As part of the workshops presented by Authorpalooza, “Panel on Diversity: How do you do it right?”, is a part of the education available for writers during the conference.
Kim-Ling Sun will be one of the panelists for this event, which will take place on Saturday, October 7, 2023.
From her press bio: Literature Award-Winning Educator Kim-Ling Sun grew up in Singapore before immigrating to Texas where she attended the University of Houston and graduated with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in English. As a mixed-race Chinese-American writer, her life experiences living in the margins inform her work. She is an award-winning educator who has 20 years of teaching experience, with 12 years teaching in community colleges. She is a published poet, community activist, and freelance writer covering topics related to the Asian American community, education, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Best Colleges. Her creative writing can be found in Raising Mothers, OPAWL Pandemic Stories Zine, and Poets Against Walls. Emmy Perez’s Digital Texas Poet Laureate Project, and the chapbook Faceless Brown Masses: A Blackout Response to Flatiron Books. In the Fall of 2023, the release of the Texas Writer’s Lab Anthology will include some of her recent work.
Viral Hare was given the opportunity to conduct pre-conference interviews by email for Authorpalooza. The first half of the interview is questions asked directly to the author the second half is shown as linked questions, were directed to all of the panelists.
Questions are in bold.
As a teacher who has to deal with the administrative as well creative sides of your profession, what’s the best way you have seen to communicate to your students to be inclusive and balanced and their creative endeavors?
As a literature professor and writing teacher, I’ve always felt that the best way to communicate these values to my students is to lead by example. It is important that I am intentional about the mentor texts I privilege. We discuss how to have open, respectful conversations about experiences that are disparate from our own and acknowledge our own inherent biases and presumptions as we read.
I remind my writers that as we take the time to walk in the worlds different from ours, it only emboldens our writing. It becomes part of our pen’s consciousness to be inclusive and echo the diversity that is America. We also reflect on how powerful it was to have the conversations from those whose experiences are being highlighted, because it reminds us not to view or write about any one group as a monolith. Students then come to their own realization that having other eyes on their work and including sensitivity readers when necessary help them with balance and inclusivity in their own writing.
Reading your biography, and some of your essays, on your web page, I see where through your own determination, and hard work, have impacted your life. are those concepts always easy to Translate into your writing?
Though I try to convey these concepts in my writing, I do find it challenging because human emotion and the human experience is complicated, no? Oftentimes a given experience has layers of emotion and layers of points of view – even from ourselves as we revisit a memory in our mind over the years. I also see my writing as more of translating a slice of who I am in that moment when the pen scrawls across the paper, acknowledging that this feeling can shift, grow, and mutate to something different down the road.
Do you see the Arts as a continuing way to express yourself to others as well as a way to communicate some of the common experiences we have with each other?
The Arts is not only a way for me to express myself to the world, but I also find it as a form of meditation, a way of self-healing, a way of connecting to others. It’s a way to say, “I invite you in to my experience, that should you find yourself along the same path, know that you are not alone.” I write so that others may feel along with me — I think that’s what any good art does, whether it’s a painting, a poem, a ballet, a symphonic movement — it evokes something deep within.
Linked Questions
How would advise a new writer to process filtering their personal point of view or experience into their writing?
I would say that before they begin writing their main work, take the time to free-write their personal point of view or own experience that is inspiring this piece. This will assist them in mapping out the direction they want the work to go (or not go) and anchor it in something that has some space to breathe and play on the page.
Writers often use the phrase finding or sharing my voice, but does personal experience or points from someone’s life give one different ways to interpret that voice?
I feel that when writers say they have “found their voice,” it means more so that they have discovered the way they feel most confident and at ease in expressing themselves. It also suggests that they are strong in that identity and are open to others interpreting the work and taking away something they find relevant, even if it differs from the writer’s original intention. Like looking at a Twombly painting, everyone walks away with something different and deeply personal.
With social media and digital connection overtaking so many aspects of life and streaming video is a constant easy access to entertainment, why do you believe the written word is as important as ever for communicating ideas?
I feel that the written word is as important (if not more important) than digital entertainment because it encourages both writers and readers to pause and really digest what is being said. With the written word, we slow down — let things marinate in our brains, and take time to inventory ourselves. The rapid pace of social media conditions us to make instant judgments as we scroll — love, like, or cancel. We make snapshot judgments without really considering the larger narrative.
Authorpalooaza will take place:
Friday, October 6 – Sunday, October 8, 2023
Hilton Houston Plaza Medical Center Hotel
6633 Travis Street I Houston, TX 77030