Fable & The Verbivore

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Episode 32: Reading diverse authors

Bethany Stedman

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Ep 32: Reading diverse authors Fable & The Verbivore

As a follow-up to last week’s episode on writing diverse characters, Fable and the Verbivore discuss the importance of reading widely and stepping outside of our reading comfort zones. Reading a variety of works and voices expands our understanding and empathy as human beings as well as opens our minds to possibilities and helps make our stories more reflective of the diverse world we live in.

In this episode, we focus mostly on BIPOC authors with an emphasis on Black voices. We did this merely to keep the scope of our conversation manageable. Our intention was not to exclude any type of writers or works.

By reading widely, we mean:

·        The breadth of the works that we choose to read across book categories and subcategories such as: fiction and non-fiction, genre, writing style, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, and unique voice

·        The depth of works that we choose to read within a given category such as: multiple works written by an author, multiple books within a category or subcategories, and reading both popular and potentially overlooked books   

Beth and Laura start by openly discussing our own experiences reading widely, and ways in which we would like to be more purposeful in pushing the boundaries of who and what we read. We acknowledge the lack of diversity in our reading as we grew up and in our literature classes in high school and many in college that tended to focus on white, Eurocentric, masculine voices. We also touch on the overarching lack of diversity in the books that are published and marketed today. Because of those and other issues, we feel it takes conscious and consistent effort to seek after and engage with diverse voices.

That said, there are many resources out there to help find new reads and diverse voices. Some ideas are to connect with authors and find book recommendations on social media platforms such as Instagram, seeking recommendations from readers you know or through a community of readers, and looking up “best of” lists on websites like Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, and independent book enthusiasts.

We hope that you are staying safe and finding time to practice self-care, as well as finding ways to grow and challenge yourself! Keep creating, putting your unique voice out there, and read widely!

Into the woods,
Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore mentions multicultural books towards the early part of the conversation. In thise case, she means both multicultural (reflecting several viewpoints) and diverse (reflecting one diverse viewpoint) books.

Both Fable and the Verbivore mention being highly sensitive readers. What we mean by this is the psychological definition of a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).

Names are important, Poinsettia author Marlene S. DeVose’s last name is actually pronounced “Dee-Vose” with a long O sound.

The website Web Writers Spotlight has a great article that further discusses why reading widely is important. Here is that link.

If you are looking for some recommendations on new reads, here are a couple places to start:

  • https://ideas.ted.com/62-great-books-by-black-authors-recommended-by-ted-speakers/

  • https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/bipoc

  • https://chireviewofbooks.com/2019/11/18/22-books-by-indigenous-writers-to-read-right-now/

Books Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)