Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues

by Kavita Das

Writers are witnesses and scribes to society's conscience but writing about social issues in the twenty-first century requires a new, sharper toolkit. Craft and Conscience helps writers weave together their narrative craft, analytical and research skills, and their conscience to create prose that makes us feel the individual and collective impact of crucial issues of our time. Kavita Das guides writers to take on nuanced perspectives and embrace intentionality through a social-justice lens. She challenges writers to unpack their motivations for writing about an issue and to understand that “writing, irrespective of genre or outlet is an act of political writing,” regardless of intention. The book includes essays from a fascinating mix of authors, including James Baldwin, Alexander Chee, Kaitlyn Greenidge, George Orwell, Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, Gaiutra Bahadur, Jaquira Díaz, and Imani Perry. By including Das’s own perspective and those of the featured writers about motivations and approaches to writing about fraught social issues, this book both demystifies the process of engaging social issues on the page and underscores the intentionality and sensitivity that must go into the work.

Audio CD

Published October 18, 2022

About the author

Kavita Das writes about culture, race, feminism, and their intersections. Nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize, Kavita’s work has been published in Tin House, Longreads, The Atlantic, Off Assignment, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Washington Post, Kenyon Review, NBC News Asian America, Guernica, Quartz, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her first book, Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar, a biography about the Grammy-nominated Hindustani singer, who played a pivotal role in bringing Indian music to the West, was released in June 2019 (Harper Collins India).