At the Salem Willamette Writer’s monthly meeting I’ll be presenting my workshop Research and Empathy: Writing Across Cultures.

The vast majority of published fiction writers in the US are white, yet readers come in different shades and colors. This is especially notable in the children’s market where more than 90% of writers are white and more than 50% of readers are children of color. The long term answer is to mentor a generation of writers of color, but the short term answer is to encourage all writers to include characters from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.

In this hands-on workshop I’ll will cover all aspects of researching a story outside your own cultural experience and will explain how to use our own experience to gain insight into another culture.