Writing across International Boundaries - Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Heather Derr
What are the responsibilities of authors who travel internationally and write on global themes? Is it possible for authors to see the world and represent it beyond the limitations of their own cultural blinders? Poets Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Heather Derr-Smith share their stories and writings about the environmental degradation and political upheaval they’ve witnessed around the world. Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was born in Won Ju Si, South Korea. Her debut collection, Paper Pavilion (2007), received the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at St. Olaf College and lives in Minneapolis. Heather Derr-Smith received her undergraduate degree in art history from the University of Virginia and her M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her first poetry collection, Each End of the World, features poems about the Bosnian war in the 1990s. Part of the Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness and the Creative Imagination.