Should a White Author Write Nonwhite Characters?

Today I wrote a post I've been mulling for weeks over at BlogHer. Here's a teaser -- click the link at the end for the full post!

A few weeks ago, I drove down toThe Writers Placein Kansas City, Miss., (full disclosure: I serve on the board of directors) to talk to a group of around twenty upper middle-school kids about writing fiction. We ended up talking about race.

I didn't start there. I started with writing process. I talked aboout how I wrote my first novel in ever-lengthening Word doc...