Coming August 13, 2024
A comprehensive craft book about writing historically marginalized identities.
In Writing an Identity Not Your Own, award-winning Mixed Latine author Alex Temblador will discuss one of the most contentious topics in creative writing: crafting a character whose identity is historically marginalized. She’ll begin by discussing what she means by ‘identity’ and why it’s important to understand the state of diversity in publishing, before delving into how unconscious bias and bias blocks are the biggest obstacles to this writing approach. From there, you’ll learn about intersectional identities and specific things to consider when writing different race/ethnicities, sexual orientations, gender identities, disabilities, nationalities, and more. Alex will guide writers through the pre-writing phase to the editing process so they can gain a full understanding of the complexities of writing other identities and why it’s important to get it right.
Available on NetGalley
Access an advanced reader copy of Writing An Identity Not Your Own on NetGalley if you are a:
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"Alex Temblador breaks new ground in Writing an Identity Not Your Own, guiding writers to craft characters from historically marginalized backgrounds with sensitivity and depth—a seminal guide to responsible and enriching creative writing that is both timely and timeless. Every writer who aspires to write great fiction should have this book on their shelf. It's an instant classic in the new canon of essential craft books."
Blake Kimzey, Founder & Executive Director of WritingWorkshops.com
BLURBS
“Alex Temblador provides a concrete and detailed guide to the issues of misrepresentation, appropriation and stereotypes in creative writing. She asks difficult questions of writers who would wish to create characters with identities different from their own and she demonstrates not just how challenging this task can be but what is required to even approach this task with intelligence, sensitivity, knowledge and self-interrogation. In the end Temblador interrogates not just issues of craft but the biases we all carry that we may be unaware of. An essential text."
David Mura, A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity & Narrative Craft in Writing
"At once accessible and forthright, Alex Temblador's Writing An Identity Not Your Own is a helpful companion for writers. With friendliness and care, Temblador offers writer-to-writer conversations about the complexities of identity in cultural production. This book is reaching for an ever more thoughtful approach to literary representation--as writers grapple with their own and their characters' identities, positionalities, and relations of power."
Janelle Adsit, author of Toward an Inclusive Creative Writing; Co-Author, Writing Intersectional Identities
