Cressida Blake Roe and Jemma Leigh Roe—“The Accidental Body”

Process Note

This collaborative project configures the body in different contexts and explores how to articulate a sense of selfhood in light of external interpretation: what does it mean to possess a body at the mercy of textuality? The words of this piece respond to the photographs, in which the use of Tenebrism emphasizes shadow to shape the subject and blurs the distinction between what is considered alive and what is not within the landscape.

Cressida Blake Roe is a biracial writer with fiction published in X-R-A-Y, Chestnut Review, Tiny Molecules, The Citron Review, Stone of Madness Press, and others. Her work has been nominated for the Best Small Fictions and Pushcart Prize and recognized by the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Jemma Leigh Roe is a visual artist and poet, whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal, Fugue, Iron Horse Literary Review, Lunch Ticket, Permafrost, EcoTheo Review, and others. She received her PhD from Princeton University and is currently at work on a poetry collection about memory, place, and chronic illness. www.jemmaleighroe.com