Women writers will meet for conference
This weekend ten contemporary women authors will visit the College for a writers' conference titled, "Books and Other Acts: Contemporary Women Writers and Social Change." Dorothy Allison, Toni Cade Bambara, Esther Broner, Cherrie Moraga, Grace Paley, Dolores Prida, Ninotchka Rosca, Leslie Marmon Silko, Meredith Tax and Paule Marshall will all be on campus this week discussing their work. The writers plan to read from their works and initiate debates on "the questions facing women writers today," according to a press release. "The conference focuses on the very heart of a liberal arts education: How do the books we read help us understand, face or change the problems in our increasingly polarized society?" Diana Taylor, Spanish and comparative literature professor. "I feel that since the 1960s, women writers in the United States have been at the forefront of this inquiry," Taylor said. Taylor is also the coordinator of the Institute for Women and Social Change, an organization formed by Dartmouth faculty to address the role of women in current social issues. The Institute is sponsoring the conference that will examine "the relationship between women's political commitments and their artistic practice," the release stated. Women's Resource Center Director Giavanna Munafo said the conference is important especially "for a campus like this one, with its outstanding academic and intellectual climate, to recognize that creative action and political action can be fruitfully aligned." In the introduction of her book "Long Walks and Intimate Talks," Paley raises many of the issues that will be discussed at the conference. "We hoped that our work would, by its happiness and sadness, demonstrate against militarists, racists, earth poisoners, women haters, all those destroyers of our days," Paley wrote.