I was honoured to be invited as a panelist to the WICE annual Paris Writers Workshop a few months back, and began immediately to check out Airbnbs in that beautiful city. Covid-19 happened, and the event like so many others has switched to a Zoom format. So, this year, I won't walk down the Champs d'Elysée or stroll through le Jardin de Luxembourg. Sigh... The flipside to this is that anyone, anywhere in this beautiful world can join the panel discussion. Below is the link for that. Alongside fellow Canadian author Caroline Vu and Jamaican novelist Alecia McKenzie, I will be tackling the highly sensitive topic of writing across cultures versus cultural appropriation. Where do writers draw the line between promoting cultural appreciation through literature and expropriating the culture of others? Writers have always written about different cultures, peoples, and eras. Often the author's moral compass has been enough to imagine a story through the eyes of diverse characters. But some writers have been criticized for inaccuracy and caricature. There has also been fallout when mainstream authors are hailed as experts of a culture, while writers from that same culture do not get similar attention or remuneration. What should writers do? We will debate these issues and try to find out!
Join us on July 11 at 6 pm Paris time (noon New York, Montreal, Toronto time). Click below to join. There are only fifty places free so act quickly :)
See you in Cyberspace!
Ian Thomas Shaw
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