F279. Making Diversity Happen: Editors Can Change the Literary Landscape

Room 208 A&B, Level 2
Friday, April 10, 2015
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm

 

Many literary editors now acknowledge the lack of diversity in the writers they publish. Yet the debate often turns into female and minority authors blaming the editing “guys”—and editors, male and female, wringing their hands but offering few solutions. This panel will focus on what editors and writers need to do to make diversity happen, be it networking outside their comfort zones, hiring editors of color, or running online social media campaigns to promote a truly diverse literary world.


Participants

Moderator:

Lee Hope is editor-in-chief of Solstice. She has received fellowships from the Maine Arts Commission and the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and has published fiction in the North American Review, Witness, and Epiphany. She helped found the Solstice MFA at Pine Manor College.

 

Martha Nichols is the editor-in-chief of Talking Writing, an online literary magazine. Her personal essays and features have been widely published in journals such as Utne Reader, Salon, and the Christian Science Monitor. She teaches in the journalism program at Harvard University Extension School.

Danielle Legros Georges is a poet, essayist, and professor at Lesley University. She is the author of a book of poems, Maroon.

J.W. Wang is the editor of Juked. His fiction and poetry have appeared in such journals as Quarterly West, Cimarron Review, Wigleaf, Hobart, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.

Margaret Elysia Garcia is a contributing editor for Hip Mama Magazine, a fiction editor for Capstone Literary Journal with Kaplan University, and the former editor of the website Girl Body Pride. Her short story collection Sad Girls & Other Stories was published this February by Solstice Literary Press. She's the local director for the national spoken word series Listen to Your Mother Show and is a DJ hosting the alternative women's music show Milkshake & Honey on www.kqny919.org Plumas Community Radio. Her play, Before You Barefoot : A Black Comedy of Revenge, had its world premiere last fall.
#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center