As writers of color or as any writer writing from what society considers "the margins," we are often confronted with expectations that subscribe to stereotypes or received narratives of who others think we are, or how they think we should represent ourselves in literature. We will interrogate the questions of identity and representation that we must each grapple with in order to write authentically and with integrity and confidence in a climate that often wishes to reduce our very existence to clichés or have us "perform" our culture or community in ways that undermine our narrative authority.
Patricia Engel is the author of Vida, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, winner of Colombia’s national prize in letters, the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana, and named a New York Times Notable... Read More →
