Official Press Release

Diversity & Fandom 102 – How You Can Make a Difference
Sunday, July 24 · 10:00am – 11:00am
Room 24ABC

In the wake of campaigns like Racebending.com’s protests and the rise of safe spaces like Racialicious.com, fans, consumers and creators from underrepresented groups have more outlets for speaking up. This panel explores how those voices can be added to conversations with geeky business interests and fan communities.

Actor Dante Basco (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hook), showrunner/writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman, Lost), author Malinda Lo (Huntress, Ash), Arturo Garcia (Racialicious.com), Phil Yu (AngryAsianMan.com) and USC Professor Henry Jenkins (CivicPaths Project) promise a lively discussion, moderated by Racebending.com!.

• Comic book writer, television writer and showrunner Javier Grillo-Marxuach has written comic books and for TV shows like Lost, Medium, and Ghost Whisperer. He’s best known for his nerdtastic comic book The Middleman, which he brought to ABC Family as a television series in 2008.

• Author and journalist Malinda Lo‘s young adult novels, Ash and Huntress, both feature LGBTQ women of color as protagonists. Lo has a Master’s Degree in cultural and social anthropology and has also written for AfterEllen.com

• Actor, dancer, and spoken word artist Dante Basco‘s breakthrough role was as Rufio in the 1991 Peter Pan film Hook. He’s probably best known to Racebending.com readers as the voice actor for Prince Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

• Arturo Garcia is the Site Lead at Racialicious.com, a blog that tracks the intersection of race and pop culture. As one of the primary contributors to the site, Arturo has covered several fandom rallies for diversity, including RaceFail’09 and the Airbender protest.

• Phil Yu is the blogger behind AngryAsianMan.com, which regularly comments on the representation of Asian Americans in mainstream media. Phil has a Master’s Degree in Critical Studies and works as a content producer for Yahoo!Movies.

• Media scholar Professor Henry Jenkins studies fandom and activism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. Check out his blog on “aca-fandom” at HenryJenkins.org