Strength Through Diversity: A Community of Writers

Writers of Color

Writers of color across the country have perspectives and insights that could add much to our world of literature and ideas yet they often have difficulty publishing their work.

• Mainstream publishing staffs are overwhelmingly white. So are literary review editors, poetry contest judges, and the powerbrokers in the technical writing field.
• Few agents and editors actively seek writers of color because they do not see a mass market for such work. Marketing directors, not being tied to communities of color, don't know how to market books by authors of color.
• Editors expect Asian American and Latino writers to write about exotic "old country" topics, African Americans to write about poverty, and Native American writers to write about spirituality.

To address the concerns of writers of color the National Writers Union:

• Investigated in a groundbreaking pilot survey the problems faced by writers of color and is creating strategies for improving those conditions.
• Sponsored programs including:
  • Writing for Our Rights, a two-day conference featuring Middle-Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian writers.
  • Maintaining your integrity as a writer of color, Boston
  • Breaking into technical writing, Bay Area
  • Censorship and Culture, New York City
  • How Media Represent Arab, Hispanic, and African peoples, Michegan
  • Poetry and claiming our voices in this land of immigrants, Santa Cruz
  • Writers of Color networking potlucks
• Developed a database of agents, editors and publishers who have dealt with threats to civil rights and the impacts on writers of color. Covers African-American, Latina/o, Asian American, First Nations and Arab-American authors.
• Defended authors such as Dennis Brutus, Demetria Martinez, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Luis Rodriguez against censorship and other threats.
• Led a successful campaign to reverse the California Education Department's decision to remove two of Alice Walker's stories from its assessment test.

Although not all writers share the same backgrounds, experiences or viewpoints, we share common concerns such as the need to be justly compensated for our work and treated with respect.

LGBT Writers

The NWU is at the forefront of defending the rights of LGBT writers of all genres, including poets, journalists, book authors, tech writers and academic writers. Whether its poor rates at queer publications, being pigeon-holed as a niche market by publishers, or facing censorship or grant denials for writing about our lives, LGBT writers face myriad forms of discrimination.

Advocacy for writers of all sexual orientations is written into the NWU constitution, and the NWU led the way in the UAW adding sexual orientation to its non-discrimination clause—a clause that protects all 700,000+ UAW members across the country.

Learn More

The National Diversity Page has many resources, including:

• The new Writers of Color brochure (pdf)
• The new LGBT Writers brochure (pdf)
• Recent Diversity Committee News.
• The Building Strength Through Diversity Handbook for Locals.

...and more. For more information, call 510.839.1248 or e-mail @nwu.

Recent Diversity News and Postings

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