Ras Mashramani

ras cutlass mashramani (ACG ’16, WOO ’22) will attend the Cascade Writers’ Three-Day Critique Workshop in Bremerton, WA. This opportunity will allow ras to interface with publishers and other working writers to get professional writing feedback on their work, that they would not have access to otherwise. Ra hopes that the workshop will allow them the tools and connections to a sci-fi writing community that can help them get published and share their narratives around institutionalization and liberatory disabled characters with the public. This grant will support with airfare, accommodations, and food costs to attend the summit.

Ras will write a dystopia sci-fi novel that explores the intersection of mental health treatment, mass incarceration, racism, and poverty from the perspective of a social work trainee at a local juvenile detention center. For the novel, Ras will research the histories of forced experimentation, medication, and incarceration of those deemed “dangerous to the status quo.” She will also organize a roundtable discussion with mental health professionals and survivors to facilitate understanding and dialogue between the groups. Through this project, Ras wants to draw awareness to issues of surveillance and violence in poor communities and amplify the voices of both survivors and workers who are impacted by these systems in hopes to promote solidarity. Ras sees this book as a tool to teach social workers about the cultural intricacies of “diagnosis” and “treatment,” as well as the historical distrust among vulnerable populations.