Julie R. Enszer's Blog, page 35

26th Annual Lambda Literary Award Winners!

Sadly, I was not able to be in New York last night for the Lambda Literary Awards, nor was I able to live tweet about the event because I had to go to a town meeting for the little hamlet where I live and plan my new front lawn with topiaries of Valerie Solanas, Angela Davis, and Joann Little. I’ve been writing and talking about the Lambda Literary Awards, though, with my friend and publishing buddy, Lawrence Schimel. We both watched from a far this year. While I missed the award ceremony, I don’t want to miss my annual post of the winners. I was especially excited to see Rigoberto Gonzalez win this year as well as Jim Ellege, David Groff, and Christina Hanhardt. Just a few of the great books of 2013. Join me in congratulating the winners of the Lammys–and, more importantly, go out and buy their books! LGBT literary culture depends on your support!

26th ANNUAL LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNERS
 
GAY GENERAL FICTION
Mundo Cruel: Stories, Luis Negron; translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, Seven Stories Press
LESBIAN GENERAL FICTION
Happiness, Like Water, Chinelo Okparanta, Mariner Books (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
LGBT DEBUT
Descendants of Hagar, Nik Nicholson, AuthorHouse
BISEXUAL FICTION
My Education, Susan Choi, Penguin Group/Viking
TRANSGENDER FICTION
Wanting in Arabic, Trish Salah, TSAR Publications
LGBT NONFICTION
White Girls, Hilton Als, McSweeney’s Publishing
TRANSGENDER NONFICTION
The End of San Francisco, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, City Lights Publishers
BISEXUAL NONFICTION
The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television, Maria San Filippo, Indiana University Press
GAY POETRY
Unpeopled Eden, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Four Way Books
LESBIAN POETRY
Rise in the Fall, Ana Bozicevic, Birds, LLC
LGBT GRAPHIC NOVEL
Calling Dr. Laura: A Graphic Memoir, Nicole J. Georges, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
LGBT CHILDREN’S/YA – TIE
If You Could Be Mine, Sara Farizan, Algonquin Books
Two Boys Kissing, David Levithan, Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
GAY MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY
A Heaven of Words: Last Journals, by Glenway Wescott, Ed. Jerry Rosco, University of Wisconsin Press
LESBIAN MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY
Body Geographic, Barrie Jean Borich, University of Nebraska Press
GAY MYSTERY
The Prisoner of the Riviera: A Francis Bacon Mystery, Janice Law, MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media
LESBIAN MYSTERY
High Desert, Katherine V. Forrest, Spinsters Ink
GAY ROMANCE
Into This River I Drown, TJ Klune, Dreamspinner Press
LESBIAN ROMANCE
Clean Slate, Andrea Bramhall, Bold Strokes Books
GAY EROTICA
The Padisah’s Son and the Fox: an erotic novella, Alex Jeffers, Lethe Press
LESBIAN EROTICA
Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories, Ed. Sacchi Green, Cleis Press
LGBT ANTHOLOGY
FICTION Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction, Karen Martin and Makhosazana Xaba, MaThoko’s Books
NON-FICTION Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners, Eds. Jim Elledge and David Groff, The University of Wisconsin Press
LGBT DRAMA
Tom at the Farm, Michel Marc Bouchard, Talonbooks
LGBT SF/F/HORROR
Death by Silver, Melissa Scott & Amy Griswold, Lethe Press
LGBT STUDIES
Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, Christina B. Hanhardt, Duke University Press

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: award winners, Lammys, lesbian poetry, LGBT, LGBT literary culture

On the Finances of Being a Writer

When I was twenty and graduated from college, the most difficult thing for me to figure out was, how do people make a living and still have a creative life, an activist life, a life of integrity? Very few people talked about how to do that. Lots of people talked about living creative lives and activist lives and lives with integrity, but I did not get explicit information about how to do this economically. I had to figure it out largely by myself. To do this, I asked a lot of question, often questions that people considered rude and inappropriate. One of my commitments is to make the economic lives of writers and artists more visible.

To that end, I have a few links that make the finances of the writing life more transparent.

First, there is a great online magazine called Scratch that engaged in exactly the same project. The subtitle of Scratch is writing+money+life. It is a great collections of issues that make these questions of how to be a writer and how to support oneself more visible and begin to provide answers. In particular, check out this interview with Cheryl Strayed. And this conversation with Ellen Willis is also excellent.

The second source is Cecilia Tan and her publishing company, Circlet Press. This post from Tan at Livejournal is worth checking out. Also follow her on Twitter to read more about how she structures her life to give her space to write, to publish other writers, and to be vibrantly engaged in creative pursuits.

So those resources are a few that I have found useful lately. Do send along others. I am happy to share them! Meanwhile, let’s do everything we can to make more visible how to have meaningful and economically viable creative lives as writers.

Filed under: lesbian, lesbian studies, progressive activism, teaching Tagged: economics, material conditions of writers, publishing, writing life

On Success

Talking with a friend who resonated with my last post on failure, we discussed success and how we define it. The two, success and failure, seem so intertwined. Perhaps only a whisper separates them, a whisper that comes in the early morning before the sun rises, before the first bird chirps. A whisper that determines will you rise with confidence, start writing, tackle the task list? Or will you feel the heaviness of defeat on your chest as you first awaken before your eyes really open? One whisper may determine whether the early rays of light give you confidence or despair.

Success isn’t confidence. I see the conflation in the last paragraph, but that is misleading. Success is . . . I do not know how to complete that sentence. I can define success more by what it is not.

For me, success is never the ordinary path, the usual constellation of achievements, milestones, outcomes. Success if often something of my own creation, something that springs from my own imagination. When I find myself embracing someone else’s notion of success, I become uncomfortable. I know I am not doing my own visioning work. I know I am relying on the creativity of other. This may be what success is for me: creating my own vision and pursuing it through my own passion, dint of my own labor.

In my last post, I talked about the need to fall in love with something else to navigate the way out of failure. I have a few ideas of new things I will love. I want to be au courant on contemporary fiction by women. I want to learn another language. I want to complete my next three collections of poetry. I also have a bargain with myself that involves a new job and a kitchen. Having a plan seems connected to my idea of success. Success is not the execution of the plan; not the completion of those tasks and steps in the plan, but the plan itself, the sense of having important work to do today, tomorrow, and the next day.

I expect next spring to bring a new round of misery. I would be delighted to be wrong, but I prepare for the worst. One preparation is new plants in the garden. Nine new azaleas around the house, four new hydrangeas, there new peonies, and three new trees. We could easily plan two dozen more azaleas and only then would the flower beds be full. For now though, I know spring will bring some new blooms.

This winter, we lost a cherry blossom tree. A late snow killed it after it had bud. We replaced it with an eastern red bud. I hope it grows; I hope it lasts until we leave this house. A few years back, when my beloved Emma was just a pup, we planted a Japanese red maple out back after a dogwood died. Emma, still teething, still enjoying the world primarily through her mouth, ate that tree to a stub. We thought surely it was dead. It survived. Year after year, it grows a bit taller, more full. Only one thing: it is now variegated. Red on one side, green on the other. Like no other Japanese maple I have seen. It has found its own success.

Filed under: Uncategorized

On Failure

I have failed at many things. I will not enumerate them here for the sake of brevity and my own sense of mental well-being, which is fragile at best at the moment. In this midst of yet another failure in this life, I have come upon two insights.

First, failure is a process. There is not a particular moment where I can say, well, I’ve failed at this. Time to move on. In fact, such a break seems desireable. A clear sign would be welcome. Instead, failure is something that unfolds over time. It is filled with moments of awareness and anxieties of wondering is this the clear sign? The bottom? The moment of no return? But the answers are never simple, the signs never clear.

Failure is something that we live within. The opposite is true as well. Success is not a moment. Success, like failure, is a journey, not a destination. (I feel like I have read that somewhere on a motivational poster and rolled my eyes. If you are doing the same, I understand.) To my point, failure is a journey, not a destination. There are no posters of people sailing in the sun emblazoned with that phrase, however. No one wants to embark on the journey to failure, we want only success. So success is the thing you do, the mountain you climb, the skill you master, the truth you learn. Success is the thing we go out into the world and do.

Failure is a house. It is where we live and quite often it is just fine, but then one day, the small leak with a quarter size mark on the ceiling is suddenly two feet wide and the plaster is crumbling on to your head. Then the refrigerator starts humming loudly and soon conks out. Or the basement fills with water and the repair person says, Ma’am, there are serious structural problems in this house. What can you do? You have been living here, and it seemed fine, until the water leak, the refrigerator, the basement. Still you do not realize that you are I living in a house that is decaying. You take out a loan. You fix the problems. Then the toilet gets backed up and you cannot plunge it. The plumber says, It’s the main sewer line, Ma’am. Then the back door falls off its hinges. This is your home. The place where you live. You think, well, I could sell, but the work should be done first. If I invest all of this money and time, shouldn’t I stay? Suddenly everywhere you look is decay and your bank balance is low and you must life somewhere. This is what failure is like. Every day wondering what will beak next. What will be the final sign to sell, move, start a new? There is no sign, just the daily drudgery of continuing. Failure offers no respite. With no beginning, it has no end. It is one big surround.

As I said, I have failed at many things; I have failed many times already in this life. Recently I realized that I could only walk away from the thing I was failing when I fell in love with something new. The new thing, the love of the new idea, the new pursuit, the new vision made me sell the house, pull up my roots, pursue something new. So I look around my decaying house, my daily failing and I love it. I want to fix it. I want to stay here and live inside even though it is clear, again, I am failing. I wonder, what will I love next? What next love will replace this love? What new love will help me wrap up the process of failing and reboot to try and operate again with a bit more success?

Filed under: personal writing Tagged: failure, process, success

Teaching: One Transformative Action

Photo credit: sally_monster on Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/sally_monster/5746218891/)

My vision is simple: I want to be a transformative teacher. I want students to experience at the end of the semester that my class has transformed their thinking and their mode of engagement in the world AND (equally important), in twenty or thirty years when they reflect back on their undergraduate education, they believe that their work in my class was transformative and an important component of shaping their life work.

I do not lack ambition.

At present, my teaching does not fulfill this vision.

The persistent gap between what is and what I wish to be. While the content of teaching may be concrete in general (I teach these books, these critical ideas, this body of information), the process of teaching is, I believe, the transformative element, and the process of teaching is quite intuitive.

This semester I learned an important element of my teaching philosophy through its absence. Generally, each semester, I require students to come and meet with me for twenty to thirty minutes in groups of two or three at the beginning of the semester. In these meetings, I discover who my students are, what are their dreams, what do they desire in their lives. These meetings ensure that I know my students; they give me some access to their all around humanness outside of the classroom.

This semester, the first few weeks were busy and in someone ways, perhaps, I was distracted. I organized these meetings, but they were not a requirement for all of the students. Only about two-thirds of my students participated. I felt the absence of knowing all of my students all semester. This is one mistake I will not make in the future. These introductory meetings will be a requirement for my students–and for me. They are a central component of my pedagogy.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy validated the significance of these meetings to me earlier this week. The Chronicle reported that a new Gallup Purdue poll indicates:

College graduates, whether they went to a hoity-toity private college or a midtier public, had double the chances of being engaged in their work and were three times as likely to be thriving in their well-being if they connected with a professor on the campus who stimulated them, cared about them, and encouraged their hopes and dreams.

 

My introductory meetings enable me to know the hopes and dreams of students and convey my caring for them. For me, these meetings are on transformative action, for me and for my students.

Filed under: lesbian, scholarship, teaching Tagged: feminist pedagogy, lesbian, pedagogy

Recent Posts at Huffington Post

I’ve been blogging a bit more at Huffington Post and thought I would post the links here.

Today, an article titled, “On Not Being a Parent.“

Earlier this month, I posted a brief reflection titled, “What I Did Not Save.”

In March I posted my comments from Split This Rock, “13 Reflections in Citizen Poet Queer.”

I also posted my comments on Sinister Wisdom receiving the Publishing Triangle Leadership Award at Huffington Post, and, in early March, a column about Adrienne Rich and Sinister Wisdom.

So a flurry of work outside of this blog. Huffington Post seems to bring some new readers to my work – and more importantly to Sinister Wisdom so I will probably continue to post pieces there. If you like the pieces at Huffington Post, be sure to share them on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, and I’d love it if you would follow me at Huffington Post and comment! As a writer, I feed on the little things – like likes and comments on social media, so indulge me!

Finally, if you have ideas for topics to write on, I’m always happy to hear them. I keep a running list of blog topics (and have some great ones coming!) but always appreciate hearing what people are thinking about and interested in reading.

Meanwhile the discussion on Facebook when I asked, “What are you doing to topple the white heteropatriarchy today?,” have been lively. I hope you are taking your own actions to topple white heteropatriarchy and enjoying every minute of it.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: blogging, Huffington Post, lesbian, mother's day, parenthood, poetry, queer, Sinister Wisdom, writing

Are YOU a part of the Sinister Wisdom Conversation?

Over the next few weeks, postal carriers across the United States and around the world will deliver Sinister Wisdom 92 to subscribers. These small packages with the glossy-covered journal inside will bring joy and intellectual engagement to the hundreds of women who subscribe.

Sinister Wisdom 92 has both a theme, Lesbian Healthcare Workers, and a guest editor, Elizabeth Hansen. Themes and guest editors are two time-honored traditions at Sinister Wisdom. Some issues, like Sinister Wisdom 90: Catch, Quench and Sinister Wisdom 89: Once and Later, are assembled from general submissions, which I am always reading through the Sinister Wisdom website. Other issues imagine new areas of lesbian life and lesbian creativity; they have a particular theme and often an individual guest editor or team of guest editors who works to find the very best lesbian writing. Themed issues invite us to imagine new understandings of lesbian and generate new platforms to bring meaning to lesbian identities in the world.

Elizabeth Hansen, the guest editor of Sinister Wisdom 92, is a recently retired nurse and public health educator. In addition to being a healthcare worker herself, she is a reader, editor, and copyeditor. Hansen brought her array of skills to this special issue of Sinister Wisdom and the results are extraordinary. She released a call for submission for Sinister Wisdom 92 over two years ago. Yes, you read that correctly: preparing an issue of Sinister Wisdom can take two years–or more! The editorial process (finding good submissions, selecting work, and editing it), the design and production process, the mail process, it all adds up. It takes time to craft a beautiful and provocative journal of lesbian art and literature, but when we hear good feedback about an issue, it makes it worth all of the time and effort.

Hansen assembled an excellent collection of writings by, for, and about healthcare workers who are lesbians. In addition to some writers who have appeared before in Sinister Wisdom, including Jean Taylor (an Australian lesbian who recently launched her own publishing house, Dyke Books), Joan Cofrancesco, and Sharon Deevey, Hansen brings new voices to Lesbian Healthcare Workers. In fact, one of the most striking aspects of this issue of Sinister Wisdom is the way it speaks in multiple voices across and through many generations.

When I began editing Sinister Wisdom in 2009, one of my goals was to ensure the continued meaning and relevance of Sinister Wisdom to the founders’ generation and to new generations. I believe that it is only by building bridges across lesbian generations that we can ensure the continued vitality of Sinister Wisdom as a lesbian cultural institution. In Sinister Wisdom 92: Lesbians Healthcare Workers, Hansen takes up this vision and assembles an extraordinary issue of the journal. I am enormously grateful to Hansen for all of her work.

The guest editor tradition dates back to the earliest years of Sinister Wisdom. Beth Hodges was the first Sinister Wisdom guest editor; she edited the second issue of Sinister Wisdom, published in the fall of 1976 (Catherine Nicholson and Harriet Desmoines published the first issue on July 4, 1976). Hodges put together a special issue on Lesbian Writing and Publishing, and dedicated it to Barbara Grier. The tradition of having guest editors has continued through the variety of editors and publishers who have nurtured and sustained Sinister Wisdom.

Would you like to guest edit an issue of Sinister Wisdom? I am always open to pitches for themed issues of Sinister Wisdom from potential guest editors. You can email me or Sinister Wisdom to pitch an idea. Remember, though, it is a long timeline. My next openings for guest-edited issues are in 2017 and 2018. Yes, the pages of Sinister Wisdom for this year and next are completely full (and I am so excited to share the great issues that we have in the pipeline!)

Are you among the hundreds who will receive this new issue of Sinister Wisdom directly in the mail at your home? If so, take a photo of yourselves with the issue when it arrives and post it on our Facebook page or email it to us. If you are not a subscriber currently, I would love of have you take out a subscription today. For just $30 a year, you can wait by your mailbox four times a year with our subscribers and be awed and amazed when Sinister Wisdom arrives. We are trying to add thirty-eight new subscribers by May 31st and we still need thirty-one more to reach our goal. I hope you can join us as a subscriber.

Sinister Wisdom is a space where lesbians have conversations about literature and arts; a space where lesbians talk about work and politics, life and love, pain and glory; a space where we learn and share, celebrate and mourn, sing and listen. I hope you will join the conversation.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: journal, lesbian, Sinister Wisdom, subscribe

Teaching: Two Crucial Questions

Photograph: Robert Alexander/Getty Images.

This semester, I have been thinking about teaching and what exactly we teach in Women’s Studies. As I have said before, I have more questions than answers. Generally, I am comfortable with that situation.

Still, I want to synthesize more of what is revolutionary and transformative in teaching Women’s Studies. One concrete item that I teach, which is outside my areas of intellectual concern (literature and history, though I recognize my persistent concern with the material conditions of writers) that women must negotiate their salaries, not only when starting jobs but also every year, repeatedly asking for raises. This is, to me, a crucial way to address the pay gap between men and women.

In all of my classes, I talk to students about negotiating salaries and hourly wages. I encourage them to ask for more and provide concrete strategies about how to do that. Many students do go out and ask for a raise; almost always they get one. It is a small piece of information and in someone ways not particularly revolutionary because it places the onus on individual women, but it is a concrete action. Students greet it that way and are happy to have an action, something they can do and see the results immediately. Here is a strategy we can engage to create change and make our lives better. A win all around.

While this may be a small step, a minor component of my teaching method, a larger question emerged this semester that I believe is crucial to feminist pedagogy. That question is:

What are people not telling you? Why are people invested in you not having that knowledge?

These two questions are central to what we teach students to ask themselves and the people around them in Women’s Studies classes. What are people not telling you? What information is being kept from you? What do people not want you to know?

There are many things people do not want us know. Why are men paid more than women? Why does the pay gap persist even when we recognize it is wrong? Why do some people understand how to negotiate for more money, but other people do not?

Then after recognizing the information that we are not given, either by the conscious or unconscious omission of this information, we must ask, why do we not have this information? Why do people not want us to know this information? Is it conscious? Is it unconscious? What are the implications of these different intentions?

Thinking about these questions is central to Women’s Studies. Our work in the discipline is to engage students to ask these questions persistently and to grapple with these questions regularly. We may not find all of the answers to these questions, but we must ask them, grapple with them, and return them.

Filed under: lesbian, progressive activism, teaching Tagged: activism, economics, feminist pedagogy, money, teaching, Women's Studies

Five Feminist Poems for National Poetry Month 2014

In addition to being the cruellest month, April is National Poetry Month as decreed by the Academy of American Poets. To celebrate this year, I published a series of new feminist poems by five feminist poets at the Ms. Magazine Blog. Now that all of the poems have published, here are links to each of the poems:

“The Hawk” by Verónica Reyes

“Rose and Snow Tell the Field Their Troubles” by Jenny Factor

Invisibility Terror: A Prose Poem” by Cheryl Clarke

“4.” from “Fleet of Nouns” by Sina Queyras

“Mo[dern] [Frame]” by Dawn Lundy Martin

I hope you enjoy the series! And if you are so moved, please do comment on the poems as you read them.

In 2012, I did a similar series of poems for National Poetry Month. Then the poems were all published the 1970s – though still by feminist poets (many still publishing today!). You can read those poems in the Ms. Magazine blog archive at these links:

“‘Vagina’ Sonnet” by Joan Larkin

“Have You Ever Tried to Hide?” by Pat Parker

“Yesterday (About Gertrude and Alice)” by Fran Winant

“Poems by Working Class Dykes”

“An Army of Lovers” by Rita Mae Brown

I am not sure if I will do a series again in 2015, but if you have an idea for an organizing rubric, I’d love to hear it. Meanwhile, we have just a few hours left in National Poetry Month so I hope you find a way to celebrate and promote poetry.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Cheryl Clark, Dawn Lundy Martin, feminism, Fran Winant, Jenny Factor, Joan Larkin, lesbian poets, National Poetry Month '14, Pat Parker, poetry, poets, Rita Mae Brown, Sina Queyras, Veronica Reyes

Music I Am Grooving To Now

Folk music and show tunes. That is the short answer, but two albums have really captured my ears lately. First, I have been listening to Ferron’s newest album, Thunder and Lightening. This album is a combination of a collection of a few new songs, old favorites, and a documentary about Ferron made by Bitch. All aspects of the combination deliver pleasure. This is a great CD/DVD set to own. I love the CD, especially Ferron’s new song “The Pledge” and her duet with Bitch, “Army of You.” For those of you who follow Ferron on Facebook, you know it has been a difficult time for her recently. Buying this album is a great way to support and independent singer/songwriter and have great new music in your life.

I’ve also been listening to the soundtrack of the musical Fun Home. Such joy and delight! This original cast recording is filled with the excitement and energy of the show. It is worth a listen for fans of Bechdel’s graphic novel, folks who love show tunes, and dykes who love butch lesbians singing songs. (I cannot believe I am the only person in the last category.)

These are the two new albums that have entered my regular rotation. What are you listening to that is new?

Filed under: lesbian Tagged: Alison Bechdel, Ferron, folk music, Fun Home, music, musicals