Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Diversity in Writing Reflects the Real World


Na'amen Gobert Tilahun is reading at Perfectly Queer July 11, 7 p.m., at Books Inc. Opera Plaza in San Francisco.  (facebook.com/events/619573908219248/)  He was recently named one of 13 Bay Area Authors to Watch and Read in 2016 by 7X7 magazine. His writing has been published by io9, Queers Dig Time Lords, Stone Telling, The Big Click, and more. His debut novel The Root was published by Night Shade Books this June.  It is the first in the Wrath & Athenaeum trilogy. The second volume, The Tree, will be out next June.

He advocates diversity in writing as a reflection of the real world.  He “believes all writing to be a political act that includes decisions on who to feature in your work and who to ignore and how to portray those you decide to feature.”

Na'amen said in his interview in The Qwillery blog June 9, 2016 that he was inspired to write The Root because he "wanted an Urban Fantasy that reflected my own lived experience.  Also, I wanted to explore/mess with the stereotype of the overly aggressive/violent black man and expand that simplistic idea into a three-dimensional character and one of the heroes of the text."

Na’amen is from Los Angeles and the Bay Area and now lives in Oakland.  He has a bachelors degree in English, with a focus on creative writing.  He is the co-creator and cohost of the geek podcast The Adventures of Yellow Peril + Magical Negro and has lived many a writer’s dream, having worked in a bookstore, in his case Borderlands.  Find out more about him and his writing at naamen.org.


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