Science fiction writing workshop in India

Writer Vandana Singh blogs about a science fiction writing workshop that will happen in India this summer. Singh will be one of the instructors:

"Until fairly recently, though, we didn’t know if we were going to have any applicants, but now it is pukka, as we say in India. Eighteen people have been selected based on their submitted writing samples. Most are not established writers but all have promise and enthusiasm. And — amazingly — about 50% are women!"

"Science Fiction, Globalization, and the People's Republic of China," by Lavie Tidhar

On visiting China in the summer of 2000 I was surprised at the complexity and determination I found in the SF field. Structures were forming that I would not have expected to see outside the US-UK axis, paralleling to a surprising degree the field's development in the West.

See also the mini-Chinese SF profile as part of the report on the 2007 Chinese SF conference within the 2007 autumnal newscast:

Today much Chinese SF is published by popular science publishing houses and SF authors tend to belong to a science writers association rather than a writers association.

Speak like a subaltern: Elizabeth Bear on writing the other

Writer Elizabeth Bear on creating characters outside your experience:

For one thing, stop thinking about this person you're writing as The Other. Think of them as human, an individual. Not A Man. Not A Woman. Not A Chinese Person or A Handicapped Person or A Person With Cancer or a Queer Person. A person. Stop trying to make them universal, and make them unique.

Edited to add:

For more, deepad continues the discussion, here:

I distrust universalising statements proclaiming our inherent mutual humanity because they are uni-directional; they do not make everyone more like me, they make everyone more like you.