Colleges with creative writing degrees need more speculative fiction workshops. Horror workshops, sci-fi workshops, fantasy workshops. More colleges need to stop hiring only white writers of literary realism to teach what writing means and how it& #39;s done.

I just remembered what it was like trying to write speculative poetry in my poetry workshops. They... didn& #39;t like that.

I hope it& #39;s clear that I& #39;m not saying white professors are the purveyors of literary realism and everyone else in the world writes speculative fiction. So many white professors though at so many universities are very narrow though in what is acceptable to them in fiction.

So many want very specific genres and voices and styles and experiences in their fiction. And there& #39;s a tradition of literary realism there. There& #39;s nothing wrong with literary realism, but there shouldn& #39;t be so much gatekeeping going on.

Writers of various ethnicities and genders and sexualities should be hired. The narrowness of what is "acceptable," as far as genre and voice and experience and style goes, will change.