Chelsea Ouellette

Chelsea Ouellette (she/her) is an educator and creative writer originally from Las Vegas, Nevada. As a first-generation college graduate, she is committed to creating inclusive, engaging, and personalized classroom environments where students feel an authentic sense of belonging. Ouellette is particularly passionate about supporting students in using their critical thinking and writing skills to foster more empathetic and productive public discourse, empowering them to engage thoughtfully and responsibly in their communities—and to use their voices to transform the world around them. As a creative writer, her short fiction and poetry have appeared in a handful of literary magazines, and she recently finished her first novel. When not teaching, you can find her chasing her two small children around a park, writing short stories, or listening to an audiobook while jogging a local trail.

How Fictional Worlds Create Real Belonging

Screenwriter William Nicholson wrote the famous line, "We read to know we're not alone," for his 1993 Shadowlands. Yet, storytelling has been used as a vehicle for creating belonging since the beginning of time. The ability to tell stories is innately human, tracing back from cave drawings to the myriad ways in which we tell stories in the 21st century. Ouellette's talk highlights how teaching storytelling--in the context of creative writing and fiction--helps us to find a sense of belonging and community, even though fiction is, technically, "fictional." Ouellette addresses the ways in which stories and storytelling can make us feel seen, heard, and understood in a safe context through the exploration of empathy.