A Full Moon Reading: On Transformation And How To Alchemize In A World Full Of Grief [Radical Book Fair]

A conversation between writers Sophia Hembeck and Fariha Róisín about how to heal in a time of mass delusion.

With the moon as a symbol of cyclical change and transformation, a reminder that life is a constant process of evolving, they are asking questions about:

how to tell the truth through the immensity of the facade of capitalism and how to transcend the veneer of fascism and supremacy to make work (and live) in a way that interrogates systems of oppression and power?

This conversation will focus on the interior and the exterior, showing all the ways we are interconnected, all the ways we are complicit, and how we transform, refusing the colonizers mission, by healing.

Speakers:

Fariha Róisín is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Ontario, Canada. They were raised in Sydney, Australia, and are based in Los Angeles. As a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, they are interested in the margins, liminality, otherness and the mercurial nature of being. Their work has pioneered a refreshing and renewed conversation about wellness, contemporary Islam and queer identities and has been featured in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and Vogue. They are the author of poetry collections How To Cure A Ghost (2019) and Survival Takes a Wild Imagination (2023), as well as the novel Like A Bird (2020), Who Is Wellness For? (2022).

Sophia Hembeck is a writer, visual artist & cultural critic based in Edinburgh. She has published three books: Things I Have Noticed, 2020, Things I Have Loved, 2023 & Things That Are Different Now, 2025 which comprise literary essays as well as her own artwork. As a fierce advocate for literary essays she teaches essay writing classes for writers of all levels. In her weekly substack The Muse Letter she wonders about the meanderings of life.