Cole Lavalais (’13, ’15) in JADED IBIS

For the Kimbilio panel at AWP ’16, Cole Lavalais (’13, ’15) presented these remarks on directionality in fiction:

Several years ago during my first semester in graduate school, some of my classmates and I went out to a local watering hole after a rather tedious writing workshop. Which, by the way, was nothing new. I found my graduate writing workshops consistently difficult, not because I couldn’t take critique, but the focus of the workshop, at least my workshops, weren’t craft. Instead the professor and workshop participants’ critiques would often devolve into cultural anthropological digs, peppered with questions about the organizations and events taking place on the fictional black college campus where my novel was set. So while my classmates communed at the bar and I whined into my beer about my growing black-splaining fatigue, one of my white classmates countered, “Well, who is your audience?” Due to her tone and body language, I could tell it wasn’t a question she expected an answer to. On the contrary, it was one of those questions meant to shut me down or shut me up. Of course, being who I am and where I’m from, I’m not easily shut up, so I countered back with just as much pointedness: “People who read books are my audience.”

Read the rest of the article here:  Writing Woke