The small group of interested fans around a table in the Brighton Tavern made this event on Mark Oshiro’s European tour an informal conversation, rather than a pre-prepared lecture.

Oshiro is a charismatic raconteur who experienced challenging micro-aggressions throughout his travels in Scandinavia, Germany and Belgium, only realizing why he was asked to produce his passport so frequently when it was pointed out that as a “brown person” people assumed he was Turkish.

As Oshiro blogs his daily experiences reading books and watching TV shows on the Mark Reads and Mark Watches websites, the discipline of writing 25,000 words every week for six years gave him the confidence to write fiction.

Reading a disturbing excerpt from the unnamed novel he is writing, he explained his plans for a dystopian trilogy. Each of the weapons he described actually exist – one was even used on him at a protest.

The discussion turned to the military weapons designed for use in wars passed down to American police forces: Oshiro vividly recalled the first time he saw a tank rumbling down his street in Oakland, California.

The evening combined humour and observations on cultural differences with social justice and consciousness-raising: a unique experience.

Four stars