Today I am excited to be participating in a project where where bookworms imagine their dream conference panel... whether it would be to hear John Green and Suzanne Collins talk Young Adult Fiction or to see J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien give their best tips for writing Fantasy... the choices are endless!
Who would be on your panel?
On my panel I would love to have Charlotte Brontë, Rainbow Rowell, Louise O' Neil, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Malala Yousafzai. This might seem like quite an odd grouping but they are all respectively my favourite authors and feminist influences. As my dream panel would be a discussion about feminist literature it's important that a vast array of women are represented, and I think that comes across in my choice of panel members. Not least because they are all individually amazing authors and important role models to me.
What questions would you ask?
This might go on for days! I would love to know each of these authors' thoughts on where feminism stands in the 21st century. In a world that seems to periodically constrain and punish women, particularly women of ethnic, religious, class and sexual minorities, I would like to know where these women see feminism heading, and how they think we can make the world a better and safer place for women. I would also like to ask Charlotte Brontë, who obviously was alive a very long time ago, how she thinks things have advanced for women, and how things have not advanced. I think this panel would be very interesting and enlightening.
Who would moderate?
This is a toughie. I think, after much deliberating, I would have to ask Mary Wollstonecraft to moderate. At the end of the day, she was the first person in popular culture to have the absolute audacity to imply that women should have equal rights to men. I know - what a shocker!
Where would it take place?
Until next time :)
