and content creators who are driving today’s global feminist artistic movement.

One of the persons she profiles is our own Anne K. Ream, the founder of The Voices and Faces Project (which will be rebranded and expanded as Center for Story & Witness in spring, 2024). A past artist in residence at Centre Pompadour – working alongside painter and Art Works for Change curator Randy Rosenberg — Anne spoke to Michaela about her journey into feminism, how a…

Part personal history of writer and The Voices and Faces Project founder Anne K. Ream’s experience rebuilding her life in the wake of violence, part memoir of a multi-country journey spent listening to survivors of rape and human trafficking, Lived Through This was been adapted for the stage by its author and two award-winning playwrights, Marilyn Campbell-Lowe, and Caity-Shea Violette.

A staged reading that has been performed as a UN Commission on the Status of Women Helen Mills Theater sidebar event and at Chicago’s Piven Theater, Cindy Pritzker Pavilion, and Printers Row Lit Fest, Lived Through This is now traveling to Virginia for two special performances that will benefit survivors of human trafficking…

For those who have been sexually harmed by leaders within their religious or spiritual communities, or shamed just for being who they are, faith is often a loaded word.

“Breaking Free,” The Voices and Faces Project’s newest immersive, two-day testimonial writing program, was created for persons who have been impacted by religious trauma and purity culture. Our end goal?  To support emerging and established writers and activists seeking to give voice to what they have lived through or witnessed in their religious or spiritual communities. Created through a partnership with Linda Kay Klein, author of Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, “Breaking Free” is a first-of-its-kind…

“Breaking Free,” The Voices and Faces Project’s newest two-day testimonial writing workshop, was developed for individuals affected by religious trauma, particularly as it intersects with gender and sexuality.

Created through a Voices and Faces Project partnership with Break Free Together, a not-for-profit organization that seeks to support individuals recovering from religious purity cultures, “Breaking Free” seeks to help participants examine the deep intersections among religious trauma, sexual trauma, and gender-based trauma — which are often unacknowledged within religious spaces, and ignored in secular spaces. Our end goal? To support emerging and established writers seeking to write or speak out about the injustices they have lived through or …

Dear Friend:

Not long ago a close friend and I were talking about The Stories We Tell, The Voices and Faces Project’s global testimonial writing program for those who have lived through or witnessed gender-based violence and other human rights violations.

“It must be painful,” he said, “to be in spaces where people are confronting that level of grief and suffering.”

He’s right, of course. Bearing witness as someone speaks to a trauma they have lived through, or are living with, is painful — and it should be. To imaginatively move closer to the suffering of another human being — which is what we ask of every participant in our writing workshops — takes compassion, and a rare kind of emotional courage…

Dear Friend:

What makes our work at The Voices and Faces Project possible? Our deeply committed team. The inspired and inspiring community of writers and activists who take part in our award-winning testimonial writing workshop and narrative advocacy trainings. And you.

It’s true. Everything we do is made possible by friends and allies like you, who have not only believed in our work since the Voices and Faces Project was launched in 2006. You’ve supported it. Which is why this #GivingTuesday, we invite you to give the gift of change again, by making as generous a donation as you can to our Stories We Tell Scholarship Fund.…

What makes our work at The Voices and Faces Project possible? Our deeply committed team. The inspired and inspiring community of writers and activists who take part in our award-winning testimonial writing workshop and narrative advocacy trainings.

And supporters and partners like you.

To date, over 1300 writers and advocates from four continents have taken part in our narrative justice trainings or The Stories We Tell — our signature testimonial writing program for survivors of gender-based violence and other human rights violations, created as a space for survivors of and witnesses to injustices to think in new ways about using personal stories to create political change.…

Those are the words of memorist Hannah Sward, who recently participated in The Stories We Tell, The Voices and Faces Project’s immersive, two-day testimonial writing program for survivors of gender-based violence and other social injustices.

A writer whose critically praised memoir, Strip, speaks beautifully to the pain caused by the sex trade, Hannah’s voice is changing the way the world looks at commercial sexual exploitation. And, as one of our Stories We Tell writing workshop alums, she is part of a global Voices and Faces Project community — now almost 1300 writers strong — who are using their personal narratives to create political and social change.

During each Stories We Tell workshop a cohort of emerging and established writers and activists come together to read and discuss culture-changing literature and representation from across history and social justice movements…

Mahatma Gandhi believed that in making any public decision, we should think deeply about how it affects the “last person” in society, centering those who are most vulnerable in all that we do. This is a vision that is deeply aligned with The Voices and Faces Project’s global testimonial writing program for survivors of human rights violations.

It’s also the vision that inspired Apne Aap Women Worldwide to create The Last Girl Awards, in recognition of global changemakers whose work uplifts the most vulnerable among us: girls who are being bought and sold. …

Sex trafficking is a global issue that is more local than many in America think. How can people of conscience with different backgrounds, ideologies, and even political persuasions come together to create a world where no one is bought, sold or exploited? What does it mean to foster a truly survivor-driven anti-trafficking movement? And how do we assure that survivors don’t only have a seat at the table — they are at the head of that table?

During “They Are Not For Sale,” the Laura Bush Institute for Women’s Health Conference, Reflection Ministries in Midland founder Lisa Bownds, Dreamcatcher Foundation founder Brenda-Myers Powell, and The Voices and Faces Project’s own Anne K. Ream will come together …

Mahatma Gandhi believed that in making any public decision, we should think deeply about how it affects the “last person” in society, centering those who are most vulnerable in all that we do.

Inspired by this vision, Apne Aap Women Worldwide — one of the most impactful, effective anti-trafficking organizations working globally — created “The Last Girl Awards” in recognition of those activists, artists and policymakers whose work uplifts the most vulnerable among us: those who are being bought and sold…

Our lives are constructed through narrative. We live the story, and then we tell the story in a way that allows us to make sense of it. But which stories do we choose to tell, and how? And what happens when we discover that a story we’ve been told, about an issue or an individual, is at odds with the story that’s been lived?

On September 10th at Printers Row Lit Fest— the Midwest’s largest literary and ideas festival — The Voices and Faces Project founder Anne K. Ream will moderate a panel discussion, “Taking Back the Narrative,” where three very different writers will explore the ways that narrative can both obscure and illuminate complicated truths about the female experience….

In “On Voice,” an all-new podcast produced by DDB Chicago, strategists Kevin Richey and Milo Chao explore the concept of voice: What it is, how to find it, and how to make it matter.

In a series of conversations with luminaries from a range of creative fields, Milo and Keven gain perspectives on these questions, with the end goal of supporting listeners in finding and amplifying their own narrative and storytelling skills. Season One of “On Voice” introduces us to 5 storytellers who are using their voices in compelling ways: Second Story Artistic Director Amanda Delheimer, Tony Award winning sound designer Mikhail Fiksel, author and Northwestern University Press editor Megan Stielstra, DDB Chicago CEO Sandra Alfaro, and Anne K. Ream, founder of…

As April is National Poetry Month, the Louder Together team at The Voices and Faces Project is seeking submissions for a crowdsourced poem that will feature the voices and testimonies of returning individuals and citizens (formerly incarcerated persons of any immigration status), currently incarcerated persons, and those negatively impacted by the criminal justice system in the United States of America.

We especially welcome submissions that speak to the racial, economic and social injustices that have contributed to the crisis of mass incarceration in our nation…

In ways that are truly unprecedented, survivors of injustice from across the globe are using their testimonies to challenge and change legal and social responses to gender-based violence and other human rights violations.

In “Our Stories Are Our Power,” a special End Violence Against Women International Conference presentation, Voices and Faces Project founder Anne K. Ream — the author of Lived Through This: Listening to the Stories of Sexual Violence Survivors—will:…

On March 24th, The Voices and Faces Project is bringing Creating Change: Testimony and Strategic Storytelling to the Center for Justice and Reconciliation at Point Loma Nazarene University. We developed this workshop for educators and advocates who seek to focus on best practices in generating and sharing testimony, think about the role of testimony in educating the public on social justice issues, and incorporate testimony and storytelling into their teaching methodology and practices across disciplines.

Workshop participants will discuss examples of testimonial writing, engage in real-time writing exercises, reflect on their own stories as educators, and participate in a series of seminar-style conversations about how to use story as a vehicle for personal and political change. …

On March 15th, the Simmons Center for Global Chicago — a Chicago-based collective connecting globally active NGOs, activists, artists, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, and community partners — will host Ethics and Impact of Storytelling in Global Engagement, its first-ever community symposium.

During this interactive, half day symposium moderated by guest speakers Kathy K. Im of MacArthur Foundation and Nissa Rhee of Borderless Magazine we will explore why impactful storytelling is challenging in the international development sector, how our values are reflected in our storytelling choices, why balancing truth and hope is critical to impactful, respectful storytelling, and who owns the rights to images and stories, among other topics. Symposium panelists include…

Our mission at The Voices and Faces Project — which in the coming months will be rebranded, reimagined and expanded as Center for Story & Witness — is to create a community in which those who have lived through or witnessed gender-based violence or other human rights violations have the tools that they need to use their personal narratives to create lasting political change.

This is one of the reasons The Voices and Faces Project is excited to be partnering with the Oakland-based National Center for Youth Law — one of the nation’s preeminent social justice organizations dedicated to transforming government agencies and public systems. As part of this alliance we recently brought…

Dear Friend:

In 2004, when photographer Patricia Evans and I embarked on the journey that became Lived Through This — a book of narrative and photographic portraits of survivors of gender-based violence — I thought our project would be a brief detour from my career as a creative director.

Almost 20 years later, it’s clear that I got that spectacularly wrong!…

From our early days spent in community with the courageous, groundbreaking survivors of rape and human trafficking we were profiling, it was obvious that our vision — creating a space for those who have lived through gender-based violence to share their names, faces and stories — was far bigger than a book…

Our mission at The Voices and Faces Project — which in the coming months will be rebranded, reimagined and expanded as Center for Story & Witness — is to create a global community in which those who have lived through or witnessed gender-based violence and other human rights violations have the tools that they need to use their personal narratives to create lasting political change.

All of which makes Simmons Center for Global Chicago — a Chicago-based collective and office space connecting globally active nonprofits, philanthropists, social entrepreneurs, and business community partners — the ideal home for The Voices and Faces Project…

On September 10th at Printers Row Lit Fest — the Midwest’s largest literary and ideas festival — The Voices and Faces Project founder Anne K. Ream, author of Lived Through This, her memoir of a global journey spent listening to survivors of sexual violence and trafficking, will moderate a conversation with two extraordinary memoirists whose books about life in the sex trade are moving — and “must-read.”

Activist, author and Dreamcatcher Foundation founder Brenda Myers-Powell‘s Leaving Breezy Street is a powerful account of Brenda’s life in and journey out of prostitution. Praised by Peabody award-winning journalist Alex Kotlowitz as “Remarkable… Myers-Powell emerges on the other side not only intact but as an inspiration,” Brenda’s book is at once beautiful and painful….

Painter and curator Randy Jayne Rosenberg, the founder of Art Works for Change, and author and activist Anne K. Ream, the founder of The Voices and Faces Project, have undertaken a new collaboration. And Centre Pompadour, Europe’s only feminist artist residency — where Anne is currently an artist-in-residence — has taken notice.

In Mother: A Literary & Artistic Exploration, Ream and Rosenberg seek to explore the connections between the exploitation of the earth and the control and commodification of the female body…

The Stories We Tell, The Voices and Faces Project’s two-day testimonial writing program for survivors of gender-based violence and other social injustices, is being offered virtually October 1 & 2, 2022, with the generous support of the Van Otterloo Family Foundation, and in partnership with USC’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and Center for Justice and Reconciliation.

During each Stories We Tell workshop a cohort of between 13-15 emerging and established writers and activists come together to read and discuss culture-changing literature and representation… take part in a series of innovative, real time writing exercises… share creative work in moderated, trauma-informed feedback sessions… and strategize on how to use our personal narratives to create political change. With a focus on memoir, fiction, non-fiction and poetry, The Stories We Tell was created to support those who seek to use writing as a vehicle for personal or political transformation….

Newcity Chicago’s August 2022 issue marks the return of their biggest literary feature of the year, Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago. This year our very own Anne K. Ream, founder of The Voices and Faces Project, co-creator of our global writing program, and the author of “Lived Through This,” her memoir of a multi-country journey spent listening to the stories of gender based violence survivors, is featured on the Lit 50 list.

A celebration of Chicago’s vibrant literary community, with a special 2022 focus on influencers, activists, educators, change-creators, and Hall of Famers, the issue is as inspired as it is inspiring, shouting out Chicago literary figures who are working locally and having an impact globally, including…

During “Conversations that create change: Meeting people where they are and moving them towards justice,” human rights journalist Jimmie Briggs and Voices and Faces Project Founder Anne K. Ream will discuss the ways our language and word choices can open people up (or shut them down) during issue-oriented conversations, consider what brain science has to teach us about breaking through ideological barriers, and lead workshop participants in a dialogue about how best to speak to social and gender-justice issues in a hyper-partisan era. Anne and Jimmie will also explore best practices for having meaningful, change-focused conversations about sexual exploitation, trafficking, and prostitution.
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“Up Next,” The Voices and Faces Project‘s writing workshop for alums of our Stories We Tell testimonial writing program, is an immersive, two-day virtual workshop. Building on the model of The Stories We Tell, our advanced writing program will take accepted writer-activists even further, through advanced, real-time writing prompts, moderated discussions on craft, exploitation of new mediums for story sharing, and trauma-informed, moderated sessions in which our writers will give — and receive — thoughtful, critical feedback to the work in the room. The workshop was co-created and is led by novelist and Yale University creative writing instructor R. Clifton Spargo and The Voices and Faces Project founder Anne K. Ream the author of Lived Through This…

Comcast Newsmakers, the longest-running news and public affairs platform of any cable operator in the country, was created to recognize national trailblazers and engage them in meaningful conversations about issues, ideas, and community challenges.

With a focus on individuals and organizations doing work that is making a measurable, national impact, the newsmaker series lifts up those who are creating change in truly innovative ways. …

Writer and gender justice activist Chris Stark has a new novel out. We can’t wait to celebrate it!

Called “beautifully woven and gut-wrenching” by New York Times bestselling author William Kent Kruger, and “a heartbreaking wonder of gorgeous prose” by PEN/Hemingway award winner Mona Susan Power, Carnival Lights tells the story of two Ojibwe cousins who leave their reservation for a new life in Minneapolis…

Through generous support from the Van Otterloo Family Foundation, and in partnership with USC’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, The Voices and Faces Project is returning to Los Angeles to offer its signature writing workshop, The Stories We Tell, June 4-5, 2022.

This is an in person, immersive, two-day testimonial writing program for those who have lived through or witnessed gender-based violence or other human rights violations. During our workshop, participants will read and discuss world-changing testimonial writing and art from across social movements and history, reflect on how to share their own testimonies, and engage in a series of innovative, real-time writing exercises and free-write sessions….

In ways that are truly unprecedented, survivors from across the globe are increasingly using their stories to change legal and social responses to gender-based violence. Today, more than ever, our stories are our power. And though there is nothing beautiful about injustice, there is something deeply beautiful about those who are using their words to speak out about it.

As April is both Sexual Assault Awareness Month (#SAAM) and National Poetry Month, The Voices and Faces Project is highlighting poetry written by alums of The Stories We Tell, our global testimonial writing program. We hope that you will be as moved as we have been by their powerful, purposeful writing…

Through generous support from the Van Otterloo Family Foundation, and in partnership with USC’s Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, The Voices and Faces Project is returning to Los Angeles June 3 – 5, 2022, to offer two groundbreaking programs to the USC community and its allies.

Creating Change in the Classroom: Testimony and Strategic Storytelling (6/3) is a workshop for educators, advocates and human service providers that focuses on best practices in cultivating and sharing survivor stories; how to incorporate testimony and the art of storytelling into teaching methodology; and how to work with difficult materials/subject matter in a trauma-informed way. Participants will reflect on their own stories as educators while participating in a seminar-style conversation on the need for a new “ethics of storytelling” in the classroom. This is a half-day program…

Those who have been exploited in the sex trade are the authorities on what it means to be bought or sold. But sometimes someone outside of our own experiences can see things that we cannot yet see, or perhaps are not yet ready to see.

“Accra, Ghana”, a narrative written by journalist Heather Kwakye, a graduate of The Voices and Faces Project‘s testimonial writing program, The Stories We Tell, illustrates this principle powerfully. Traveling to Ghana, West Africa, Heather lived in community with two young women in the sex trade. Their story, as recounted by Heather, speaks powerfully to the connections between sexual exploitation and racism, misogyny, poverty and colonialism.

Heather’s piece is also a reminder that bearing witness to the pain of others is how each of us can play a role in advocating for a more just and equitable world. …

What does change look like? That’s a question that we at The Voices and Faces Project ask every day.

Our signature writing program, The Stories We Tell — an immersive, two-day writing workshop for survivors of gender-based violence and other human rights violations — was created to help emerging and established writers and activists think in new ways about how to use their personal narratives to create social change. In the last few years, we’ve expanded that signature program to reach a series of new audiences, including refugees from across the African continent, formerly incarcerated persons in Chicago, and migrant workers from across the Americas.

During the coming year, The Voices and Faces Project seeks to provide 100 full, two-day scholarships to survivors of social injustices seeking to take part in our award-winning storytelling program. But we cannot do it without you. Please consider giving the gift of change to someone seeking to use their story to create a more just world by supporting our Stories We Tell Scholarship Fund. Every $650 raised will allow us to provide a full, two-day scholarship to someone ready and eager to take part in one of our workshops…

The Stories We Tell, The Voices and Faces Project’s two-day testimonial writing program for survivors of gender-based violence and other social injustices, is being offered online December 11 & 12, 2021, with the generous support of the Maanaki Foundation. With a focus on memoir, fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction and spoken word, our award-winning storytelling program isn’t just about developing writers. It’s about creating community.

During each Stories We Tell workshop a cohort of between 13-15 emerging and established writers and activists come together to read and discuss culture-changing literature and representation… take part in a series of innovative, real time writing exercises … share creative work in moderated, trauma-informed feedback sessions… and strategize on how to use our personal narratives to create political change….

Through the support of Illinois Humanities Council and in partnership with Contextos and the Illinois Prison Project,The Voices and Faces Project is offering its newest two-day writing workshop, Testimony & Transformation: Telling a New Story About Mass Incarceration, November 13 & 14, 2021 in Chicago.

Building on the model of The Voices and Faces Project’s Stories We Tell workshops for survivors of gender-based violence, Testimony & Transformation will bring together a community of previously incarcerated persons who want to use their stories to change the public understanding of the criminal justice system.

Led by novelist and Yale University creative writing instructor R. Clifton Spargo and human rights journalist Jimmie Briggs, in partnership with Voices and Faces Project founder Anne K. Ream and spoken word artist Marline Johnson, the workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to reflect on their experiences of incarceration and shape those experiences into stories of witness….

Activist and author Brenda Myers-Powell, the founder of Dreamcatcher Foundation and a longstanding Voices and Faces ally, has a new memoir out. We can’t wait to celebrate it!

Leaving Breezy Street, a powerful account of Brenda’s life in and journey out of the sex trade, has been praised by Peabody award-winning journalist Alex Kotlowitz as “Remarkable … Myers-Powell emerges on the other side not only intact but as an inspiration,” and hailed by Publisher’s Weekly as a “page turner from start to finish.”

On October 21st, 7pm EST, join The Voices and Faces Project and World Without Exploitation for “Joy as an Act of Resistance,” a virtual celebration and conversation between Brenda and Anne K. Ream, who recently profiled Brenda for New City Chicago and is the author of Lived Through This, a memoir of her multi-country journey spent listening to survivors of gender-based violence….

For the fourth year running, The Voices and Faces Project is proud to be a featured presenter at the Printers Row Literary Festival — one of the country’s largest and longest-standing books and ideas gatherings. This year we’re collaborating with our allies at Surviving the Mic and the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation to present two must-attend festival programs:

How do you Survive?
A performance and poetry reading.
Saturday, September 11, 2021
10am-11am @ Center Stage

Through a project sponsored by Poetry Foundation, the Chicago Reader curated a series of poems written in response to the question: In the wake of sexual violence, exploitation or harassment, what does survival look like? The resulting poetry and spoken word, curated by writer Nikki Patin, is truthful yet hopeful, speaking to the resilience of a community of writers who have been shaped — but refuse to be defined – by the violence that they have lived through…

History’s most effective storytellers are also its most strategic storytellers. Consider Reverend King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he connected his hopes for his four children to an American ideal that did not yet exist; or Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers using their testimonies of workplace injustice to power a national grape boycott; or millions of #MeToo stories coming together to create a roar that could no longer be ignored.

Curated by Voices and Faces Project founder Anne K. Ream and developed in conversation with Justice For Migrant Women’s Mónica Ramírez, Find the Right Words was piloted in 2020. Now this interactive workshop series, with each session led by a different artist, or communications or storytelling strategist, is available to your organization. Each session is 90-120 minutes; timing for the full six part series can be flexible….

The Voices and Faces Project, in partnership with our close allies at Surviving the Mic, a collaborative organization dedicated to creating brave and affirming creative spaces for those who have lived through trauma, recently asked a national community of activists, writers and survivors to answer these questions in the form of a poem.

We then took lines from the many submissions received to craft “Imagining a World Without Exploitation,” a crowdsourced poem and video performance that is the first in The Voices and Faces Project’s 2021 Louder Together series. “Imagining a World Without Exploitation” debuted at “Celebrating a Better World,” the 2021 World Without Exploitation national gathering. Many of the contributors to this poem are alumnae of The Stories We Tell, The Voices and Faces Project’s testimonial writing program….

The Stories We Tell, The Voices and Faces Project’s two-day testimonial writing program for survivors of gender-based violence and other social injustices, is now being offered online. With a focus on memoir, fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction and spoken word, this award-winning storytelling program isn’t just about developing writers. It’s about creating community.

During each Stories We Tell workshop a cohort of between 13-15 emerging and established writers and activists come together to read and discuss culture-changing literature and representation… take part in a series of innovative, real time writing exercises… share creative work in moderated, trauma-informed feedback sessions… and strategize on how to use our personal narratives to create political change….

Like so many people in the United States and beyond, we at The Voices and Faces Project grieve the shooting deaths in Boulder, Colorado and Atlanta, Georgia. That six of the victims in Georgia were Asian American women puts a painful point on the fact that anti-Asian hate and harassment have been rising during the last year. That we have seen this rise alongside a broader increase in crimes motivated by bias toward individuals because of their race, ethnicity or gender makes this moment feel all the more painful — and urgent.

Anti-Asian bigotry has a long history in this country. From the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, to the vilification of the Chinese during the McCarthy era, to the sexualization and exploitation of Asian American and Pacific Islander women in today’s global and US-based sex trade, discrimination, objectification and violence have been lived realities for far too many persons of Asian descent…

The Louder Together team at The Voices and Faces Project, an award-winning non-profit storytelling project and testimonial writing program, is joining with the Rural Women’s Collective Fellows at Justice for Migrant Women to solicit poetry submissions that speak to the statement “I Am Rural America.”

We are seeking poetry that helps us shine a light on outdated notions of who represents rural America…confront the economic, racial, and social injustices too often experienced by immigrant and farmworker persons…and highlight aspects of rural life that are too often ignored by the media and the public. We seek especially to elevate the writing of Black, Brown and Indigenous persons, and other Communities of Color, whose stories are too often disappeared in conversations about rural populations…

Take part in our first-ever virtual Stories We Tell writing workshop.
Every survivor story has power and purpose. With a focus on memoir, fiction, non-fiction and poetry, The Stories We Tell was created to support those who seek to use writing as a vehicle for personal or political change. This is an immersive two-day program that is offered over the course of a single weekend, broken into multiple workshop/ discussion periods. During The Stories We Tell, a Virtual Testimonial Writing Workshop, participants will read and discuss testimonial writing, and reflect on how to share their own stories.The daily schedule will include “free write” sessions that provide participants the chance to explore their craft and write on their own and in real-time. There will be a daily break for lunch…

Changing minds and hearts on social justice issues is challenging, even during the best of times. And these are not the best of times.

Today, Americans are more divided, and less willing to listen to one another, than at any point in the last half century. But there are effective strategies for meeting people where they are in order to move them closer to justice. And time-tested ways to break through barriers in order to make sure that your message is heard and acted on.

In The Movement is the Message: Meeting people where they are & breaking through ideological barriers, a January 14th Now & Next Speakers Series presentation, author, activist and Voices and Faces Project founder Anne K. Ream will consider new strategies for using our personal stories to create political change…

The Stories We Tell, The Voices and Faces Project’s immersive, two-day testimonial writing program, was developed to help those who have survived or witnessed gender-based violence and other human rights violations use their personal stories to call for social and political change.

To date, over 1200 writers from across North America and Africa have taken part in The Stories We Tell. Most recently we’ve expanded our programming, launching Writing a New Refugee Story, a two day storytelling workshop for refugees and undocumented immigrants and debuting Testimony & Transformation, a writing program for Chicago-area men impacted by the criminal justice system…

In the United States today our politics are increasingly polarized. The differences that divide us are great. The things that unite us feel fragile. And our ability to engage in a respectful dialogue with those we disagree with is challenged in unprecedented ways.

At The Voices and Faces Project — an award-winning non-profit storytelling and testimonial writing program for survivors of gender based violence and other human rights violations — we recognize that participants in our programs bring different lived experiences and political ideologies to the table…

In 2020 The Poetry Foundation — publisher of Poetry Magazine and one of the nation’s preeminent literary organizations — partnered with the Chicago Reader to ask seven spoken word artists and writers to craft short pieces that answer a simple question: What, in the wake of violence or oppression, does survival look like? Curated by writer and spoken word artist Nikki Patin, pieces crafted in response to this more-relevant-than-ever-question speak to the resilience of survivors, balancing hard truths with much-needed hope…

In August, 1963, Reverend Martin Luther King — imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama for taking part in an anti-segregation demonstration — was on the receiving end of a public statement issued by a group of white religious leaders who asserted that while they agreed with King’s civil rights goals, he was pushing too hard, and too fast, for change.

Today “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” King’s 7,000 word handwritten response to those who did not share his sense of moral urgency, is as painfully relevant as it was over a half century ago. One passage in particular calls the conscience: “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is…the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”…

Part personal history of writer and Voices and Faces Project founder Anne K. Ream‘s experience rebuilding her life in the wake of violence, part critically-praised memoir of a multi-country journey spent listening to survivors, Lived Through This has been adapted for the stage by Ream, award-winning playwright Marilyn Campbell-Lowe, and award-winning new talent Caity-Shea Violette. On 3/2, 16th Street Theater’s Ann Filmer will direct a curated reading of scenes from Lived Through This, alongside a live rock and soul set inspired by the author’s personal playlist and performed by Tony Wittrock and Rachel Drew.

Borders are closing. Nationalism is rising. And politicians and pundits are too often speaking unsympathetically about the migrant community. Which means that if you are a refugee, the story being told about you isn’t being told by you.

LEAP Volume 3: Writing a New Refugee Story was developed to change that. Featuring work from the extraordinary community of refugee girls who took part in The Voices and Faces Project’s Stories We Tell writing workshop at RefuSHE in Nairobi, Kenya, our teen-focused literary journal features voices that are truthful, hopeful and powerful.

Every survivor story has power and purpose. During The Stories We Tell, The Voices and Faces Project‘s two-day testimonial writing workshop, participants will read and discuss testimonial writing, reflect on how to share their own stories, and engage in a series of innovative, real-time writing exercises. With a focus on memoir, fiction, non-fiction and poetry, The Stories We Tell was created to support those who seek to use writing as a vehicle for personal or political change. Hosted at The USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work: applications due 1/31.
For questions, email janet@voicesandfaces.org

Today, more than ever before, survivors of gender-based violence are coming forward to share their stories. They’re not just asking to be heard. They’re demanding that society finally, fundamentally change.

Creating change through the power of survivor storytelling is what The Voices and Faces Project is all about. And in 2019, eight years after we piloted The Stories We Tell, our immersive, two-day testimonial writing program for survivors of gender-based violence and other human rights violations, we’re creating more change than ever before.

Through the support of the Illinois Humanities Council and the Chicago Fund for Safe and Peaceful Communities at the Chicago Community Trust, The Voices and Faces Project is launching an all-new program: Testimony & Transformation: Telling a New Story About Mass Incarceration.

Building on the model of The Voices and Faces Project’s Stories We Tell workshops for survivors of gender-based violence, Testimony & Transformation will bring together a community of previously incarcerated men and boys who want to use their stories to change the public understanding of the ways that violence has shaped their lives.

The Stories We Tell, The Voices and Faces Project’s immersive, two-day testimonial writing program, was developed to help those who have survived or witnessed gender-based violence or other human rights violations use their stories to call the public to greater compassion and — most importantly — social action.

During the writing workshop, participants discuss examples of world-changing testimonial writing from various social movements and historical moments and take part in a series of innovative, real-time writing exercises. We seek to support emerging and established writers, activists, and direct service providers as they think about what testimonial writing is, and why it matters. We help workshop participants imagine how they can most effectively carry forward the work of witness. Above all, we encourage the creativity of our participants, leading them to find new sources of personal and political power within themselves and their poetry, memoir, fiction, spoken word or creative non-fiction.

Part personal history of activist and writer Anne K. Ream’s experience rebuilding her life in the wake of sexual violence, part memoir of a multi-country journey spent listening to survivors, Lived Through This has been adapted for the stage by Anne K. Ream, award-winning playwright Marilyn Campbell-Lowe, and award-winning new talent Caity-Shea Violette. Directed by 16th Street Theater’s Ann Filmer, the theatrical adaptation of Lived Through This features an ensemble of actors and live musical performances inspired by the rock and soul playlist that helped the book’s author heal. This is a play about the lives we live after saying #MeToo, and the gorgeous, funny, outspoken, all-too human women and men who are living them.