F243.
Choices & Challenges in Writing Diaspora
Friday, March 25, 2022
3:20 pm to 4:20 pm
Writers who write about other cultures and languages have to navigate many issues in how they present themselves and their communities. Should we italicize non-English words? How much should we explain about cultural nuances? And who is it that we’re writing for—a general audience that doesn’t know us or an implied diaspora community? Hear from five diverse writers on the choices we’ve made and how we balance authenticity with the demands of a predominantly white publishing industry.
Participants
Grace Loh Prasad received her MFA in creative writing from Mills College and is an alumna of VONA. Her essays have appeared in Catapult, Ninth Letter, The Manifest-Station, Cha, and Hedgebrook Journal. She is currently working on a memoir/essay collection entitled "The Translator’s Daughter."
Lillian Howan is the author of The Charm Buyers, recipient of the Ka Palapala Po'okela Award for Excellence in Literature. Her writings have appeared in Asian American Literary Review, Cafe Irreal, CALYX, Jellyfish Review, New England Review, and the anthologies Ms. Aligned 2 and Under Western Eyes.
Sunisa Manning is a Thai and American novelist. She’s the author of A Good True Thai, which was a finalist for the 2020 Epigram Books Fiction Prize for Southeast Asian Writers. She is the recipient of the Steinbeck Fellowship, a residency from Hedgebrook, and other honors.
Victoria Buitron is a writer and translator who hails from Ecuador and resides in Connecticut. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SmokeLong en Español, Entropy, the 2021 Connecticut Lit Anthology, and other literary magazines. Her debut memoir-in-essays is the 2021 Fairfield Book Prize winner.
Michelle Chikaonda has won awards at the Seventh Wave, the Tucson Festival of Books, and the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown. She is a contributing editor at Electric Literature; has attended workshops with Tin House, VQR, and VONA; and has worked at Al Jazeera, Catapult, and Hobart, among others.
