{"id":15261,"date":"2014-07-12T09:21:36","date_gmt":"2014-07-12T13:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=15261"},"modified":"2014-07-12T09:27:37","modified_gmt":"2014-07-12T13:27:37","slug":"readercon-2014-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/12\/readercon-2014-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"Readercon 2014: Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"

First thing I did yesterday was to post Thursday’s Readercon videos<\/a>, because I’d hoped to encourage you to get here today, but don’t worry—I then got out of my hotel room and quickly dove into the thick of things. <\/p>\n

First up was the morning panel “Empathy, Identification, and Stories,” which featured Matthew Kressel, L. Timmel Duchamp (moderator), Julia Rios, Andrea Hairston, and Walt Williams.<\/p>\n

Here’s what they set out to discuss. <\/p>\n

At a panel at Arisia 2013, Andrea Hairston said, “I can only tell you a story if you’re a human who can hear a story and imagine what it’s like to be someone who isn’t you.” Tannanarive Due added that access to stories matters: some children, for instance, can easily find books about characters like themselves, while others have to read books from outside a position of identification. Culture creates structures of identification and empathy; or, to put it another way, ways of feeling from within and ways of feeling from without. How do stories create structures of feeling, and how can writers and readers both benefit from awareness of these structures?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And for those who couldn’t make it to Readercon<\/a>, here’s the panel itself.<\/p>\n