Diane Donovan, editor of Midwest Book Review’s California Bookwatch and proprietor of Donovan’s Literary Services, sent me this great review of my forthcoming novel, Two Natures (Saddle Road Press, September 2016). It’ll go up on their websites in July. *** Julian is a Southern boy and transplanted aspiring fashion photographer in New York City in the 1990s;
Advance Praise for “Two Natures” from California Bookwatch Read More »
“Not just toys, dolls signify much more than childhood,” writes poet Nicole Cooley in her introduction to The Doll Collection (Terrapin Books, 2016), a rich and complex anthology of doll-themed contemporary poetry edited by Diane Lockward. Dolls are imbued with our powerful, contradictory feelings about gender, race, class, mortality, and innocence. “Symbols of perfection, they
Book Notes: The Doll Collection Read More »
Bathrooms and discrimination have a long history together in America. Restricting bathroom access is a way to limit a minority group’s freedom of movement and their ability to exist in the public sphere. The debate over access can taint the minority group by association with the taboo subject of bodily functions, reinforcing the prejudice that
June Links Roundup: Bathroom Walls Read More »
When visiting a friend in Toronto last month, I had the pleasure of discovering Glad Day Bookshop, the world’s oldest LGBTQ bookstore. One of my purchases was this 1989 essay collection, Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique, edited by Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn. There are too few books devoted to reworking
Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: Cross Purposes Read More »
David Kato was an Ugandan activist for the rights of sexual minorities, who was killed in a probable hate crime in 2011. For several years since then, I’ve sponsored this prize for poems on the theme of LGBT human rights, as part of the Alabama State Poetry Society award series. Thanks to award coordinator Jerri
Winners of the 2016 ASPS David Kato Prize for LGBT-Themed Poetry Read More »
A challenge of social justice work is that people can have shared values but incompatible boundary conditions for the space in which they collaborate. For instance, the need of oppressed people to release anger can clash with the equally valid need of their traumatized comrades to be free from face-to-face aggression. Many groups for healing
May Links Roundup: Safer Spaces Read More »
Welcome back, readers. Blogging has been light this month while I prepare my Two Natures galleys for submission to book review journals. If you are a reviewer and would like an advance reading copy (Kindle edition), email me. I’ve read more good books this spring than I’ve had time to blog about individually, so in
Book Review Roundup: They Tried to Make Me Go to Rehab Read More »
Happy Easter! No, I’m not late. Episcopalians celebrate the liturgical season of Easter for 50 days. That’s a lot of Cadbury Creme Eggs. No one out-femmes me. The post-resurrection wounds of Jesus have long been precious to me as a symbol of new life after trauma–a kind of healing that doesn’t mean forgetting. One of
April Links Roundup: Noli Me Tangere Read More »
I wrote the following poem in response to newspaper articles about the Second Intifada (2000-05). From the still-raging conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, to the dreadful news of the terrorist bombings in Brussels this week, it seems that the cell phones of the dead never stop ringing, and desperate people never stop killing and dying
“Jerusalem Cycle” Revisited: This Poet’s Wish for Peace Read More »
I owe Caleigh Royer a debt of gratitude because her blog inspired me to start studying Tarot last year. I found her online some years ago through one of the spiritual abuse survivor blogs for ex-fundamentalist Christians, probably No Longer Quivering or Love, Joy, Feminism. When I saw on her Facebook page that she was
The Dark Door: C.M. Royer’s Spiritual Abuse Survivor Memoir Read More »