Belated Speakeasy Run-down

Overall the Speakeasy over at Women And Children First was fun if a little insular. The problem with having events like these is that they tend to turn to commiseration fests, and it's easy to get bogged down in simply talking about how much things suck. I think I'm ready for the next step.

One thing that was said was that we don't put value on fiction anymore and that while fiction literature isn't effective for immediate political actions it's an important tool for learning how to empathize. Rosellen Brown had particularly interesting story about a judge who read her books because she thought if she was going to be a good judge, she needed to understand the people coming into her courtroom. Empathy is in short supply these days. We expect that presidents read the histories and biographies. What about the classics?

Anyway here's my plug to the writers on the panel:

Aleksandar Hemon

Rosellen Brown

Sara Paretsky.