My Rumpus Review of Barbie Chang, Guest Post on PR for Poets with a Disability or Chronic Illness, More Cancer Tests, Faerie Magazine Poems, and How the Lit World Can Avoid More #MeToo Moments

Guest Post on Promoting Poetry Books with a Disability or Chronic Illness

Thank you to Trish Hopkinson for hosting me as a guest poster on her blog to talk about PR for Poets, and specifically, to address how writers with chronic illnesses or disabilities can help promote their books. One of my gracious beta readers suggested I address this in my PR for Poets book. I was worried it was not a universal-enough topic, but I did want to address it eventually, so thank you to Trish for giving me the opportunity:
How Do I Promote My Books with a Disability and/or a Chronic Illness

Rumpus Review of Barbie Chang

Happy to say The Rumpus has my review of Victoria Chang’s Barbie Chang up. Hope you enjoy it! Here’s a quote: “Barbie Chang is an intelligent, lively portrayal of the pressures on contemporary women (especially mothers), and a breathlessly entertaining read.”

Poems in Faerie Magazine

I also have a mermaid poem (along with two other poems) coming up in the future Mermaid (!!) issue of Faerie Magazine, but discovered they had put my poem from a previous issue, “The One-Armed Swan Sister” up online so you can see the beautiful art work that they put with it. If you are into the cross-section of fairy tales and fashion, and literature, you would love Faerie Magazine. I wrote “One-Armed Swan Sister” while I had a broken elbow, and I wrote my current set of mermaid poems while I was in a wheelchair. It’s weird how body issues can help you understand fairy tale characters a little better, or at least give you a different lens for understanding the lore.  Anyway, I want like five copies of the issue when it comes out! It’s such a beautifully produced magazine.

Spring Comes With More Cancer Tests and MS Treatment Decisions

It’s lovely spring here, the dogwood in bloom, and the lilacs. And I got a thirty dollar check that was payment for one of my poems in a literary magazine yesterday, that was pretty exciting. (That’s enough to pay for ten submission fees, LOL. Ah, the prosperous life of a poet.)
But I’m not going to lie, it’s been tough recently. I was down with MS symptoms (leg weakness, dizziness, and crazy tiredness) during my 45th birthday week and this week I had an MRI of my liver to check for growth, spreading, or proliferation of the 14 tumors they found last year. We are hoping none of those things have happen. I also have to get cancer blood tests. Cancer tests are pretty stressful, especially when they’re on top of MS symptoms and still trying to figure out the right treatment for that. Literally I could spend my entire life in doctor’s offices and different physical therapies if I actually went in as much as doctors want me to. Waiting for the results is stressful too. Last year at springtime they literally thought I had six months to live. So I’ve already done better than they thought. Now the neurologist is thinking of switching my MS meds around. Meanwhile, I just keep writing poems, planting flowers, spending as much time doing life-affirming stuff as I can. So think good thoughts for me. Summer is a tough time for MS patients – raising your temperature even one degree can bring an onset of symptoms, and worse case scenario, new flares that can put people in the hospital (it did me last June.) I’m going to try to do a couple of events – the Skagit Poetry Festival, and the Poets in the Park in Redmond – so think good thoughts for a better summer than last year!

Meanwhile, in Literary Land, Some Things About How to Prevent #MeToo Moments

Yes, yet another lauded male writer, it has come out, did and said some horrendous things to women writers. Scandal ensues. Again. So, I have a thought. If you are truly interested in preventing more #MeToo moments in the literary world, a few suggestions:

• Read women writers, especially women writers of color and women in the margins. Buy their books.
• Invite women writers to your campus or conference and pay them the same you would pay a male writer.
• Publish women writers in your literary magazine or give their books a chance at your publishing concerns, then actually promote their work.
• Review women writers. If you find you are reviewing 90 percent men’s books and ten percent women’s books, think about how that’s really under-representing women writers.

If women writers were given as many chances, as many extra passes, as male writers, I think you would see a lot less sexism and abuse in the system. I see women writers being shoved out of the way, talked over, published less, paid less, treated as less important, and I think: Why do people think this is okay, and why does it keep happening? Of course the literary world is not protected from these incidents – in fact, in my experience, it’s worse than, say, the tech world I used to operate in (I had very supportive male bosses who promoted me at AT&T and Microsoft, in particular.) So if you have power and influence, try using it to help women succeed. I bet it would prevent so many abuses. It occurred to me one of the reasons I wrote PR for Poets is I felt women writers, weren’t reaching their audiences because they weren’t being promoted, reviewed, invited to speak, like male writers. I’ve seen very shy, unself-promoting male writers lifted up by their male colleagues, taken out for a beer and given tips and even having their books suggested to certain high-end publishers, but I haven’t really seen the same thing for shy, unself-promoting women.  I wanted all poets to have the tools to help get the word out about their books, but I didn’t realize this was actually a subversive act. It’s subversive to help poets learn how to promote themselves because the literary world wants you to believe that it is a meritocracy, when it really isn’t, it’s a place where privilege and place and class and gender all reflect social norms, which means the disabled, the poor, people of color, and women are going to have less of a chance to really make it. When AWP ignores the needs of disabled folks, that means less chance for us to interact with others. When publishers skew their books to a male audience because male writers “are more universal,” well, no they’re not, unless you make that the case. Readers of books actually skew strongly female, so shouldn’t the authors of books also skew female?

I’m sorry if this tone disturbs you. I like to uplift people. I like to be inspiring. But lately, with the political tone of the country, the repeated shock at many men in power abusing that power, I have started to say: enough of the shock. Let’s do something to make it better. I may not live to see a woman president of America, but I want to make some noise for equality in the poetry world, at least. If I can support other women writers by bringing attention to their work (which is why I do book reviews even though they are time consuming and mostly do not pay,) I want to do what I can to make the literary world a better place. I want you to encourage you to take action too.