Community of the Imagination – 2021

Novelist Adam Biles (UK) interviews writers for a living. But who interviews Adam Biles? UTV Founder and Director Magda Bogin asks Biles how he comes up with questions that take his featured authors by surprise.

Sheree Renée Thomas (US), a guiding light of the Afro-futurist literary community, and young Mexican writer Jumko Ogata discuss the role of speculative fiction in portraying and expanding the African diaspora experience on both sides of the border with writer and essayist Gabriela Damián Miravete (Mexico).

Novelists from four countries–Francisco Goldman (Guatemala/US), Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina), Gina Apostol (Philippines/US), Jonathan Levi (US),–weigh in on how the epic experience of the pandemic has shaped their writing.

As science unveils the mysteries of the universe, astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan (India/US) and novelists Alberto Chimal (Mexico), Victor LaValle (US), Annalee Newitz (US) explore the shifts that ripple through the imagination when the unknown becomes known.

Investigative journalist Ginger Thompson (US) and evolutionary biologist Valeria Souza (Mexico) share the passions behind their pursuit of stories that resist easy telling and reshape the way we see the world.

Poet Carolyn Forché (US) and pioneering Mexican journalist and novelist Elena Poniatowska (Mexico) speak about becoming writers of witness.