Outwrite!

Acclaimed author Nalo Hopkinson comes to the Cap

Hopkinson: "Being a person of colour does mean that I have real-world experience in what it's like to be 'Othered'"

In some form or another, the Agitate collective has been around Ottawa for five years, organizing events, throwing parties and workshops, spreading their fingers as so many other similar groups do in order to eventually find each other and join hands. Their latest effort is a terrific mash-up of literature, food, music and community.

“It’s exciting for us because it’s the effort of so many people and so many unions and community organizations we received financial support from. It’s all led us to this,” says Indri Pasaribu, one of the organizers of the Aug. 17 event called Outwrite! “I’m always interested to link my work to the work of others… to link our work to other struggles is the only way to really make our work relevant.” And they practise exactly what they preach – the Agitate group’s proceeds will go to benefit the Migrant Trade Union of South Korea, and locally to a relief fund for violently assaulted taxi drivers.

It’s a sentiment echoed by the feature panellist for the Outwrite event, Nalo Hopkinson. Hopkinson has risen to become a unique and important voice in the science fiction and fantasy genre, not simply here in Canada but in the cross-border and cross-culture world of this literature.

“Being a queer in the genre – well, there are lots of us there so it’s not that unusual – but being a person of colour does mean that I have real-world experience in what it’s like to be ‘Othered,'” says Hopkinson. “People often think that it’s all about entertainment. When, in fact, science fiction goes way back to dystopian literature, when writers took it very seriously and examined social conditions.”

As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – Aug. 20, 2009
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/books/books.aspx?iIDArticle=18082