Ghada Abdel Aal of Egypt begins the panel by discussing how she made the leap from blogging to professional writing. She explains that she began blogging as a way to express her feelings and observations in a “safe” forum. In closing, she...
Meena Kandasamy of India discusses the problems she has faced with her official first name, Ilavenil. She discusses the political and religious origins of her name and that after wishing for a long time that she had a different surname, concludes...
Aziz Nazmi Shakir-Tash suggests general meanings of the terms "migration," "diaspora," and "exile," relating stories of his own experiences--as well as those of Bulgarian Turks--to these meanings. Verena Tay's talk is titled, "You Are What You Eat:...
Agnes Lam, using few words as is her preference, writes poetry because it is something she likes to do. Hu Xudong's talk, "From the Margin of a Painting to Plural Inner Selves," describes the myriad transitions he has gone through growing from a...
Madeleine Thien's talk is titled, "The Shattered Mirror: On the Migrant in Literature and Politics," and says that "my writing allows me to reflect a self that is often in-between places, that is restless and that is not satisfied." Gutierrez...
Maryam Ala Amjadi is a poet and translator from Iran. For her, the act of translating is in itself a form of self-exile, because the writer is forced to distance themselves from their mother tongue and in so doing, they become spectators both of...