Writing the Other: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

Its one of the great 'truisms' of writing that you should write what you know. However there are also many famous occurences of people writing what there was no way they could ever know - the classic one being the old chestnut of a dowdy middle age man who has little contact with women writing very sensitive womens prose such as that portrayed by Jack Nicholson in 'As Good As It Gets'.

During a Workshop attended by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward one of the students expressed the opinion that it is a mistake to write about people of ethnic backgrounds different from your own because you might get it wrong, horribly, offensively wrong, and so it is better not even to try.

This opinion, commonplace among published as well as aspiring writers, struck Nisi as taking the easy way out and spurred her to write an essay addressing the problem of how to write about characters marked by racial and ethnic differences. In the course of writing the essay, however, she realized that similar problems arise when writers try to create characters whose gender, sexual preference, and age differ significantly from their own. Nisi and Cynthia collaborated to develop a workshop that addresses these problems with the aim of both increasing writers skill and sensitivity in portraying difference in their fiction as well as allaying their anxieties about getting it wrong.

Now a book has come out of this workshop. Volume 8. Writing the Other: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward or you can read about the Acclaimed 'Writing The Other' workshop.