ONLINE Writing the Soundscapes of Cities
4 weeks | Tuesdays | Begins July 7, 2026
9am-11am PT | 10am-12pm MT | 11am-1pm CT | 12pm-2pm ET | 1pm-3pm AT
Instructor: Dr. Shumaila Hemani
MEMBER PRICE: $180.00
NON-MEMBER PRICE: $240.00
What does a city sound like to you?
A train passing at dawn. Footsteps in an alleyway. The call of street vendors. Rain against apartment windows. Traffic, silence, music drifting from distant rooms.
In this 4-week online course, Writing the Soundscapes of Cities, we will explore how sound shapes memory, emotion, migration, and our relationship to place. Through deep listening exercises and creative nonfiction techniques, participants will learn to transform everyday listening into vivid personal essays.
Together, we will write about:
• the cities we were born into
• the cities we migrated to
• the cities we travelled through
• and the cities that continue to echo within us
This course emerges from my long-standing fascination with urban soundscapes across the places I have lived and travelled around the world. I first taught this course from an ethnomusicological perspective for Semester at Sea, and I am excited to now offer it through the lens of creative nonfiction and sensory storytelling.
Open to writers of all levels, especially those interested in sound, music, memory, migration, and storytelling.
This class takes place online using Zoom.
Dr. Shumaila Hemani, Ph.D. (University of Alberta), is a Calgary-based author and ethnomusicologist, and a former music faculty member at Semester at Sea and the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Extension. She is the author of the award-winning memoir Writing in the Wound: Acculturation, Trauma & Music, described as “arresting, thought-provoking, and fiercely alive” by Literary Titan. The book was featured in Alberta Favourite Reads (2025) and praised as “a fascinating memoir” by author Barb Howard.
A recipient of the Women in Music Canada Honour Roll (2023) and the Cultural Diversity Award (2015), and a PEN Canada Writer in Exile, Hemani is currently completing a human rights monograph with Routledge. Her work engages questions of ethics, systems, and cultural expression, including contributions to a special issue on Hannah Arendt with the International Human Rights Arts Movement.
Her writing has appeared in Cambridge University Press (Traditions of Music and Dance), The Conversation, Canada’s National Observer, Arts Desk UK, Journal of Environmental Arts and Culture, OC87 Recovery Diaries, Canadian Dimension, and Westword Magazine. She has also been featured on CBC’s What on Earth, The Artsy Raven podcast, CDLI’s Storytelling for Change, and Recovery Diaries.
Engaging themes of climate justice, migration, and mental health, her artistic practice includes music and storytelling; her song Anticipating was featured in a cross-Canada tour for suicide prevention and was described as “bearing a visceral emotionality and a deep musicality…ushering listeners into a place of contemplation” (Radio Airplay).
~~~
We are a community that thrives on support and encouragement. Based on the philosophy of "no writer left behind", the J. Michael Fay Subsidy Program is available to anyone who finds themselves in financial need but really wants or needs to participate in one our programs are classes. Click link above for more details and to apply.
