Aaron Landsman

The genre of creative non-fiction has never been more playful with form, and so this issue of Hinterland celebrates the art of experimentation. Headlining the issue we have an epistolary essay from Jenn Ashworth (Ghosted, Notes Made While Falling) written to her younger self’s favourite author. We also sit down to chat with Doireann Ní Ghríofa about her hybrid work of non-fiction and auto-fiction, A Ghost in the Throat. Also featuring writing by Chris Beckett, Chris Cusack, Pune Dracker, Jacqueline Ellis, Jordan Harrison-Twist, Alice Kent, Laura Knott, Aaron Landsman, Carla Montemayor and Jon Paul Roberts.

In 2009, theatre artist Aaron Landsman was dragged by a friend to a city council meeting in Portland, Oregon. At first he was bored, but when a citizen dumped trash in front of the council in order to show how the city needed cleaning up, he was intrigued. He began attending local government meetings across the country, interviewing council members, staffers, activists, and other citizens. Out of this investigation, Landsman and director Mallory Catlett developed a participatory theatre piece called City Council Meeting.The City We Make Together looks at how we make art with communities, how we perform power and who gets to play which roles, and how we might use creativity and rigorous inquiry to look at our structures of democracy anew.