Voices

Evie Godfrey2023 Longlist, 2023 Opening Up Prize Shortlist, 2023 Shortlist - Main Prize, 2023 Shortlist - Social Good, Chris Meade Memorial Prize (Main Prize), Opening Up

Voices is an interactive digital fiction for body image bibliotherapy (the practice of reading for mental health and well-being). It aims to address body dissatisfaction, which is now so common in the Western world that it has become the norm among women and girls.

Hayley, the main character, struggles with negative self-talk. She has body image issues relating to her size and shape. Her friends, a diverse cast of characters who have issues of their own, try to support her. Hayley’s experiences show how the culture we live and work in can contribute to body dissatisfaction. But there’s hope! Thanks to its branching story structure, Voices offers different potential strategies for building body image resilience.

Voices is an outcome of Writing New Body Worlds (https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/writingnewbodies), an international, interdisciplinary research project. We collaborated with a group of 18-25 year-old women and non-binary individuals from diverse backgrounds to co-design the digital fiction.

Voices is an accessible web app designed primarily for mobile devices but it works on any screen size. (Currently, on desktop and laptop computers, it’s best played on Chrome or Firefox.)