What still needs to be accomplished can be summed up by the lovely album released on my birthday last year by Solange—A Seat at the Table. How much significant, systemic progress and change can be made if you still don’t have a seat at the table? Walter Mosley was organizing around this question in the early 90s via PEN’s Open Book Committee, which I believe he founded, to help bring more people of color into the publishing industry. Why is that vital? Because different people at the table ask different questions, seek different voices, and have a different relationship to all the things we are told are universal. Intersectionality matters. Consider what work we wouldn’t get to read if other talented people didn’t get a seat at the table, a chance to guest edit, an opportunity to curate, to be a juror, to host, promote, celebrate, read and review, be reviewed, speak …

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About Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley was a contemporary American novelist. Walter Ellis Mosley is an American novelist, most widely recognized for his crime fiction. He has written a series of best-selling historical mysteries featuring the hardboiled detective Easy Rawlins, a black private investigator living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Read more on Wikipedia →

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“The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.”
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“It hurts when they're gone. And it doesn't matter if it's slow or fast, whether it's a long drawn-out disease or an unexpected accident. When they're gone the world turns upside down and you're lef...”
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“Blood may be thicker than water, but family has them both beat.”
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“You know, one of the interesting things you find about writing fiction is that any fiction you write has to be political. Otherwise, it goes into the realm of fantasy. So like, if you write about a...”
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“The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.”
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