Diversity and Inclusion in My World

As you start to get to know my world, there are a couple caveats I want to lay out as quickly as possible about how diversity and inclusion, including: race and skin color, sexual orientation, religion, age, class and education. These can be tricky topics, and I am open to learning from you and others about how to approach these issues better in my novels.

Race and Skin Color

Depending on which kingdom or empire they hail from, the people of my world are described as having white/pale/alabaster/light, olive, or bronze skin tones. This is not because I am unaware of racial diversity, but because without the resources to hire sensitivity readers, I am wary of accidentally causing further harm to historically marginalized peoples of black and brown skin tones. This is not an endorsement of prevailing beauty standards in the Western world. However, it is an implicit acknowledgement that the prevailing standards are so well-entrenched and culturally dominant that I worry less about the consequences of accidentally causing offense.

If you are a person of color trying to find yourself in my novels, then I encourage you to look beyond the physical description of the characters and focus on the characters’ experiences and reactions whenever they are the racial minority.

I also make a conscious effort for my bi(multi)racial characters’ physical appearances to be on a spectrum, instead of always an even mix between the two (or more) races. Some of them are capable of “passing” as the dominant race where they live, others are not.

My fantasy world still has room to grow – if I ever have the resources to hire sensitivity readers, then I would love to expand it to better reflect the full diversity of humanity. Until then, please know: everyone, regardless of race, is wholeheartedly invited to step into my fantasy world; my character descriptions are only guidelines, and YOU can imagine the characters however you would like; and I draw on my experience navigating white male-dominant spaces (academia and government) as a biracial woman of color to share that experience in a way that transcends the specific colors of my characters’ skin.

I could have described my characters as having blue, green, and purple skin tones and the core story would hold – though I decided the distractions it would cause outweighed the benefits.

Sexual Orientation

I am a mostly straight woman who has had crushes on women as well as very emotionally intimate, physically touchy, platonic friendships with women. I try to reflect this in my writings: that women can both desire women sexually as well as have emotionally and physically close but platonic relationships with other women. 

According to the 2025 update to the Gallup poll, 1.4% of U.S. adults identify as lesbian, 2.0% of U.S. adults identify as gay, and 5.2% of U.S. adults identify as bisexual. As this is a self-reported survey, it is worth noting that 23.1% of Generation Z, 14.2% of Millennials, and 5.1% of Generation X identify as LGBTQ+. Across my world (not across any specific novel), it would seem reasonable to split the difference between the Generation Z, Millennials, and Generation X rates and aim for 14.13% of the population being LGBTQ+.

Several factors constrain me. First, my own relative lack of experience, which makes me hesitate to write a fully developed sapphic romance for a POV character. Second, the emphasis on politically-driven, heterosexual marriages among the nobility in my fantasy world. And third, Primo Pietas (a sect in my fantasy world) being modeled on evangelical Christianity and Shikiteikoku (an empire in my fantasy world) on imperial Japan – both societies that would require people to suppress their LGBTQ+ identities. However, I am doing my best within these constraints and hope to one day reach my own target. But similar to writing characters with black and brown skin tones, I would feel much better about writing LGBTQ+ POV characters after I reach a point in my writing career where I can hire sensitivity readers.

Religion

I sprinkle in references from and allusions to the Christian Bible. It is an intentional literary device to jolt readers into making connections between what my characters are grappling with and religion in the real world, with all its historical, political, and theological significance. Readers should not read any particular endorsement or interpretation of the Bible into my stories, but grapple with the Bible yourself, if you are interested in doing so (recommendation: Rachel Held Evans’s Inspired).

I was raised in a quasi-Christian cult, attended a Jesuit university, and grappled with atheism and evangelical Christianity before choosing to be baptized in the Episcopal church as an adult. Therefore, I am most comfortable drawing on the Christian tradition – both in its progressive and regressive forms – for my novels’ insights about faith and the human condition as well as critiques and commentary about the role of religion in human society.

I expect to be working in the Christian-inspired world of Therreth that I already created for a couple more novels, as I have more I want to say on this topic. However, as with race/skin color and sexual orientation, when I have the resources to, I would love to move beyond the limitation of my own experiences. I can see myself – given the resources and opportunities – using future novels to explore the beauties and complexities of how people relate to the divine outside the Christian framework.

Age

My nine POV characters, for the three novels I have already written and the fourth novel I am working on, are between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four (17, 20, 21, 21, 22, 24, 24, 24, 24). I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future I naturally start writing older characters. I am in my early 30s and finally starting to understand what was going on in my early 20s. When I hit my early 40s, maybe I will take what I am going through right now and turn it into stories.

However, I also wouldn’t be surprised if I am forever writing stories about young women coming into their own – in their early 20s. Some of us are later bloomers than others, but the early 20s is such a precious time in life – when our beliefs are still malleable and there is so much potential for growth, especially when you are taken out of your familiar context – that I may constantly be mining that life period for more stories about change and transformation. Who knows? Only the future can tell…

Class and Education

My characters are not all upper class, but they all associate with the very upper crust of the politico-economic hierarchy. I think that was the natural result of wanting to write characters who could influence the world around them in the high-stakes way I love about writing fantasy.

And. More importantly, perhaps. They are all highly educated, in their own way.

Kara is a savant, trained to be a strategist from a young age, and was even sent to attend the prestigious Zhuresh Military Academy. Serena and Sage are raised in a secluded monastery, but their non-religious education is fairly well-rounded given that they are preparing to marry husbands from a foreign land and move there to be emissaries for peace. Avril is the crown princess of Aeona, and Rhenise, the heiress to Kazarah’s largest arms manufacturer; Seira is the daughter of a Kazari duke, and Anisha, the daughter of an Aeoni mountain lord. They all would have had a flock of private tutors. Even Therise was being educated at home by her father to go to law school in Zhuresh, and Rissa ran away from home to attend Kazarah’s diplomatic school.

It says a lot about me, that when I started writing characters organically, they all either had the privilege that a strong education could be assumed or made a conscious effort on their own part to get the best education that they could and that is a big part of their identity. It is an interesting pattern I am noticing now, and I am open to writing characters who are less highly educated in the future. (I do worry that even if I want to write brilliant characters that are not “book smart” or highly educated it will sound contrived, because I am not smart in that way…)

Do you have a favorite character who is not highly educated? Please drop it in the comments, as I would love to read more such characters for inspiration, even if I might not be able to ever truly capture that perspective. The first example I thought of was Gen (or Eugenides) from Meghan Whalen Turner’s The Queen’s Thief series. In The Thief, he starts out as just that, a thief. But as you learn, he does have a high degree of education, in his own way, so I need better examples for inspiration!

Conclusion

This summarizes my current approach to diversity and inclusion in my novels. I see the limitations clearly, due to my own identity and positionality, and would like to overcome them. However, I acknowledge, and I hope you understand, that I will need the help of others to do so. I also would like to compensate sensitivity readers who come from different backgrounds from myself fairly. If I start making a profit as a fantasy author, then hiring sensitivity readers for my future novels will be a priority because I would love to push my own writing to be more inclusive of the diversity we see in the world we live in.

Postscript

I did wonder whether to write this blog post at all, of whether it would be considered “performative progressivism.” I disagree with the notion that this is “performative.” Over the course of my writing process, I thought deeply about how representative my characters are of the diversity of humanity, felt my limitations, and came to my own conclusions about how to approach it, for now. As I said at the top, I am very open to learning how to do this better.

I also recognize that some (not all!) DEI programs in the real world have gone too far. Thus, using the words “diversity” and “inclusion” might be off-putting to some readers. However, I also believe in using as plain English as I can and not self-censoring. If you have a strong negative association with DEI, then I can sympathize. But I do want to talk in this post about human “diversity” and how readers of all backgrounds are “included” in my world – even if not on the page of the novels I am currently writing, but in my thought process and hopefully in my future novels.

Ultimately, I considered two types of “harm.” First, the “harm” to myself as an author by turning away potential readers offended by the terminology of “diversity” and “inclusion.” Second, the “harm” to my readers who love my novels but wonder why they don’t see someone like themselves on the page. A black person, a brown person, an LGBTQ+ person. Someone who adheres to a religion inspired by faith traditions other than Christianity. Someone in their late twenties or older. Who believe that I do not see them because they are not written into my novels. The second harm far outweighs the first.

If you are such a fan of my work that you are trawling my old blog posts and you don’t see yourself in my novels, then this post is for you. I see you. I am thinking of you. I want to include you as soon as I can.

And I am open to how I can improve. I would love to hear your thoughts and reactions to any part of this post; please drop it in the comments.