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“Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air”

--Florence + the Machine

“Oh, make me wanna holler/ And throw up both my hands”

--Marvine Gaye

I want the biggest party

I want every dj ever to make a playlist and take their turns behind the wheels of steel

I want sparkly makeup and glow sticks

Whistles and noisemakers

I want everything to be painted the color of Elizabeth Bishop’s fish

I want to have to yell over the music

I want to stop dancing but I don’t want to stop dancing

I want to be able to stand still and feel the floor bounce beneath me

I want a driving bassline to pave a way to safety

I want everything, again, painted rainbow, rainbow, rainbow

I want salsa music and merengue and samba

I want it to be so humid and sweaty and hot that my hair sticks to my face

To your face your face covered in glitter

I want to see your teeth glow in the black light

I want to be sprayed with water and I want to drink tropical drinks

I want breaks in the music where I can catch secrets screamed over music that is no longer there

Then I want the music to come in louder than before, leaving me guessing

I want to holler woo, throw up both my hands

I want happiness to be tactile, kinetic, joining us like scales on the fish

I want men kissing men and men kissing men and men kissing men

I want women kissing women and women kissing women

I want to kiss everyone—I want to be so drunk that I would want to kiss everyone

I want the biggest party and to see everybody dance now

In June

When it’s already hot in Florida

But it’s always hot in Florida

And sunrises the color of Elizabeth Bishop’s dreams

I want the sun to always rise

To always rise to come up and up

I want to know there will be a tomorrow

--DeMisty D. Bellinger, June 12, 2016

#Orlando

The bestselling author of the Chocolat series has given a troubling insight into life as a female author

#kat brown

Submissions open now for Kalyani Magazine, a magazine dedicated to women writers and artists of color!

Because mistakes are the portals of discovery.

#writing

Still want to start a magazine one day.

A professor and a historian discovered the identity of the unseen wheelbarrow owner in a classic poem.

#books and literature

Cartoons and humor make a good pair. Add a side of feminism and you get Rebecca Cohen’s spot-on illustrations. The cartoonist, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., spreads a feminist message on her

Elizabeth (Liz) Climo, the talented illustrator we wrote about a while ago, is back with more adorable illustrations of her cartoon animals' everyday conversations. Her cute and simple comics imagine the everyday problems and moments that animals might face if they interacted with each other the way we do.

I want these animals to be my friends.

Love and Marriage and Equality

Do I love my husband more today? More every day but today, more than ever. I never talk about Loving v. Virginia, but I always give a nod to it. To think that he and I would have had trouble getting married! Of course, sometimes, we deal with racism, but we have always had that right to marry because of the Lovings.

And now that anyone can marry who they choose, I feel like our marriage is so much stronger. We can share love with everyone. We can find comfort that everyone can have the basic rights that he and I have. We can be a part of a more loving and egalitarian society than the one we had just yesterday.

The Supreme Court is knocking it out, y'all. Fair housing, the Affordable Care Act, and now gay marriage. I don't understand how Citizens United happened, but I think we can address that in the future.

Also, we can't rest on our haunches, yet: sexism, homophobia, racism, and classism still exist. We must continue to work not only for our rights, but for the continuing enjoyment of those rights. We can't take people being shot by police for being black or brown. We can't take women being harassed or discriminated against on the streets and in the work place. We can't take unfair wages and working conditions. We can't take mass shootings. We have to continue to fight, right?

And we're reminded of this continuing fight for justice today admid all this celebration: Rev. Clementa Pinckney's funeral was today. For being black, he was killed with eight others. But maybe, let's just extend that celebration towards him and those eight others who weren't allowed to live to see this day. Let's celebrate their lives, too!

#marriage equality #scotus

Here's a secret: a lot of famous authors are, well, kind of badass. That is, they're even more badass than you assume, if you're the kind of person who thinks it's already fairly cool to be a great...

For too long, alternative black girls and women have been chastised for "embracing whiteness."

fanboyingoverdemigods

There is nothing wrong with our school system.

meantfortheshore

moremetalthanyourmom

Okay but after seeing this I started doing it too and it’s amazing how many men I’ve run into bc they expected me to move

youcangofindatree-deactivated20

Gotta try it

clevermanka

I work (and walk) on a college campus. I’ve lost count of how many men I’ve smacked shoulders with.

emmagrant01

Recently, I was standing outside my son’s classroom waiting to talk to his teacher. I stood on one side of the hallway, not even close to the center. At some point, a man came walking along. I was standing right in his path, but the hallway was empty, so I logically expected him to swerve around me. Instead he kept walking right toward me, got to me, and stopped, as if waiting for me to get out of his way. I didn’t; I just smiled politely at him. He finally walked around me, clearly annoyed that I hadn’t leapt out of his manly path.

Now I’m wishing I’d leapt aside, taken off my jacket and laid it on the floor before him, then bowed deeply and said, “My Liege!”

mercurialkitty

I also work at a college campus. I smack shoulders sometimes, but I find that if I stare straight ahead and follow the advice below, people get the heck out of the way.

songbirde108

Honestly this post changed how I carry myself when walking alone in public, or in a situation where I’m the one leading. People definitely move for the murder gaze.

onethingconstant

Confirmed. I once had to rush back inside a convention hall as the con was closing in order to a retrieve a sick friend’s medication, and I didn’t understand why people in the crowd were jumping out of my way (literally—one guy vaulted a table) until I realized I was dressed as the Winter Soldier and doing the Murder Walk because that’s just how I walk in those boots. I got the meds, got out, and made a mental note.

I repeated the experiment later, wearing the boots but otherwise my usual clothing and mimicking the expression I thought I’d had at that moment. People parted like I was Charlton Heston.

I now wear that style of boots whenever possible. I recently had a man do a double-take as I walked by and ask me, politely, where I had served because I “looked like a soldier.” I’m not current or former military. I was wearing a flowy purple peasant top and looked as un-soldierlike as possible.

Moral of the story: wear comfortable shoes, square your shoulders, and walk like you’ve been sent to murder Captain America.

The first time I went away to an artist’s residency, I was 24 years old. It was a large program, but I managed on the first day to find the one other poet there. We sat together at dinner, where...

“The bigger part of Leaving the Baby to Write is the guilt.”

And in a few days, I’m off to Vermont Studio Center, away from my own kids. Sigh.

Zoë Heller and Dana Stevens debate the merit of literary prizes for which only women compete.

Why is this a binary question? Is there a “Cause of Women Writers”? And why can’t such awards be a celebration of women writers? And why does Pen/Faulkner have so few women winners?

#women and girls #writing #book awards #books

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