Does expat lit deserve its own shelf?

Social media as self actualization

Spirit of the season(ing)

The twinge of heritage
Since the Ottoman royal harems were filled with women from both the Mediterranean and the Baltic – Italian families even casting their daughters on the Adriatic to be picked up by the sultan’s sailors — my Turkish husband jokes he finally brought me back to Istanbul where I belong. I don’t know, in the span of history and forgotten connections of family, anything’s possible. My Lithuanian family name, echoing a town and river on today’s Belarus border, also sounds a lot like the imperial Turkish bloodline of Osman.

Does expat lit deserve its own shelf?
I asked that question during a week of live #litchat on Twitter when I guest hosted this spring. Here are highlights from three hours of conversation with 40 readers, writers, travelers, expats, Third Culture Kids and emigrees weighing in from around the globe: WHAT’S EXPAT LIT? The interpretation of another culture by someone of our own. — M. Dominique Benoit An expat writer draws on a collective cultural consciousness to talk about a

Social media as self actualization
This week I’ll be speaking with creative entrepreneur Tara Agacayak on a panel about social media for the International Professional Women of Istanbul Network (IPWIN). The happy trends of Web 2.0 online networking, collaborating, and user-generated content seem tailor-made for pro women like us who often face a more difficult career path abroad. Whether “trailing spouses” lacking a local work permit like Jo Parfitt recounts here, or in some other way, being at a geographic or cultur

Is that a pain cry?
I don’t see death every day, but I hear it. From where I sit, in my home office overlooking a little Bosphorus bay, the day is punctuated by recess at a large school below. Sometimes through the din I think I hear a high-pitched pain cry echoing in the valley. An intermittent wail. Out on the balcony I listen, some primitive hackle raised. Rarely can I locate its exact source but it comes from the government hospital on the waterfront. Not a patient. Someone realizing a loved life is over. Yesterday I caught a grief panel live-webcasted from

Spirit of the season(ing)
Blood and marriage draw families together but often whole worlds continue to separate us as individuals. Lifestyle choices. Generations. In-laws. Siblings. Achieving – and maintaining — harmony is a challenge we all seem to face. Some clans need more help than others. Around our holiday table in 1979, my fractious relatives were gifted with a sudden ability to perceive each other as the loveable characters we truly are, every day of the year. Our secret ingredient for interplanetary peace? An unseen substance in the stuffing. The basic recipe: Rivalrous teenage sisters. Strait-laced mom. Judgmental 70-something grandparents who abhor visiting fun