Hello and welcome to this week’s Lez Liberty Lit!
Here’s Denne Michele Norris and Deesha Philyaw talking about how literary gatekeepers can advocate for Black trans women at Electric Literature. Norris says:
“Many among us are more invested in protecting our image, our wealth, our success, the perception of us as leaders, than we are in striving not to do material harm and to make amends when we have harmed. And I regret this about the publishing industry because we pride ourselves on being thought leaders. We pride ourselves on being forward thinking, and working in an industry where new ideas flourish and we get to push the cultural conversation forward. This is how we talk about the publishing industry, how we position it in our society. And yet we haven’t moved far enough forward to cast debates about trans identity aside. I feel this enormous sense of cognitive dissonance because I’ve been heartily embraced as a Black woman of the trans experience who occupies an influential editorial position. And yet in the same professional sphere, so many of us are willing to look the other way when the most powerful in our industry, all of whom have zero lived experience as trans people, are allowed to speak with authority on who and what we are, and where we fit into gendered society. It is obscene.”
Solange is opening the Saint Heron Community Library, dedicated to rare and out-of-print books by Black and Brown authors.
Here’s how to write a book in 30 days even if you haven’t written anything before.
Let’s stop talking about generations.
Read these 10 new books by Native writers. Read these books about older women behaving badly. Read these magical realism short stories. Read these books about living in Los Angeles. Read these books if you’re writing a speculative memoir. Read these 20 queer webcomics. Read these 14 works of Mexican literature in translation. Read this new nonfiction in translation. Read this new nonfiction from 2021. Read these books with love triangles that end in polyamory.
I run a book club and get a lot of my recs from articles linked in this column. Last week I went to pick next month’s book up from the local store where we are registered and the employee helping me check out could not stop gushing about our selections and how everyone in the store always anticipates our next pick because of how exciting and refreshing they find them. So thank you Carolyn for helping fulfill the very specific dream of mine to have a hot older bookseller tell me very nice things about the books I read haha
YOU ARE SO WELCOME