AWP PROGRAM: “If You Haven’t Lived It, Can You Write It?” featuring Patricia Smith, author of The Year of Needy Girls, Virginia Pye, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Lamar Giles, and Julie Wu. As fiction writers, we are used to creating worlds and characters, if not from scratch, then from some merging of memory and imagination. But what happens when our story ideas veer toward experiences and worlds beyond our own? When can research fill in for lived experience? And what is our responsibility to “get it right?” What are some things we can do if we get it wrong? When is the story not ours to tell?

Program will take place in Meeting Room 1, Marriott Waterside, Second Floor.