I also want to acknowledge the important discussion around our own voices. The publishing industry has marginalized authors outside of the white, Western mainstream for far too long. This needs to change. In this polarized era, we need more diverse books, written by diverse authors, in settings and situations that reflect the deep richness of our world. At the same time, like PEN America, I don’t believe in setting “rigid rules” about who has the right to tell which stories, or that an author should be confined to creating only characters with a similar background or genetic code. I’ve spent
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