Introducing: The Writer's International Culture Share

The more writing I do, the more I find myself searching around the internet looking for information and inspiration. One of the sources I have come to appreciate a lot is the Folkroots column at Realms of Fantasy (here's a wonderful example by Theodora Goss). I've also been following the discussion of World SF with great interest. Thus, I was very intrigued and inspired when my friend Harry Markov started posting information and stories about his native country of Bulgaria. I was struck by the conviction that his posts had a lot in common with my own articles about my experiences in Japan, and that somehow they belonged together in a set. When I spoke about this with Harry, a new idea started to come together:

What if there were a place on the web where writers from all over the world - including the US - could share folklore, local culture, religious stories and details of daily life that would be difficult or nearly impossible to discover through ordinary web research avenues?

Thus was born the idea for The Writer's International Culture Share.

The culture share will start small at first, but with your help I'm hoping it can grow much bigger. I have received much positive feedback on the idea and already offers for posts are coming in (for example, for the Netherlands, Singapore, and England). I'm deeply grateful to these writers for offering to share their native cultures, and I'll be posting Culture Share posts here at TalkToYoUniverse every Thursday, compiling an index in three categories: folklore, religion, and daily cultural practices.

Here is the beginning of the index, with a sample post of each type so you can see what I'm thinking of. I invite you to take a look and consider whether you'd like to share something of your own.

Folklore

• Personification of Spring in Bulgarian Culture by Harry Markov

Religion

• Saint Haralampi, patron of Plague and Beekeepers by Harry Markov
  

Daily Cultural Practices

• Unexpected differences: Japanese Taxis by Juliette Wade
  

If you would like to contribute or learn more about the project, please contact me at info at juliettewade dot com .