We're all just stories in the end

illustrator • auntie • mamaheart

[amyheartspark]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Children's Literature

Are you a transgender woman or (C)AMAB non-binary storyteller who dreams of writing great children’s literature? Heartspark Press wants to hear from you. We are working on our first chapter book of kidlit for transgender and gender nonconforming children, all written by and for girls/people like

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The Resilience Anthology - The largest literary collection of transgender women and AMAB non-binary writers is about to go to print and we need your help. - http://kck.st/2hlZOgY

Join Heartspark Press and friends in creating The Resilience Anthology, the largest collection of literature to exclusively feature transgender women and (C)AMAB (coercively assigned male at birth) non-binary writers.

Who's In Our Book

Resilience stars a wide spectrum of contemporary (C)AMAB trans writers, each exploring different worlds across race, class, ability, and gender identity. We're proud to feature new work from over thirty authors, including  forty-one short stories, essays, and poems from so many of our friends (old and new). Our list of authors includes:

Luna Merbruja • KOKUMO • Magpie Leibowitz • Moss Angel • Joss Barton • Ariel Howland • Casey Plett • Sascha Hamilton • Sophia Quartz • A.K. Blue • Rahne Alexander • Tobi Hill-Meyer • Lawrence Walker • Connifer Candlewood • Serafima Mintz • Talia Johnson • Sugi Pyrrophyta • Oti Onum • Sara Oliver Wight • erica, inchoate • Lillita Lustre • Tyler Vile • Lina Corvus • Bridget Liang• CHRYSALISAMIDST • Ana Valens • Larissa Glasser • Lilith Dawn • AR Rushet • Boudicca Walsh • Rabbi Emily Aviva-Kapor • and an introduction by Julia Serano

“As far as we know, there hasn’t been an anthology specifically like this before,” said Executive Publisher and Resilience curator Amy Heart. “It is the book I needed as a young adult when I was desperately searching for answers about my identity as a trans woman. This anthology is going to change and save lives.”

Our Ask: The $6,000 Goal

While we are committed to bringing this project to print, our collective decided it was time to ask our beloved queer community to help offset some of the costs. The majority of our staff are currently living in poverty and we can't easily do this without you.

Here's what we'd like to do with your support:

Print a first run of Resilience and make it available to purchase here and everywhere.

Give an honorarium to each of our thirty-two writers involved in the project.

Pay our cover artist, Mia Rose Elbo, for her beautiful artwork.

Provide a stipend to our volunteer staff/editors for their time and effort in bringing Resilience to life.

Purchase multiple ISBNs for each edition of Resilience. We've got our ISBN for hardback, but we'd like to also expand distribution to paperback and the eBook/Kindle/iTunes Bookstore.

Give away copies of Resilience to our local libraries and to community members in need.

And if we go beyond our main goal, we can take Resilience on tour to key cities across the continent (like NYC, Portland, Atlanta, San Francisco, Baltimore, Toronto) so our writers can read their own work to you live!

Check out our website and learn more at heartsparkpress.com. You can also email us anytime at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you!

Donate today and support transgender women and (C)AMAB non-binary literature! ttp://kck.st/2hlZOgY

[amyheartspark]

https://soundcloud.com/amyheartspark/cameron-combs-reading-live-at-obsidian-oct-10-2016

[amyheartspark]

"We had a time" : Remembering the inaugural Trans Women Writer's Workshop

It’s a hot, late summer afternoon in the Pacific Northwest. I’m sitting in the corner of my favorite coffee shop drinking iced turmeric tea, remembering, wishing I wasn’t here. All I can think about is being with them, my new friends — my sisters — back in Brooklyn, New York, all over again. Life there made sense, if only for a moment. If I only had a T.A.R.D.I.S, I would fly back in an instant.

Something amazing happens when suddenly girls like me, girls like us, are the default setting. And for at least 26 of us, for one amazing week, we were.

Two weeks ago, Topside Press hosted the first ever week-long trans women writer’s workshop in New York City, the heart of the publishing world. More than two dozen trans women from all over the country came together to read stories, provide feedback, share their unique experiences, talk about the meaning of our lives, and hold each other’s broken but beautiful hearts.

When I first heard about ‘The Workshop’ in May, I was immediately compelled to apply. Trans women writing together? Hanging out in a small space? In New York City? All expenses paid? SIGN ME UP NOW. As a writer and as a queer, unemployed trans woman in a small town, I had been craving community with other creative women who already shared a frame of reference with me. While I have a supportive family that was always willing to read my work, there was always a nervousness I carried in sharing it. “What will they think of me?” I would wonder anxiously. “Am I sharing too much this time? What will I need to explain, to clarify, for them to understand? To relate to me and my strange story?”

For once in my life, I just wanted to bring the shield down and show up with my whole heart. I wanted to be seen without explanation, without caveat or question. And while the relationships with my various families have always been real and authentic, I had reached a point in my life where it wasn’t enough. I needed to be more than just the auntie, the sister, the cousin, the daughter. I needed to simply be — and that meant surrounding myself with other women who I didn’t need to explain anything to. They would just get it.

And so, the Universe granted my wish.

My first day in Brooklyn was spent with one of the participants in the emergency room. We kept each other company and held each other's hearts, being likely the only two trans women in the entire facility.

That’s not to say it was easy. It wasn’t at all. Not everybody’s needs could always be met, and that was brutal on my heart as The Workshop’s accessibility coordinator. Racism, white supremacy, ableism, and classism all played out in their own ways, like it always does when you have a group of different people intersecting together. And then there’s the unspoken part — how trans women as a whole are some of the most abused and mistreated members of American society. All of us came with baggage. Sometimes, we hated each other. Sometimes, we were the mean girls. Sometimes, we were left out, or even left behind.

One student in instructor Casey Plett's class making notes about her story.

But what happened in that week was nothing short of extraordinary. For me, I witnessed a group of women loving each other for everything that they ever were and ever will be. I experienced compassion, understanding, and hope in a way I’ve never felt before. I heard stories of girls who had been to hell and back, but were still brave enough to put it on the page. Sometimes what they wrote was fiction, sometimes what they wrote was not, but all of it was real. Every single word.

Two participants find love while writing and reading together in Brooklyn.

Riding the Q Train to the City for a reading of emerging trans women writers

You see, when trans women are finally given a chance to fully shed their armor, a magic more powerful than anything comes to life. Beneath the lives of girls like us, there exist worlds that breach the fantastic and the tragic. More often than not, we carry a heart that has been broken open wider than most people will ever know. But in that brokenness comes great gifts: empathy, vulnerability, and a profound love for ourselves and each other that may be deeper than all of time and space. To be at the epicenter of that kind of magic for seven days…. I still don’t even know how to explain it to anyone who wasn’t there. I’m not sure if I ever will.

One magical night, I held hands and sang childhood songs in the grass with a new friend in the Workshop. It was one of the most memorable moments of my week.

Perhaps for me, this was what the Workshop was truly about. Yes, it was imperfect, but in the end, it succeeded in its mission. There is at least one trans woman who knows somewhere deep down, despite the painful, cissexist world she grew up in, that she belongs, that she is good, and that she is loved. That woman is me — and for once in my life, I know that I am not alone.

Me exploring on my last full day in New York City. What an amazing adventure.

[amyheartspark]

PSA: Cisgender friends and family have been asking me what it looks like to proactively support trans women and trans girls, so I've made a list. Please read and share:

1. When somebody tells you their gender is x instead of y, believe them.

2. Ask for pronouns if you don't know. Assuming can do some pretty bad things.

3. Don't assign gender to your kiddos based on their body parts. Let them tell you who they are and support it.

4. If you see somebody on Social Media or In Real Life saying something fucked up about trans people, correct them.

5. Be involved in social justice movements that are ensuring trans people have the right to use public bathrooms. Much of these movements are being done by trans people themselves, which is not enough up.

6. Get educated when you don't understand. Use Google, or ask another ally.

This is just a beginning, but a good place to start. ‪#‎girlslikeus‬

[amyheartspark]

I’ve been published in a small literary magazine in Olympia, Washington! Check out this live audio recording from its debut on Friday, June 10th, at South Puget Sound Community College. I read an excerpt from my short story, “Good Night Kiddo.”

https://soundcloud.com/amyheartspark/amy-reads-an-excerpt-from-good-night-kiddo-live

[amyheartspark]

Star princess Hailey takes to the sky. <3 

(From my children’s book, The Girl from the Stars)

[amyheartspark]

Excerpt from my first adult-centered short story, “Good Night Kiddo.”

I had been running away from my entire life, and Olympia was supposed to be just another temporary stop. Your mama was ten minutes late. I was twenty minutes early. It’s only coffee, I thought. I’ll meet her for coffee and leave. At the time, I was pretending to find a place to live, a place to stay in case I wanted to stick around. I had no idea this was such a critical moment in my time stream.

I didn’t know you were the beginning of, well, everything.You gave me this glance, peering from behind a beloved oversized purple rain jacket that faithfully served as your shield. Those big blue eyes looking up at me, curiously outlining the awkward shape of my body behind an orange gingham dress. There was a bit of a hesitation… for both of us. I was your first giant. You were my first kiddo. Neither of us quite knew what to do with each other.

That’s when I started bouncing. I hopped up and down and up and down, until my everything hurt. It was worth it. You laughed and joined in on the adventure. Soon we hobbled our way into the grocery store, laughing and smiling and being.

We had an understanding, you and I. Almost like we always had an understanding, before either of us even existed.“

[amyheartspark]

met this wonderful old woman at the bus stop yesterday. She told me that she looks in the mirror sometimes, she can't see herself anymore. So I decided to draw her, the young woman in front of me. This is who I witnessed. ❤️

[amyheartspark]

Hailey shows her best friend the girl she always saw on the inside

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Portrait I made of my cousins for Christmas

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Father figures

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Hailey visiting her homeworld for the first time, Starcadia.

[amyheartspark]

Starbright, starlight

[amyheartspark]

Hailey discovers the power within and the instrument of her heart. ❤

[amyheartspark]

My star princess Hailey from “The Girl from the Stars” takes to the sky! This was animated on my iPad Pro using FlipPad, Procreate and PhotoToaster. SO FUN.

[amyheartspark]

<3