On Oct. 22, the Carroll Room in the Smith College Julia Child ‘34 Campus Center was packed with students and professors, eager to listen to a group of speculative fiction writers discuss their latest works as the most recent stop of the Traveling Science-Fiction/Fantasy Festival. The panel, moderated by Smith College English Language and Literature professor Allegra Hyde, featured five of the fourteen authors participating in the festival. As the talk’s theme was “Worldbuilding and the Real World,” the authors spoke how their personal experiences have influenced their work over the years.
Yume Kitasei, a self-described extrovert, came up with the idea of creating a traveling science fiction and fantasy festival. “We felt like it would be so much fun to put together a group-style tour,” Kitasei said. “We’re doing eight nights in eight cities.” Kitasei has a long history with Smith, as her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and aunt are all Smith alumnae. Originally from New York, Kitasei is Japanese-American, describing her childhood as growing up “in a space between two cultures — the same space where her stories reside.” Her three books, “The Deep Sky” (2023), “The Stardust Grail” (2024), and “Saltcrop” (2025), all touch on themes of race, family and finding oneself in a hostile world. “An author’s background inevitably affects what they write,” Kitasei said. “To me, diversity broadens the ways stories are told, not just the kinds of stories that are told.”
Elaine U. Cho also spoke about how her identity impacts the stories she writes. Originally from Seattle, Washington, the author of “Ocean’s Godori” (2024) and “Teo’s Durumi” (2025) has a lifelong love of the fiction genre. “I definitely grew up reading a lot of sci-fi and fantasy,” Cho said. Reading books written by predominantly white authors with a limited cast of characters influenced what she chose to write about later in life. “The space opera genre has not always been very kind to minorities…We’re getting the chance to tell those very personal stories in our ways, and I think it’s a beautiful thing.”
J. R. Dawson touched on how parts of her identity haven’t always been represented in science fiction or fantasy books. As a queer, disabled person from Minnesota, the author of “The First Bright Thing” (2023) and “The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World” (2025) discussed how they seek to empower marginalized voices through fictional stories. “At least in my writing, people who have historically not had the power suddenly get magic, or suddenly find that they are magical,” Dawson said. She also noted that fiction can help people discuss difficult topics. “It allows us to speak about things that are happening in the real world that are scary, or are difficult to speak about…in a distanced way, so it comes closer to home.”
Emily Jane spoke about how her most recent book, “American Werewolves” (2025), deals with the impacts of modern sexism and capitalism. As an attorney based in Cincinnati, Ohio, Jane spoke candidly about feeling marginalized at her law firm. “The one time I visited Boston, I went into this conference room. We were doing witness interviews, and it’s me, the only woman, in this room full of older white men.” Jane said. “This is the world we’re living in. We’re having to deal with this all of the time, and it definitely impacts your experience when you’re writing fiction.” Jane also discussed how she wrote “American Werewolves” (2025) during the first Trump administration and how contemporaneous events influenced the stories she was writing at the time. “For me, it wasn’t conscious. I didn’t set out to process certain current events, I just felt things about the world, and it comes out in the narrative.”
Mia Tsai also talked about how her book touches on current events, namely the refusal of many western museums to repatriate some of their artifacts to their countries of origin. Tsai, who lives in Atlanta, said her inspiration for her most recent book, “The Memory Hunters” (2025), came from the idea that physical museums aren’t just displaying artifacts, but also the cultural histories of their places of origin. When talking about the main setting of her book, the Museum of Human Memory, Tsai said, “When the memories became physical objects, the logical next step for me was to have them be collected in a museum so I could work through the central questions of the book: Who tells your story, and what gives them the right? Physicalized memories are inherently problematic, you could say, because immediately one has to understand the memory could only have come about through personal experience.”
When talking about their creative processes, the authors discussed the phrase, “write what you know,” advice often given to aspiring writers. “Thinking about all of these books and what I know about all of these authors, there are elements of the books that reflect their own background, their own experience.” Jane said. “I think it can be really helpful in terms of envisioning the details. You have the details already…so you can draw upon your life experience.” Kitasei added her own interpretation of the phrase, saying “I think what that really means is that the stories that you’re telling are true to feelings that we have or the way that we think.” She added, “You borrow things from everybody that you know. Every character is sort of an amalgamation of everyone that you’ve ever met.”
The authors also talked about who they wrote their books for, either for a specific person or a group of people. Dawson spoke about the importance of fiction as a community building tool, saying, “I feel like all of us in this room feels like at some point, we’re alone.” They declared, “I just want my book to tell you that you’re not alone, that we’re all going through these things…that we’re all trying to love ourselves, and that you’re enough.”
