 Yn ystod, a rwy'n fawr i'r fawr o'r fawr o'r fawr o'r gweithio. Rwy'n molygrosol o'r Fawr oedd y Cyfwyr Rhyw Llywodraeth, ac mae'n gweithio i'r fawr o'r fawr o'r fawr o'r arweinyddol mewn ymddangos o'r RSL a'r fawr o'r fawr o'r fawr o'r fawr o'r Llywodraeth yn ymddangos o'r fawr o'r bandbwchwych, mae'r fawr o'r penderfyn a'r gweithio. Bwchwych bandwchwych sef ar gyfeyddio pan ydy mwylorth a hynny'r bwcification o cyff Download Ff conclusionoline o chei newydd eu holl gan ymgyrchu ystod clywed o gweithio, ond nid mor b désod yn cael an�� yma ac yw'r gweithio hefyd meddyg wedi bobl会 arno ondusty'n gweith ym colum hitting Oire gifts Un man写r yn橙�fastiad? Oes iawn – aunt Wendellie profession gan genna ei ddeithas, Ac ydw i'n ddyn nhw'r fawr o'r gwyllt yr un tro i ddeall i gyfryterau o'r gym 보여� Mae'r gwaith yng Nghwylun Llywodraeth yn ystod o ffrindio gyrdd yma, ymweld yn fwyaf o gweithio amgylchedd o'r ddylch yn yma i gael ei gwell yn ei gweithio. Yn y ei dda, gwrs am gyfwil yn gweithio'r gwyrdd, mae'n ddweud i'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio gael ei gael ei gweithio a'r gweithio'r gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. ond yw'n ddweud o'r ffwrdd sydd yn bwysig i'r un o'r ystyried i'r ddechrau i'w ddweud i gael. Rwy'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio, yn ddiddordeb y gallwn. If you have any questions, please do have questions for our brilliant speakers. During the event you can submit them through the question box, which is just below this feed, so you should be able to, at the bottom of your screen, see where to submit questions. We're going to put selected questions to the panel at the end of their conversation, so you'll have a chance to ask them what you wish to. You'll also find social media links beneath the video, in case you want to continue the conversation on other platforms, and you can find out more information about the event and the speakers through the More Information button, which does what it says on the box. This event is also being live captioned, so you should be able to turn on the live captioning at the bottom of your screen as well. Please show your support for these excellent speakers by buying their books, which you can do via the RSL's online bookshop. You can click on the link on your screen to be taken to those books, and while you are there on the RSL website, you can book for our next two events with the British Library. The first is Tomorrow Night, with Stephen Fry in conversation with Shappie Corsandi, and next week on Thursday we have David Mitchell talking books and music with Brian Eno. Members of the RSL can book all of our events for free, or you can buy individual tickets via the British Library online, and I think you can also find a link on the screen to get to the BL as well. And now it is my pleasure to introduce this evening's chair, Ovasi Batalia. Ovasi is director and co-founder of Cali for Women, India's first feminist publishing house. She's an active participant in India's women's movement and has been for more than two decades, and she holds the position of reader at the College of Vocational Studies at the University of Delhi. Thank you so much, Ovasi, for guiding our conversation tonight and I'll pass over to you now. Thank you. Thank you, Molly. Great to be here. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to our discussion on resisting self-censorship. I'd like to start by saying that in many of our countries, these three words have come to be really loaded. Resisting or resistance is something we are not supposed to do. The self is something that's really not meant to exist any longer, and censorship, well, if you were to listen to some of our states at least, there's no such thing. All they're asking us to do is to speak in the right language and then we'll be fine, then we have lots of freedom. So with that, let me begin by introducing you to our brilliant panel. All of you know the three writers here, and I'm not going to give you very long bios on each of them because that would take up all our time. I'll give you the briefest of introductions. Elif Shafak is a Turkish and British writer. She writes fiction, nonfiction, essays. She's an activist on women's rights. She's a public speaker, and she has many books translated into innumerable languages. Some of them are on the shelf behind her. You can see that. And her latest book is a small pamphlet, which is called How to Stay Same in a Time of Division. Jacqueline Woodward is a writer of wonderfully subversive books for young adults, and she writes both fiction and non-fiction for adults. She's an ambassador for children's writing and reading, and many of the awards she's won are on the wall behind her. You can see those. Rachel Long is a poet, a young poet, whose recent collection of poems published very recently has received great critical acclaim. She's also the founder of Octavia, a Black Women's Poetry Collective, and all of them have this in common, that they are pretty amazing. They've won huge numbers of awards, and they're really kick-ass gals. So I'm delighted to be speaking to you, Jacqueline, Rachel, Elif. I want to start by saying that, you know, when I started to become acquainted with your work, I realized that you are three very, very different writers. Each of you has a powerful, really strong and distinct voice. Each of you comes from a different place and you carry those places with you in your writing. You write in a range of forms, you know, fiction genres, if you like, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, poetry as memoir, et cetera. And in some ways, all of you stand somewhat outside what is generally called the mainstream. Partly this is, as I said, an act of volition where you self-consciously place yourself outside because that's where you are. And partly it's because that's the way the world is. That's the way the mainstream works. Those who don't belong kind of stay outside. But I see you writers also as unique because the so-called mainstream doesn't really seem to represent a place that you yearn for. It's not a place you necessarily want to belong to. Instead, your work is animated by your concerns, your cultures, not by a kind of aspirational or desired elsewhere. And the work of all three writers is deeply political. This is something to have in common, but the political is not in the narrow sense of the word. It's in a very nuanced, very intimate, very personal way. They're not standing on top of so-of boxes and screaming out, but actually they don't need to. You know, the deeply felt, the deeply personal, the meanings of history, of culture, of politics, of race, all of these things lie at the heart of their writings. So with that as a brief introduction to the concerns that animate the work of these writers, I'd like to begin with my questions. And I want to ask you, Jacqueline, Rachel, Elif. How do you understand this thing called self-censorship? I mean, when you look at your own writing, when you look at your lives, because those two are connected, can you think of moments or stretches of time where you have consciously held back on something where you're worried about how it will be received, where you have censored yourself, or even considered it? And if you felt that, have you resisted and how have you resisted? Is it through the forms of writing that you've chosen? Is it through some other way? So if you could just address this and see, I mean, is writing when we're doing it, are stories another? Rachel, can I ask you to start? Hey, that was a really beautiful introduction. Thank you. It's a really good question, and something that I am absolutely currently thinking about if not consumed by. Since my book has been published, it came out in August. I sometimes do the washing up, or I'm going for a walk or something, and suddenly I'm like, oh my God, you wrote that, and it's out in the world now, and I can't take it back. And so I think, which I knew, obviously I knew that, but there are still times that I am experiencing right now that I feel scared and worried that I have said something that I haven't perhaps censored myself in a way that I should have, or in a way that would be most safe, perhaps for me, perhaps for other people. So I don't have an answer answer because I'm currently literally walking and feeling that right now, but it is self-censure and how much you say and how much you write, how much of yourself you want to give is something that I am thinking about a lot at the moment. And struggling with I think as well. So is the sense of vulnerability just a way in which you worry about making yourself public, putting the self out there in the public, or is it something born of a fear of reprisal, let's say? Both I think, both. I think they're absolutely entwined for me at least, both. But when I teach, when I run workshops and things, when I'm talking to other poets, when I'm mentoring or working with them, I always advise might be as honest as you can and that doesn't necessarily mean kind of tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but be honest to the feeling which is not necessarily being honest to the kind of how things played out, but be honest to the way that you feel and try and get that down on the page. So I do like in my essence like believe in that but I know because of how I am. Sometimes I feel right now that the book is out. Sometimes I do know or I am feeling the power of what kind of how set self-senship can try and control you or how reprisal kind of works even in terms of the self. Elin, how does this work for you? I so respect what Rachel said and her honesty. These are not easy issues to talk about but I think we have to talk about them and I do come from a country where words are heavy. I think every Turkish writer, journalist, poet, academic, cartoonist, you know, knows that because of your words, because of your art, you may get into trouble overnight and you may be detained or arrested or exiled or demonized in mainstream media. As a result, I think there is widespread self-senship in my motherland and it's not easy to talk about self-senship in some ways, paradoxically, it might be even easier to talk about censorship that comes down from outside because particularly when it's written, we could just hold it in our hands and show it to ourselves at least. But how do you deal with the kind of censorship that comes from within? The kind of censorship or anxieties or fears that we internalize? So I think when we have these kinds of debates, we do encourage each other. We do inspire each other. That's why they're so important. Of course, in countries where democracy has been crushed and right now all around the world, similar things unfortunately are happening in different degrees. It is not easy to talk about politics. It's not all easy to question taboos or silences, particularly if you're focusing on the margins rather than the centre. If you want to make the invisible more visible or give more voice to the voiceless, then it's not easy and we all know that. But I think sometimes we forget that it might be equally challenging to write about sexuality. It might be equally challenging to write about gender, gender discrimination, sexual minorities and maybe in some ways it's harder for women writers because unfortunately the way things work when a male novelist writes about these issues, people say, well, he's got a great imagination. When a female writer or poet tackles these issues, people say, oh, did it happen to you? Because people think it must be a personal story. So everything becomes more intimate for, I believe, women writers and also minority writers. And maybe it's much harder for younger writers. So it's better to be aware of all these layers and maybe self-censorship is not something we could solve in one go, but it is a question that we should be thinking about again and again. Some days we will deal with it better, some days maybe less so. But what helps me personally, I think when I write fiction, when I'm in the middle of a novel within that imaginary world, I tend to forget as much as I can, as best as I can, the so-called real world. I stay in my imaginary world only when the novel is over after weeks and months or years of work. And when I hand it to my editor, then I have panic attacks and anxiety attacks. But by then it's too late. The book is born and it is free the way it should be. So I think while we're writing, we should definitely try to forget all those anxieties. We can have those anxieties later on. In the sense you're echoing what Rachel was saying about the moment it goes out of your hands and enters a public world, that's when the anxieties actually start. They may not be working on you while you're writing because that world is so preoccupising. I want to come back in the second round to the question of gender, but I'd like to hear from Jacqueline first how she feels about this. I just want to echo what Rachel and Alif said and also I just really appreciate your voices in the world. I have to say that and the work you're both doing and the work you're doing. So I was thinking, of course this is a twofold question, right? The issue of self-sensorship, what's happening inside our heads and hearts as we're trying to create the work and that consciousness of the exterior. I found the most when I was writing Brown Girl Dreaming because I was writing a memoir about my family and I had to figure out what stories were mine to tell and what stories were not and what was my responsibility as a writer. So I do think more about a writer's responsibility and the impact your words will have on the world and are those words going to impact a greater good or are they going to hurt somebody? And so when I was writing Brown Girl Dreaming in terms of thinking about the stories of my siblings, thinking about the stories of my parents, I had to ask myself again and again, is this my story or am I stepping on my family's throat as I tell it and made conscious decisions around that? But one thing that keeps me from censoring is reading stuff out loud to myself that I've written before I put it out into the world just to feel safe. And as Elif says, once it gets out into the world once I've birthed, it's for the world to consume however they're going to consume it or not, right? And so that, but it's not mine anymore. So while it's still, when it still belongs to me, I do have to ask myself a lot of questions about my responsibility as a writer. And even though I'm not thinking about my readers particularly, I'm thinking about the mirrors I'm creating for the girl who was once Jacqueline Woodson or the person out there who kind of needs this work. I don't think about censorship. I could care less. I mean, because if I start thinking about the way my work has gotten censored and will continue to get censored, it might make me afraid and I don't want to be afraid. I don't want to stop creating work that's trying to impact the greater good. But I do think about if my work is harmful, if my work is harmful to the reader, if I'm creating stereotypes or recreating stereotypes. And again, if I'm telling a story, that's not mine to tell because if it's not mine to tell, how am I going to tell it with love, with care, with thoughtfulness? I want to come back to this point, the very important point that you raised, that when you're writing about yourself, so in a non-fiction form, when you're writing a memoir, let's say, there are the stories of others around you which acquire a kind of truth in that writing. How do you deal with that? I mean, it's an ethical kind of dilemma for the writer and you spoke about it. So what would you do? Would you abide by the truth of what you were writing? And if it was hurtful to somebody, would you change it or how would you think of that? Is that it? Well, as we learn every day, truth is very subjective, right? But I think I asked myself what is my truth, right? An example of it is in writing Brownville, dreaming there's a story of my brother's dad. I talked about my brother being biracial and then there are the three siblings and I had to decide was I going to tell the story of my brother's dad or was that his story to one day tell? Because that story didn't impact me as much as my relationship with my brother did. And so my relationship with my brother was a story I knew and I owned. His relationship with his dad was his story. So I do think about it. I do think again about what stories are mine to tell. And I do have, in that case, I had conversations with my family and I showed them parts and asked them, was it okay because again, I didn't want to hurt them. I was writing about love and I was writing about family and I was writing about what's in all how I got from being the kid I was to the writer I became. So the intention was never to harm and of course somebody's gonna feel like, well you painted me poorly in that scene or whatever but I'm like that was my experience of it. And of course when you have four siblings, we're gonna have four different experiences of a moment because we were four different ages and saw it from four different perspectives. And in that memoir what I am giving is my perspective, which I do own and I do feel good about. I want to come back to the question that Elif raised two things actually that are coming out of this. One of them is of course you're very right to point out that censorship as it is imposed or sought to be imposed on writers is something that maybe we can deal with because it's clear what it is. And it's also out in the public world and there are in some places at least laws that enable you to at least address it. Self censorship is a much more sort of ambivalent thing because it is to do with you internally as a writer. As women, we grow up with so many restrictions on what we may say, what we may feel, what we may wear, where we may go, et cetera, that restraint and caution becomes like part of our DNA in many ways. And men don't necessarily have to face those kinds of restrictions. I'm just wondering how that seeps into women's writing. Do you believe that or do you think that it means, in a sense, a different thing for women to be self-censuring because it's almost within courts normalised for them? I'm not going to pick on one of you to respond to this. I'm going to let you decide who's going to come in on this first. The first thing that pops into my head is my mum saying, sit properly, Rachel. Sit properly and kind of what that meant and how my brother was never told to sit properly because there's no proper way for a boy to sit. But the way that I wanted to sit was the most natural way for me and it was nice so you can get air and your legs could be free and do what they wanted to do. So just when you were talking to your master, I thought, does my work sit properly? And I thought, no, it probably doesn't with my mother at all. But I think for me, writing was where actually I could say and do and sit and be however I wanted. Also, I think because I didn't necessarily grow up in a very literary house. Like, I think my friends are both, my mum is definitely an artist but not in the way that maybe the world thinks of an artist. So when I was just up in my room and I was writing, I knew I wouldn't be disturbed and I knew that nobody would really kind of have an interest really in what I was doing. Not in a kind of a neglectful way just like, oh, she's off doing that. So I think actually writing was the only place that I could actually be free and freest. Thank you. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't think I grew up with such gender binary stuff going on. I think growing up in New York City, growing up in Brooklyn, growing up in black and Latino culture, there were definitely ideas about maleness more so than ideas about femaleness and you know, I was a big old dyke even from a very young age. So it wasn't like I was going to walk a certain way or be a certain way or hear people say I should and maybe they were saying it, but I have no memory of it. I also grew up as a witness. So there was a dress code for going to the Kingdom Hall, but not out every day life. So I do think that in coming to it, it wasn't coming from this place of maleness versus femaleness, but I think the lines for me were much more racial lines and the behavior of what it meant to be an African American in a particular place and time and and how to behave within that caste system. So, and like Rachel said, the writing was the place where people didn't question where I could be free and I wasn't showing it to anybody either, but it wasn't. I wasn't being there were there weren't parameters around it. Really? It's interesting. We all use the word freedom several times and I think that resonates deeply with me. I do feel free. I do feel also like I can be multiple when I'm writing. I think we all have multiple layers, multiple selves, but we're living in a world that does not appreciate people that does not appreciate diversity and that does not appreciate multiplicity. And to me, it's very important to defend these values against the tide against the current. When I look at my own literary journey or personal journey, in some ways it was very nomadic because I was born in France in Strasbourg and the first house that I was brought to was full of immigrants left the students, you know, talking and dreaming of revolution and from that environment after my parents got separated, my father stayed in France, my mother brought me to Turkey and I came to Ankara to a very, very conservative, very patriarchal and very homophobic neighborhood. This was my grandmother's home and from that moment on I was raised by two women, very different women. My mom is very westernized, secular, modern, urban and grandma pretty much would tick off all the opposite boxes more in some ways irrational, in some ways more spiritual. And what stayed with me was the solidarity, was the sisterhood, was support between these two women that really, really left an impact on me. So I do believe that when if women can support each other, especially throughout difficult moments in their lives, the impact of that goes beyond generations. I started writing not because I was planning to become a writer, I didn't know such a thing was possible. There were no role models around me. I didn't grow up in a very literary environment either, but I think I was very lonely. I was an only child raised by a single working mom, underground mom so life felt very boring and somehow storylines felt much more real, much more colorful. The reason why I'm mentioning is because all these journeys there were moments when I left Turkey, I lived in other countries then you come back to Turkey and maybe you live in a bit more fragmented life and you keep thinking about belonging, non-belonging. Maybe in some ways I felt like an insider outside there many times. And in my work to me it feels of course as writers we do chase stories but it feels so important to me to be also aware of silences and who are the silenced in a society. Where is the margins? Where is the periphery? So that's that's where I've always felt closer to. And so coming back to literature in that world I feel like I can defend my multiple belongings. I am not just one box Turkish writer, this writer or that box. And I think we should be questioning those boxes all the time. Of course our identities matter enormously but it's our starting point. It shouldn't be where we end up. So I am a big believer in the power of literature. Maybe in its ability perhaps to transcend those boxes. And that's where I find the sense of freedom. And echoing what you said earlier I leave in terms of what women's writing being made personalised by men much more than writers of cis male writers. That I think the same is true in terms of the boxing in us and the needing to compartmentalise the who we are and the identities we are within our writing. Yeah, absolutely. I promise not to mute myself and I did it. Before you come in I just want to add another little order to this question which is if you talked about people on the margins and those who are silenced. And part of the resistance of self-censorship and a very essential part of it is to have an articulate and to be able to speak or to have a voice or to be heard or to be known to exist. This is how marginalised communities find expression and that expression finds its way into literature written by margin people from the margins. It's like women's writing. There was a time when women's writing was hardly existent. So the question of language comes in here sort of very centrally. If you don't actually have a language, then how in writing do you express yourself? There are other forms of expression. So there are some forms. I suppose you can't call that self-censorship but there are some forms of I don't know what the word is. Barriers in our societies which don't allow or don't make the space for certain voices to be heard. And I wondered Rachel if you might include that in look at that also in your response and Jacqueline, you talk about black communities not even being allowed to study to have an education and how then would they be able to express themselves perhaps through other forms like songs and so on. Just wondered if you might like to include that in your response. You don't have to if I'm putting pressure on you. No, not at all. Well in terms of black and brown communities especially coming out of enslavement where people were not allowed to learn to read and write there was the oral tradition, right? So people still spoke and the oral so much of what we know now in terms of narratives is grounded in that oral tradition. Everything from spoken word to hip hop to my own story tell and it comes out of that period where people we still held on to narrative. We still found ways to communicate and to communicate about the underground railroad, right? All of these ways in which we were able to without having access to reading and writing still have access to ways of finding freedom in our own heads are through very particular ways of escaping enslavement and oration that came later on as a means of showing our intelligence right through the recitation of other people's poetry memorizing it. So there was I think there was always a history of resistance that came through spoken word that we had access to. I don't know if that answers the question. Yeah, it is a big question. It would be it is a quite a difficult question for me to answer. I don't think I have I don't think I've ever struggled or no anyone has particularly struggled with a dominant language being English, you know, like perhaps not having a like a maybe a writer's command or of it perhaps and ways I would think to it would be to listen to them to to listen into the way in which they communicate best and to not shame people perhaps even in like sort of in everyday ways even in a text message and kind of berate in someone for not being able to like the grammar or something mine so it's not brilliant. It doesn't make them any less able to communicate and or even intelligent. You know, it's just the way in which they have learned to communicate maybe slightly different from from truly what is is dominant. I think what at least said about silence and also in that silence you can really listen when you're on perhaps in any way even in your own life even to your own self feel marginalised if there's borders or you feel like you're sitting on the periphery of yourself even sometimes being able to sit in that silent and really look and really listen only to yourself but to other people and that's how you can even get a description about someone like really down. You know, I think that's from from from looking and from noticing and and I think that's kind of what makes writers writers by by by being quiet and listening and looking and noticing. Richard, you've talked a lot about dreams being wild places. The imagination for you. And when you speak about silence, I'm thinking of the kind of deep restraint of your poetry where so little means so much. In a sense, there is so much unsaid, but what is said is pregnant. Sorry, she used a word with the meaning of of what remains unsaid. Is that for you one way the choice of that one way of saying a lot of things which might otherwise be difficult to articulate and what happens when you go into the dream world? We don't have a lot of time left because there are lots of questions coming up. But if you could respond to that in a tiny way, I'll try. Dreams are massively important to me. I think so even if I think we've maybe said or agreed or I said that writing gave us a certain freedom, a certain space in which we could be perhaps multiple selves or say the things that we wanted to say. Dreams perhaps for me even more so because there was dreams of the things that we absolutely I think can't even self censor. You might have to make for really ashamed or you don't understand and you can't be can't guide it. You can't kind of control them in many ways, which is why I find them fascinating. I can't remember the first bit of your question. I was well. That was the first bit and the second bit was about poetry as a form, which is a form. Yeah, a really good question, which I have again been thinking about more and more as I think can I write in other forms. I can do I want to and I think poetry for me for being able to say what perhaps in other forms I haven't yet been able to and I love it because I love how you can say something and then get the hell out of there really quickly. I love that you don't have to go to the end of the story. You can just isolate a particular moment and it can just be that moment and you can crystallise it and then run basically. So yes, perhaps perhaps this is why is the form for me. So I can say and then be like, oh no, I said that and then and then run. Great way to resist it and run. OK, we have only about two minutes left before we take audience questions, which I can see on my screen are piling out. But I do want to ask you, Elif, the same question that I have put to Rachel. In your work, you know, the two things that strike me at because every leader takes away something very different. But when I'm reading your work, I'm constantly in the presence of history and constantly in the presence of love. And I'm just wondering whether that history allows you to say things which would which are so relevant for our time. So when you're talking of Rumi and Chums and, you know, the Ottoman Empire, you are actually talking of the political issues of here and today. But the use of that history makes it seem like it's placed somewhere else. Is that it's not a conscious we're doing it is something you just do because you love history or? I am interested in history very much so, but I think memory is a responsibility, isn't it? Not in order to get stuck in the past, but we must learn what happened in the past. And and again, I come from a country that seems to have a very rich and complex and long history, but that doesn't mean we have a strong memory. I think Turkey is a country of collective amnesia. Our entire relationship with the past is full of ruptures. So when you go to school, when you learn the official narrative, it rarely occurs to us. How would I feel had I been, let's say an Armenian silver Smith in the Ottoman Empire or a Jewish Miller or a concubine in the Haram or a slave sold in the slave market? How would I see the story of the empire? So when you bring it down to seemingly micro histories, then you realize the narrative that is being told us is actually not the truth. And I think it is the job of a storyteller to focus on those silences interesting earlier. Jacqueline was mentioning also oral culture that resonates with me because I think oftentimes women are the bears of memory and what written culture erases. You can find an oral culture. If we listen as Rachel mentioned, if we do become good listeners, we can actually find those forgotten or erase narratives or their seeds and take them and grow them in our work. So I believe and I appreciate your saying love because there has to be empathy. No, because that is at the core of our work that at least for a few hours, for a few days, if the readers when they're reading our work, if the readers can put themselves in the shoes of another person and try to see the truth from their eyes through their eyes, that cognitive flexibility is almost like a spiritual journey. I think it's good for the soul, good for us, and it brings a certain humility that unfortunately we forget otherwise in our daily lives. It's beautiful. I have to say that our cultures are very similar in their troubled relationship of history and memory. They don't want to remember. Yes. Yeah, I agree with you. Jacqueline, I had a question for you, but we are running out of time. Can I just say the question to you too, but don't answer it because there's lots of questions at the back. I can see your name there. But what I did want to ask you was, does it work differently? This question of self-censorship when you're writing for young adults on the kinds of themes that that you do write about. Do you? It doesn't. That's an easy question to answer. I can't answer. Okay, let's go over the questions. We have about 15 minutes or 14 minutes for questions. I'm just going to take a look and see what there is. Okay, so there's a question for Jacqueline here, which says, you said that you think about whether you're ever using a voice that doesn't belong to you. Are there any times when self-censorship is a good thing? What's the difference to you as a writer between self-censorship and self-interrogation? Well, I actually think that's a question for all of us. And I think as writers, we are always interrogating the self through every, I know for me through every story I write. I always say I write because I have questions, not because I have the answers. And even when I'm writing books for adults, there's that same sense of questioning and trying to understand what, why the thing that's happening in the world is happening and how can I reimagine it so that it's different. But in doing that, yes, I'm interrogating the real world to some extent, but mostly I'm interrogating my experience inside of it, even if it's through a fictional narrative. I always say in my books, there's some part of Jacqueline Watson in every single character because every single character is doing that work of asking for something and trying to get it in the end of the narrative and interrogating themselves throughout. Eileen, Rachel, do you say either of you want to take the response to that? Just if I may make us just follow up on that. I think doubt is so precious. We need to doubt ourselves always. And actually, I think what is scary is this absolute certainties, clashing certainties. That is something that I find very unhealthy. But there is a difference between doubting ourselves and maybe alienating from our own voice just because we fear what other people might say. And I think this affects women a lot. I used to go to schools at some point to give talks in Turkey and one thing stayed with me if I can maybe briefly share it. If you talk to six-year-old, seven-year-old kids, it's just amazing wherever you go across the world. They have so much hutswa and courage and confidence and they want to be writers, they want to be poets and at that age girls are just as confident if not even more confident than boys. But then when you go to high schools and you speak to teenagers, young people who have gone through puberty, everything has changed. No one wants to become a poet anymore or a writer of their numbers have dwindled and girls have become more timid because we teach them, watch out, sit properly. What other people will say about you. And that's kind of a burden. It weighs us down. So we need to differentiate that from the doubt that is healthy. And I agree if our job is to ask questions, not to try to find answers, not to try to teach, but to create open spaces where a variety of opinions can be heard. And then you always leave the answers to the reader because everybody's going to come up with their own answers. Richard, would you like to add to that? Well, I was thinking just before I said that, which is it's rigidly beautiful. I was thinking about self-censorship and perhaps how that is maybe even how we use that to in a technical way, at least in terms of editing our work. You know, maybe in what concentration is self-censorship for censorship, a good editing tool. That's just what I was thinking. It's lovely we're putting it. Okay, we have another question. Do you think writing under a pseudonym and really remaining anonymous is a form of self-censorship? Whoever would like to take that. It's an interesting question, isn't it? And there have been women writers who have actually written under male names for a variety of reasons. I can understand that. And maybe in some ways I can relate to that as well because Shafak is actually not my real name. It's my pen name. It's the name I decided to give myself when I first started publishing my work. I like the meaning of it in Turkish. It's a bit like dawn in between them, but it also gender neutral name. It is neither a feminine name nor a masculine name which spoke to me. So I think renewing yourself trying to rebirth yourself. That's all of that is part of the creative process. I don't necessarily see it as connected to censorship, but more like I think I connected to renewal. Yeah, yeah. Either of you wants to add to that or do we leave that there? I'm going to take a decision. Oh, I heard a sound. No, no. That was me saying saying no. No, all right. I thought you were coming in on that. There's a big question here, which I actually kept away from because although it's the flip side of the coin of our debate, but it is a big question and and that is a question about freedom of speech. And the question here is what are your thoughts on freedom of speech? Do you think writers should be held accountable for sharing potentially helpful views? I mean, in some ways you all answered this by talking about your responsibility as writers and what you think about. But if anyone would like to address that. Please feel free Jacqueline. Do you want to think about it? Rachel, do you want to try? So the question is, what do we think about freedom of speech? Like do we believe in it or do we believe in censorship? I think do you think writers should be the real question is do you think writers should be held accountable for sharing potentially helpful views held accountable by whom? By the state, by people it doesn't say, but yeah. You know, I think we're held accountable every day by our readers, right? So we are speaking freely and we're either getting bad reviews or people are debating what we're writing. There are ways in which we're always held accountable. We hold ourselves accountable. And do I believe in freedom of speech? Of course I do. Like I do. I believe in censorship. Of course I don't. And that said, it becomes a very complicated conversation, especially in the country in which I live right now, as we know. But that and that's not going to change my beliefs about freedom of speech and and I do I'm going back to what I was saying at the beginning. I do think a writer has a responsibility. I know I have a deep responsibility to tell the truth and and I also have a responsibility to not hurt it to try not to hurt the people who I want to see themselves with love in the literature. I I also believe we have to defend freedom of speech. Unfortunately, in the world we're living in right now, East and West, we all need to defend freedom of speech louder freedom of press freedom of academia, you know, louder and louder. The only thing I maybe want to question a bit further is what does it mean harmful thoughts harmful in the eyes of home. We need to be careful about all of that because unfortunately it's very easy again in countries where democracy is particularly crushed. It's very easy to offend authorities. Whatever you say, you know, you might end up offending. I had a taste of that when one of my earlier novels, the bastard of Istanbul was put on trial because that book talks about memory amnesia and Armenian genocide. And it was very surreal because a work of fiction and therefore the words of fictional characters were brought into the courtroom. As a result, my Turkish lawyer had to defend my Armenian fictional characters. Fast forward, I had maybe another taste of that when another one of my books was, you know, taken to the prosecutor's office for an investigation this time for the crime of obscenity because I do write about issues like sexual harassment gender violence or child abuse because these are the realities of the country where I come from. The only reason I give you these examples because I think it's a writer's job to speak about these silences. But in the eyes of the authorities, it's harmful. So we need to be very careful about the art needs freedom. Literature needs freedom. And to me it's very paradoxical that instead of really doing something about the example of the country, it's very paradoxical that instead of really doing something about the existing problems instead of changing the laws, opening shelters for abused women and children and changing their own patriarchal mindset, the fact that authorities are prosecuting, investigating poets and writers is yet another tragedy perhaps. So we have to defend freedom of speech from all those angles, in my opinion. This notion of harm is also premised on the authorities thinking of people as infantile who have to be controlled and who will immediately react to reading something and go off the rails or something like that. If people are perceived to be mature human beings who can exercise choice and discretion and read and understand, I think this notion that you will be harming may actually go out the window, but that's just my segue to your comment. Richard, would you like to add something to this? Nothing except to say I agree absolutely. Even if I might not personally like somebody else is what they say with all their freedom, that is I still believe in each of our individuals. We have to. Thank you for that. We have a last question, which again is something we should and could have talked about. I mean, there are many other questions, but I'm just picking on that one because we have about two minutes or three minutes maximum. And that is a question about the internet, which because all of you have also large followings may be interesting. So it's actually about social media. What role do you think social media plays in the uncensoring of voices? Is this a positive or a negative thing? And let's see. And Jacqueline, there's a question which says how can we make sure that brown girl dreaming becomes available along with your other children's books in places other than the UK? So that we can address right at the end, but would you have any comments to make on the internet? Anyone would like to speak on that social media good thing or bad thing or both? We've all been watching social dilemma and things like that. It's very noisy, the internet is. I'm going to not comment on that part, but I was just thinking of how much noise is on it right now for me. So I've taken a breather. I think it's a bit like the moon, isn't it? It does have a bright side in the sense that sometimes it can be egalitarian. Sometimes, especially when the media is suppressed and silenced, it can give people pockets of information and a chance to connect. And I don't be little any of that. Also, again, especially across the Middle East where women don't have equal representation in the public space. I find it important that many women are in the digital space, especially young women. But because we focused on its bright side for too long, this is the time when we need to especially highlight its dark side. And that dark side, as you said, it is noisy and it's full of slander, hate speech, misinformation, deliberate misinformation. We just scroll up and down. It is not knowledge. I think too much information is an obstacle in front of proper knowledge. But in some ways, it affects, again, women and minorities more, the kind of hate speech that you receive. We experienced this in the UK, even throughout Brexit, when opposition female MPs were receiving all kinds of threats and slander every day. So there's a lot we need to unpack. And I think we need to question tech monopolies. And we have to become maybe more active, more involved digital citizens because otherwise we're leaving the public space to hear these voices who are, unfortunately, louder and more passionate. And more vile, actually. In many ways, the attacks are really quite terrible when it happened. Rachel, the last word from you. Oh no, the last word. I think the Internet, I agree with that. I think that the Internet is a beautiful place. There are people, particularly young women here who in real life would be chastised for certain things. They are living their best lives online. They are so fabulous online. And it's given them so much freedom that actually wouldn't be possible, perhaps in reality, which is sad, but a kind of fact in their life. I also think that we need to begin us in questions, I think particularly now, now that so much of our lives are going to be online even more, even in terms of where these videos go and where they're stored and what kind of information is being collected on us and of us when we are perhaps our most uncensored, when we are saying what we maybe won't go out and protest about, but maybe we will say it on our phones in the comfort of our living room. But how is this information gathered and by who? I think without being silver hat about it, I think that we do need to start questioning these things even more, even more responsible citizens at least. Wait, what's the term silver hat? Oh, you know, people with foil hats. That's fabulous. Thank you so much. That's so fair. So the brown girl dreaming question, it is coming out, it's coming out in Turkish, it's coming out in Italian, it's coming out in Spanish, it's coming out in a bunch of languages in the next couple of years. So great. Thank you. Thank you all three for you Rachel. Thank you for the lovely conversation. Had we been physically sitting across the table or chairs from each other, this would have been like a real conversation where we would have jumped in and so on and not going from one to the other, but still thank you for making it so sort of rich with a lot of things. Every conversation that seems incomplete is a brilliant one because that means there's so much more to say. I want to really thank you for doing that. Thank you to our audience and the British Library and the Royal Society and I don't know if someone's going to come in and say goodbye or if I'm just saying goodbye on your behalf. But goodbye. Thanks for your fabulous questions too. This was awesome.