Wow this is such a powerful panel with amazing books and creative minds! I appreciate this! Thanks

The discussion about representation is so interesting to me because I feel it is such a huge concern in north america (canada and USA). When in western europe (I don't know about the UK) we don't really pay attention to that (we do more now because of netflix). I simply wonder why

Was the zoom broken on the camera or something?

SO excited to see Mira Grant here

I didn't know McPoyle was a writer!?

And then he ruined the diversity convo by ignoring it, this sounds eerily familiar... im suspicious, but I agree w/ the sentiment... it shouldnt matter, but it ignores millions of years of human evolution that conttibutes to tribalism, but I still appreciate the sentiment

scott sigler shows my philosophy on diversity, in that you basically let the readers own subconscious decide, there are a number of books that dont mention the looks of the main character at all and sometimes even their gender, i think anytime you explicitly pull attention to identity politics you will put off a portion of readers such as myself, but also devalue the whole point of including diversity.

So much cringe at 40:00 from all these authors except Jon Skavron and Cindy Pon. Also interesting that the white, Mormon author had nothing to say on diversity.

This really for of goes off the rails at around 40:00. So Gini Koch's aliens don't understand racial and sexual prejudice, but are capable of interstellar travel? This seems like a bad cliche and that it's most likely handled poorly in the narrative. The interracial couple thing might have been relevant in the 70s and 80s, but it just seems tired now. "You look American, you look Australian"? What? From a world building perspective alone these problems turn me off to her work. The diversity complaint seems, as always, rather shallow here. Especially from a panel of all white people and one Asian. I don't know the work that McGuire references, but apparently she makes a lot of negative racial assumptions and seems to have a problem with how human beings of all races actually behave. The underlying lack of faith in humanity that these authors demonstrate is so prevalent that it only solidifies the prejudices they claim to oppose. Listen to everyone who must identify with characters of a particular race, gender, or sexual orientation and marvel at the imagination stifling and insults to intelligence that must occur.

If I have to conform to ideas and concepts about sexuality that a very small handful of people expect to find in my books and if I have to write with a post gender mindset and prove that I'm also feminine, please shoot me.

A lot of interesting stuff, but I can't stand diversity that feel forced. Tolkien had orcs, elves, humans, dwarves and hobbits. That's pretty diverse from my point of view. Cindy Pon writes about China in her novels, but complains about novels with mostly white and straight people. Let authors write about whatever they want to write about. If I was an author myself, I would probably write a fantasy book with only white and straight humans (but with a diverse cast of non-humans) just to rub it in the SJWs face.

Having watched this panel a few tiems over the years, I always felt it was a little combative between MCGuire and other authors.