Question for the #expatwriters, #expats and #writers out there, do you think expat lit differs from travel writing, if so, how? #research — Ruby Slippers (@rubyslippersdxb) March 27, 2014

@AnastasiaAshman yes, it's what inspired me! What made you specifically speak out about identifying expat lit as a genre in its own right?

— Ruby Slippers (@rubyslippersdxb) March 31, 2014

Thanks to expat author in Dubai Faye Brann for interviewing me about #expat #literature and the #publishing world's opportunities to capture expat lit's readers. She blogs about it here. Here's the interview as it was conducted on Twitter this week -- which is where Faye and I met!

Faye is working on her first book, There’s No Place Like Home, to "look at the often misunderstood life of the ‘trailing spouse’ abroad". At her blog she explores the gap in the market for narrative expat literature.

I'll be coproducing a Global Nomad Salon this June at Istanbul's Four Seasons Sultanahmet along with the Salon founder Dutch-Curacaoan banker Janera Soerel. Introduced by various international friends in 2007, Janera and I quickly found common ground: our shallow roots in many different communities and the urge to find the larger meaning in local issues. Working together long-distance, we are co-producing this cultural entertainment. It's a guided dinner for 20-30 educated, intellectual, opinionated people to discuss concerns of global culture and economics.

The Economist magazine calls the scene at this worldwide series of intellectual dinner parties "jetsetters with a conscience." Pluralism, individualism, universalism are Global Nomad values.

Experts who guide the conversation at their ends of the table will include Serif Kaynar (country managing director of Korn/Ferry) and Nese Gundogan (secretary general of the Turkish Olympic Committee).

Along with an online magazine and members-only social network (Janera.com), founder Janera Soerel, a Dutch Curacaoan banker who lives in Manhattan, launched the Global Nomad Salon series October 2007 in Washington DC, then Rome, the Caribbean and New York City. With local co-hosts, Janera’s events are now spreading across the globe. This summer and fall they will take place in Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Dubai, Tuscany and London. The goal is to rouse the Global Nomad community worldwide and strengthen the network of its members, eventually with a GNSalon occurring twice yearly in various countries, events populated by Global Nomads both local and from afar.