Riff Raff Reading Room
Series
Riff Raff Reading Room is a series of covid-safer reading, writing and riffing sessions at TheySwarm, making space for reflection, learning and community building centring marginalised creatives. TextaQueen and invited diverse facilitators co-create the information and access for each reading room e.g. Quiet-ish, low sensory, independent reading; Read-A-Loud with shared material, more social; and writing workshops.
Riff Raff is also open by appointment 11 am- 3 pm on the first full weekend of the month starting 7 – 8 March 2026.
TheySwarm Access information here.
Facilitated introductions are available only to those practising pandemic precautions.
Riff Raff Reading Room shares TheySwarm’s library of titles by First Nations, Black, and people of colour authors and artists with a focus on disability justice, radical resistance, speculative and queer fictions, self publishing, picture books and poetry.
We have an ongoing ACF Fundraiser supporting the Riff Raff project. Thanks to all who’ve donated so far. You’ve helped us provide more titles for the BIPOC Library, a website (coming soon!), and access costs. We haven’t met our goal as yet, but hope to host more facilitated sessions for/by COVID-realist writers and readers late 2026. We’re not currently lending titles out – a borrowing system is in the works.
Why we need your support
Your support will enable fellow disreputable and undesirable peers to creatively collude outside of and in dissent from institutional contexts. It will pay underemployed marginalised and disabled creatives to share space and knowledge in a supported environment, and develop ongoing community resources including the TheySwarm library.
All donations will go towards:
- facilitation fees
- support worker fees
- access costs
- project management
- cataloguing and website
- more books for the TheySwarm library (donations and title suggestions welcome)
Are you an artist interested in community-building amongst like-minded creatives, TextaQueen would like to invite interested COVID-realist writers and readers to come and help facilitate the space as part of a revolving collective, with opportunities to provide your own input from your lived and professional experience. Since lockdowns were officially phased out in late 2021, many of us have experienced isolation as arts spaces have generally become less interested in maintaining COVID-cautious measures.
Riff Raff Reading Room is currently in the process of being created, and will open in early 2026.
The intentions for Riff Raff are currently:
- To build a COVID-safer space with low expectations for being outwardly social
- To cater to various sensory needs
- To foster connections between COVID-realist creatives
- To create a non-institutional library that helps with unlearning dominant structures
- To support COVID-realist creatives to realise their artistic potentials
- To empower COVID-realist creatives to begin or continue a lapsed practice as a result of isolation
- To maintain long-term relationships with other COVID-realist creatives with the view towards sustainability for the space
If you would like to be involved, please contact TextaQueen at textaqueen[at]proton.me with more information about yourself and how you personally envision the space to look like. While Riff Raff is open to all who are COVID-realist, BIPOC marginalised creatives are especially encouraged. Facilitators will be renumerated for their labour, with options for support assistance and travel subsidies if needed.