Hawkins, Brower “Trigger Warnings” At Last On Way

We began this volume in 2017, shortly after Donald Trump was elected. We began working on it in response to the outrage we felt over the Access Hollywood Tape, in which Trump openly admitted that he randomly assaulted women. While previous presidential candidates’ campaigns had been derailed when sex scandals were reported by the press (Gary Hart, for example), Trump seemingly faced no consequences, even when multiple accusations of physical molestation and rape were made against him. His election and imperviousness to charges of assault seemed to signal a new step in the normalization of rape culture. . . . It was in this climate that we began soliciting stories, poems, essays and nonfiction pieces about the assault and attempted assault that is a striking aspect of so many women’s psychosexual histories. . . .

So begins a lengthy Amazon blurb for Bloomington Writers Guild Editors Joan Hawkins and Kalynn H. Browers’ long-awaited collection of accounts, revelations, essays, even in one case (mine) fiction, fully titled TRIGGER WARNINGS: WRITINGS ON NARROW ESCAPES FROM SEXUAL ASSAULT. A nearly entirely local production, all contributions, save for the introduction, are from Writers Guild members as well. Or to further quote from the Amazon blurb: All but one of the pieces in this anthology were authored by writers who belong to The Writers Guild at Bloomington, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting written and spoken word in Bloomington, Indiana and its environs. Most of us are published writers and all of us have other careers. Ruth Novaczek, the author of the Introductory piece in the book, is a London-based filmmaker and artist. We contacted her when she posted an earlier version of this story on her Facebook page. It was such a strong piece, we thought it would be perfect as a kind of thematic introduction. “Rape-escapes,” she wrote when she sent us permission to use her story, “are a good way to show that every young woman has probably had one, and we’re the lucky ones.”

And so, the announcement today from Co-Editor Hawkins has been a long time in arriving. It’s been a long haul, I know. After trying several publishers and having the ms tied up for lengthy reading times with each one, we finally decided to publish with Cephalod press. Anya Royce contributed photos for the wraparound cover and to use as section breaks throughout the volume, and Tony Brewer did the actual production/layout, so the volume looks lovely. Kalynn and I hold the copyright to the volume as a whole, but the rights to each individual story/poem/piece remains with the author. So you are free to use your work again in your own chapbooks and anthologies with the idiocy of paying rights to someone else etc.

I just sent off the payment today — so I should actually have books in a few weeks. When I have them in hand, we can arrange a book launch.

Thus it goes. My part in this, as a man, is a sort of outlier titled “La Fatale” — a pseudo-factual supposition that the novel DRACULA was originally based on true events, and that Mina Harker, against her will, had ultimately become a vampire herself. She flees to France, tries to minimize the effects of her new nature, but ultimately in warding off an attack on herself and several companions, discovers it’s possible for her to fight back.