As part of this year’s National Day of Racial Healing, writers and community members alike gathered at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art to listen to poetry at the annual Writers Give Voice event Jan. 16.

Cameron McGill, event organizer and WSU professor, spoke on why sharing art is such an important part of the day.

“Whether it’s through the art exhibits in the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. If it’s a piece that someone else wrote or a story they told before, the passion that someone had in reading, or vulnerability someone put forth,” McGill said. “Those seem to me like little seeds of the things that connect people’s lives.”

Many writers from different backgrounds spoke at the event.

One speaker in particular, WSU doctorate student Rose, spoke about her struggles with burnout and frustration within her work in the social justice field.

“Racism is part of a problem, and denying that racism is another,” Rose said. “Changing our point of view from giving voice to people, to helping them come to voice.”

She hopes that this message will help further conversations in communities.

The people who attended the event on Tuesday but were not originally signed up to read in front of the audience had the opportunity to share other’s work or their own in the second half.

“Poetry allows us to hear ourselves, other people and to have conversations,” McGill said. “My hope is that by sharing poems, and experiences, that were able to have a dialogue that is healing.”