Multilingual Writers

When many of us hear the term multilingual writer, we may automatically think of international students or those who don’t speak English as their first language. However, the term multilingual writers literally means anyone who can write in more than one language or more than one dialect of a language. Many famous authors, including Chinua Achebe, W.E.B. DuBois, Kahlil Gibran, Xiaolu Gou, Junot Diaz, Ariel Dorfman, Eva Hoffman, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jack Kerouac, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Vladimir Nobokov, are multilingual writers. Multilingual writers bring linguistic dexterity, multiple repertoires, and ways of expressing ideas to their writing. 

This webpage contains information about the differences in academic communication across cultures, strategies for building confidence and comfort in the classroom and on the page, and links to writing resources. While some of the resources are directed at non-native speakers of English, most are for anyone writing in a language other than their first.

Emulsify is a multilingual creative community and publication devoted to language that lives between borders. We believe most of us do not inhabit a single tongue, but move across registers, dialects, and ways of speaking—between home and public life, intimacy and institution, what can be said and what is still forming.