Writing the Other

The workshop will focus on practical approaches to writing “the other,” which merely means creating, or introducing in your fiction, characters who are different in significant ways from you, or whose social and cultural environment is different from yours. We will therefore be exploring several ways of dealing with characters of diverse backgrounds. We’ll discuss how to identify what most people in our society recognize as the norm, or in computer-speak the default, to which we’ll refer as the dominant paradigm, and the various ways we may or may not depart from it.  We’ll first define “otherness” by examining the dominant paradigm, drawing from a worldview that is shaped by our own biographies. We all differ in one way or the other from the dominant paradigm, and these differences may include one or more of the following: class, age, race, national origin, ability, gender, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. We explore varied methods, including defamiliarization and empathization exercises, of bridging cultural and other socially constructed differences, for the writing of successful fiction. The workshop will comprise discussions and writing exercises.

Zakes Mda is a writer, painter, filmmaker and music composer, Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio University and Creative Writing Instructor at Johns Hopkins University. He has published 25 books, 11 of which are novels and the rest collections of plays, poetry, essays and a monograph on theater as a medium for development communication. His novels have been translated into 22 languages, including Turkish, Serbian, Italian, Estonian, French, Norwegian, Korean, Dutch etc. and have won awards in South Africa, the USA and Italy. His memoirs, Sometimes there is a Void, were the New York Times Notable Book for 2012. He holds an MA and MFA from Ohio University and PhD form the University of Cape Town and was awarded honorary doctorates by five other universities, including Dartmouth College and University of the Free State.