Category Archives: Writing & Reading

Yes, Women — but ALL women

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Hello, my fellow white feminists.
 
I am glad our next president will probably be a woman, too.
 
And I am not scolding anyone, or trying to make you feel bad.
suffragettes-1600x0-c-default
But I think it would do well for us to keep in mind that women’s suffrage in the US with the sashes and the white dresses was often grounded in white supremacy, and when we don our white sashes in memory, we are inadvertently telling our sisters of color that we don’t mind if they feel ignored today.
 
I’m not surprised a lot of us don’t know about this history; it’s been ignored in our history classes. But if you’re curious about what I’m talking about, here is a very concise bunch of quotes from prominent suffragists which clears up this misinformation.
 
“White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women’s suffrage.” — Carrie Chapman Catt, 1859-1947 (Founder of the League of Women Voters)
http://the-toast.net/2014/04/21/suffragettes-sucked-white-supremacy-womens-rights/

what is happening to me

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Test-Case-e1271397628224

Look at this gorgeous thing LOOK AT IT

I am falling in love with writing test cases.

Such artful precision! Such hope that I will be clear and thorough!

Writing test cases is the perfect job for a writer who sort of wishes she’d been a coder and who has a desperate need to be ENDLESSLY HELPFUL.

Like all love affairs, I am certain this one will last forever.

Panels at CONvergence, Jul 3-5 2015, Bloomington, MN

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CVG-2015-Web-Header-H

I’ll be on a few panels at CONvergence this coming weekend. Hopefully I’ll see a few of you there:

Thursday, July 2

8:30-9:30PM, DoubleTree Atrium 7
Using Folklore as Inspiration
Explore how writers and artists use folklore as inspiration in urban fantasy.
Panelists: Melissa Olson, Adam Stemple, Abra Staffin-Wiebe, Ty Blauersouth, Haddayr Copley-Woods

Friday, July 3

11AM-12PM DoubleTree Bloomington:
How We Change the Stories We Tell About Disability
Join us for a discussion of hidden disabilities in the media – for example, Iron Man has PTSD – and how it changes our perceptions of ability in the real world.
Panelists: Haddayr Copley-Woods, Kiah Nelson, Vetnita Anderson, Emilie Peck, Sherry L.M. Merriam, MA, LPC

12:30-1:30PM DoubleTree Plaza 1
Long and Short of Storytelling
Join publishers and writers of fiction to discuss the differences between novels, novellas, and short stories, from germinating to print.
Panelists: Melissa Olson, Haddayr Copley-Woods, Elizabeth Bear, Wesley Chu, Michael Damian Thomas

3:30pm – 4:30pm DoubleTree Atrium 4
Diversity in Casting
Come discuss race, handicap, gender, diversity, and more in film and TV casting. Is it acceptable when an actor portrays a character with a different physical characteristic? When is it OK to divert from the source?
Panelists: Jonathan Palmer, Derek “Duck” Washington, Haddayr Copley-Woods, Wesley Chu, Cynnthia Michaels

Kirkus Review of LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER: THE BOOK

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9780399169854It’s a pretty sweet review!

In part:

For a collection of writings with an ostensibly narrow focus, the range of material is impressive. A first grader collapses, and the medical tests offer no conclusions. A teenager, worried about becoming pregnant, finds an unexpected ally in her own mother, who says, “If you get pregnant, don’t get married because then you’re making two mistakes instead of one.” Daughters that hate pink; a mother’s rage at being left behind by a husband on deployment; tiny tots, their eyes aglow, eating the tiny slips of paper mother wrote her daily gratitude on—these and countless other experiences demonstrate the wide range of the ups and downs of parenting.

The essays are short, which enables the book to cover a lot of ground, but they also pack a strong emotional punch—and they’re almost certain to leave any mother feeling less alone.

Take a look.

Advice

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Oh, you guys. You are sending me the most amazing, amazing letters. I feel so honored.

Here is my next column. More to come. Oh, your amazing letters. Keep ’em coming at bitterbutch@bitterempire.com. Thank you.

iNwKpTHC26wyK-1-862x538Dear Bitter Butch:

When my husband and I were engaged he bought me flowers, huge amounts on my birthday (the day before Valentine’s Day) and Valentine’s Day. The other guys at work said he should stop making them look bad. I love flowers. He promised me he would keep doing it. In the twenty-one years since we got married he says he never knows what to buy me. I say ‘I love flowers!’ A couple of times when I whined, a lot. Really whined. He bought me a bouquet. Once my son made him do it. Is there any way I can get him to buy me flowers without feeling passive aggressive? Signed, flowerless.

Here’s how I really want to answer this letter: with a note to your husband that says: “Buy your wife flowers. What the actual fuck. This is not difficult or complicated. Buy her. Flowers. Today. DOOOOOOOOD.”

But he didn’t write me. You did. So I’m going to take your question at face value. Read the rest of my answer.

I am speechless over this beautiful review of “Belly!”

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From Piecemeal Reviews:

goya-witches“The short story, Belly, by Haddayr Copley-Woods, featured in the July/August issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction fascinates, disgusts, and digs into the brain of itself, conjuring magic within its own spinning yarn.   With a hive of witches and an unsuspecting girl, Copley-Woods clearly uses fairytales as inspiration for Belly, but that’s simply a model for her larger themes: abuse and personal destiny.  After I read Belly, I forced it into my writer friends’ hands, excited, hopeful, distracted and envious of what they would experience for the first time.  Rarely does it feel like a crime to have something so remarkable not freely available for everyone to read.” Read the whole thing.

We are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart

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taran“Most of us are called on to perform tasks far beyond what we can do. Our capabilities seldom match our aspirations, and we are often woefully unprepared. To this extent, we are all Assistant Pig-Keepers at heart.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The Book of Three

It’s the 50th anniversary of The Book of Three! Taran is one of those characters that I didn’t even understand HOW formative he was until I got older. Each year makes me realize more how much of an impression he made on me — how much I wish to be like him, when I am at my very best.

And how I wish I’d written Alexander to tell him so, when he was still with us. Write your literary influences! Write them, and tell them. Certainly they will be delighted, but it will be good for you, too. I delight in Taran, Eilonwy, Coll, Dalben. Wonderful, surprising, big-hearted Gurgi. Ridiculous Fflewddur Fflam. (who, did you know? Is the name of a real person! I stumbled across him years ago researching another name.)

I am so grateful to all of them. They are people to me. And to Alexander, who breathed life into them and set them free so that I might meet them.