Episode 37: Pride
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Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you’d like to be. Welcome to the writer’s triangle, a podcast about all things publishing and books. And today, I’m going to be talking about pride month, one of my most favorite months of the year, because I am part of the LGBTQIA+ family. And it’s also my birthday month. So double fun for me. Way back when I used – when I used to go to pride parties and such I don’t go out as much anymore. But when I did, it always felt like my birthday was being celebrated for a month, because so many things about my identity, we’re being celebrated throughout the month of June. And seeing so many companies jump in and know that that uplifting and celebrating the community is the right thing to do. Sadly, because they know it’s also the profitable thing to do. I wish that they were doing it just because it’s the right thing. But you know, it is what it is. And I’m I’m happy that they’re doing it for whatever reason, when we started the press, something I’m really, really proud of is when we started the press, we did so with diversity in mind. And that included the LGBTQ i plus community, LGBTQ i plus stories, and LGBTQ i plus authors. And it feels really good that since we opened officially in October of 2020, we published our first book, and February of 2021. Since then we published 11 books, and six of the 11 books have a queer main character, and a central LGBTQ ai plus storyline, which makes me super proud of being able to get that mission, be able to set that mission and follow through and deliver on that mission. And we see the same thing when we we look at as we are surrounded by my publisher. And we also have cinnabar moth literary collections, and we see the same thing. And this month to have an entire e zine issue dedicated to LGBTQ i A plus stories is just a dream come true. To be able to uplift and share all of these stories, and all of these voices is just really exciting for me and gratifying for me. Because I think that as a community, we need people to uplift us within our community, as well as outside of our community. So feels really good to be one of those people, uplifting us and taking, you know, thinking about what is in the community’s best interests and thinking about how can we support and help people. And for me, that’s just a really big part of diversity. And my eye when opening the press was very much to diversity being a majority black on press, and looking at marginalized voices, and it feels a lot like queer black voices are the most marginalized. From my perspective, when I’m looking at what’s out in the world, and looking at what characters do we see? What stories are we hearing, when we’re looking at, at all of the stories that are out there in terms of diversity, and his voices are being represented? And for me, it just feels like queer black voices are the most underrepresented. And, you know, it could be skewed because that’s a big part of my identity. So I could be missing out or missing advances, but I don’t think that I am. And when I think about diversity, I don’t feel like we can have an honest and open question about diversity if we’re not talking about including the LGBTQ plus community and how to uplift those voices. And for me, I tick a lot of boxes when it comes to diversity and when affirmative action was in place, the United States and for those of you that don’t know what affirmative action is, it used to be a law that so many, if you want to govern government funding and government support, a certain percentage of your workforce had to fall under the umbrella of diversity. And so that was ethnic diversity, gender diversity, identity, diversity. And I found for a lot of people, they would come to me and be like, Okay, tell us what you are so that we can tick off all of these boxes. And I felt that that was really disingenuous, because it was misrepresenting how many people that they actually had because they were using me to tick off so many boxes, because I’m black and indigenous and Jewish, so they’re like, great, we’re gonna mark off that we have someone who’s blacks on whose identity indigenous someone who’s Jewish, and they’ve like, Okay, you’re also disabled, so we’re gonna check off that We have someone who’s disabled. And you’re also Chris, we’re going to check off that we have someone from the LGBTQIA plus community. And like, that’s not how this is supposed to work, you know, don’t use me to game the system. And don’t use me as to say that you’ve got all of this diversity that you don’t have. If there’s only one of me, I think Michelle Obama said, it’s the best if I’m the only diversity in the room, we can’t have a discussion about diversity. Not right there. We know that the starting point is we need more voices in this room, I can’t be the only diverse voice in the room. I felt the same way about publishing and we can’t have just one or two, I didn’t want tokenism. I wanted there to be a significant number of our authors who are from the LGBTQ i plus community, and have experiences with LGBTQ issues and identities and all of that, and to tell their stories. So for me that that’s so much fun. And I also love that their stories are our stories. They’re just stories of humanity, and what it means to be human, and how it feels to get from point A to point B in this life, and the struggles that we face. And not every queer author writes queer stories, some of them write cisgender heterosexual stories. And I think that that’s okay. I don’t think that we should box in anyone in terms of their writing and say, you can or can’t write about this with the exception of slurs, I don’t like people to write slurs if they’ve never been called that slur. Because I think that, then the slur gets written from the position of power and the person saying it, rather than how it lands on the person who’s been called, by thinking of her writing from the place of diversity. And I’m writing my story about what it felt like to be called a slur or how that landed on me, and how that impacted my day and how I moved through the world. I think that that can be a really powerful thing. And a place that people can go to feel seen, heard and validated. And a place that people can go to, to have conversations about what they’re experiencing, and what their everyday life is, is like and what their struggles are and what their challenges are. I think that that’s really healthy. I also feel like talking about the good times, and the community and the good times, and our identity when we have found family and our chosen families supporting us. And we’re living in upper middle class life, and everything’s normal. And nobody would faces any diversity because of their identity, and they’re just living their life. And sometimes, things get a little bit challenging because of their identity. I think that’s a really important piece of diversity as well, because the community comes from all walks of life, and all levels of socio economic success, and socio economic struggle, we sit across the span of everything that makes us human. And I feel like sometimes people really get into being trauma tourist with our community, and they want to hear how rough it is. And they want to hear how marginalized we are and how abused we are. And I think there is a place for that. But I think there’s also a place to celebrate and party and enjoy an uplift and talk about the good times and the happiness and what it feels like to be content, happy, supported, seen, heard and validated, while embracing our identity and standing in our truth and sharing our truth. So the stories that we tell her across all of that the stories that we publish, come from the most disadvantaged, the most abused, the most traumatized, someone can be for identity, all the way over to living their best lives and being loved and supported in their, in their truth and their sexual orientation. I think that’s really important for everyone to see and know that it’s okay to be okay.
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I don’t feel like that said enough to people that it’s okay to be okay. Even if you come from a traumatized background, it’s okay to be okay. If you haven’t been traumatized, it’s okay to be okay. It’s really about being authentically who you are celebrating that embracing it. And sharing that with the world is where I come from I’m looking for, for stories in the community written by members of the community. I just look for a good story. I’m not looking for any specific type of story. I’m just looking for something that feels and sounds authentic that I think does A good job of adding to this canon of, you know, LGBTQI plus literature. And if it’s a good story, you know, I’m going to want to publish it providing that we have space and our subject open, and, and all of that. So for me, I think that, my hope is that more publishers get into, into celebrating members of the community and stories from the community. And what that would look like for me is, you know, we can celebrate it on blogs, publishing blogs, we can celebrate it by doing contests and challenges for these types of stories. We can celebrate it by publishing books, with marginalized identities, and we can also do it in our magazines, and making sure that we have this and celebrate it, and that we’re looking for it specifically that we’re going out and seeking out these things. And I really wish that there was, and there might be, I’m gonna look it up after the podcast, I’m not sure I really wish that there was a pitch contest for the LGBTQ eight for LGBTI plus stories, because I know that just last week, it was just the other day, it was a picture book, pitch contest. And it made me think, I wonder if there’s, you know, LGBTQ ai plus, out there. And those types of pitch contests, I know that there are a couple of places that do Kickstarters for, for publication, and there are specific anthologies that are focused solely on LGBTQI plus voices, I think there needs to be more of that throughout the year, not just in Pride Month, I think they’d having just be one month a year. That’s so limiting. And it’s so hard for us to really get voices across the community and throughout the community. So I feel really happy that we have books that represent every type of identity, every letter in the LGBTQ i plus we have a book that that represents every single letter, we have, you know, lesbian, gay, trans, non binary and asexual. And so trying to think of LGBTQ A plus, we don’t have a Two Spirit book, which I would love, love, love to have a Two Spirit story. I love indigenous writing, and I love indigenous authors. I love those stories, there’s so much I feel like, as an indigenous person, we have so many stories to tell, and especially when we’re looking at that naught point of, of diversity or looking at LGBTQI plus, and indigenous people looking to spirit and looking at what it means to be queer and identify an indigenous is really an interesting mix for me because the community can be quite conservative. And I think that’s because of the relationship, not the tribes have with Christianity. And depending on how religious The tribe is, and how close you are to members and your tribe. It can, it can be a really difficult identity. Because we’ve lost so much of our history, we’ve lost so much of our culture through assimilation, and through separation, and having our last generation where the children were literally ripped from our homes and put into orphanages and, and religious schools that took away all of the culture that took away. A lot of generational knowledge was lost. And language, a lot of language was lost. And so a lot of costume tradition and languages were lost to that practice. I just feel like religion has been so horrific has been applied on a lot of my communities.
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And I don’t think all religion is toxic. But I do think some is and when you look at my Christian conversion camps, it becomes undeniable how toxic religion can be for people of color and being told that you can’t be religious and this thing. I don’t believe that I just I think that there’s room for everybody. And my hope is that if you know if there is any sort of higher power out there that they will be loving of all the identities that that they created, right if there’s a grand creator so looking what it means to represent diversity, we really have ever surprised by how much how actively I have to look for it, and how actively I have to put out calls for it and put out requests for it. And I don’t know if that’s from suffering from rejections or feeling shy or giving themselves the No, before I have a chance to reject them. But we don’t get a lot of just open submissions. Without invitation, we don’t get a lot of submissions from the LGBTQIA plus, people of color. And that’s so important to me. I felt like saying where I’m majority black own presses that was speak to our mission, I put our mission out there with the first podcast, I really expected there to be an influx and a flood of, of authors of color, and authors who are disabled and and authors who are in LGBTQ plus community. And there wasn’t, I really had to go looking for them. And making specific calls with a que we want stories with this theme, specifically for the E zine. And, and looking and asking for community members to please, you know, share the stories with us. And submit to us, our submissions are closed until January 2024. Because we don’t have any publication base before 2025. And I don’t think that people should stop querying and wait until, you know, three years to be published, I think they should be out there cream because somebody might have a faster path to publication for them. But I’m hoping that when our publications opens again, when our submissions opens, again, that we do see an increase and LGBTQI plus stories that we’re seeing written by LGBTI plus authors, right now, our authors percentage for those on the LGBTQ plus spectrum. And I call it a spectrum, just a rainbow. And that is like a color spectrum to me. And I think we’re about 1/3 right now for all of our, all of our authors, when we look at what umbrella they fall under how they identify. And that’s a really good feeling. I’d like to see it improve and be about 5050. I don’t know, I’d be happy if like, every one of our authors was from a diverse background, I think that would be pretty cool and pretty interesting. But I also don’t want to discriminate and exclude against anyone who’s not diverse. And I don’t know, it’s a it’s a tricky thing, building a press and building. A group of authors that we celebrate and champion and books that we fight for. And at the core of it, they have to be good stories, you know, you have to write a good story, you can’t just be like, I’m diversity, what I’ve written is diverse, published us, I have seen a little bit of that. People pushing and saying, But this story is diverse. And so you must want it and like, you know, not to be mean, but it doesn’t. It’s not finished or needs improvement. And this or that way, it’s not enough to just have a clear MC, but poorly written or not, or one that doesn’t sound authentic. And if the story doesn’t feel true, and if the story doesn’t feel authentic, then for me that’s damaging to the community, because what’s written and what’s put out there, when we’re looking at writing diverse identities, there really has to be an authenticity, there has to be what’s true to this character, and all of their identity.
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And does it pass the sniff test? Sort of, you know, is it baloney? Or is it good? And true and honest, does it resonate? Can readers relate to it? And something we do with with everything that’s submitted to us is we do have beta readers that read it, and they fill out a questionnaire that we give them. And we have a very diverse pool of beta readers. So we’re looking at beta slash sensitivity readers, and we give it to them and they read it and then they give us feedback. And based on that feedback, we then give feedback to the authors. And our new authors, excuse me, when we publish an author for the first time they have to go through that process before we say yes to publishing the story. And then we find that that some authors really struggle to take on the feedback and then their dates. You know, we have to delay that needs until we can, can work it out. And so things become really fluid when you’re looking at sensitivity reason you’re looking at writing diverse stories, there has to be sensitivity and respect, and humility and understanding. So, for me, that’s an in every type of story that’s told. And in telling these diverse stories, one of the reasons is part of our passion is because growing up, the team didn’t have their identity represented to them. And there wasn’t even a language for my identity when I was growing up, the words weren’t there. And I didn’t know them. And it was really challenging and confusing. So having these diverse voices in these diverse stories, is really important. Because we’re at the dawn of a new era, when we’re looking at advances and understanding what non binary is, and understanding what trans is, and understanding what age, gender and sexuality is, and Pam, sex jabi panromantic, you know, a gender a sexual, a romantic, those three things didn’t really exist. There was a, I was aware of what a sexuality was, but I wasn’t aware of what a gender meant, and I wasn’t aware of a romantic and looking at the different levels that we have, that we’re we have, I have gender, and then I have romantic attraction, and then I have sexual attraction. And those degrees of separation weren’t there. When I was growing up, the language wasn’t there, for it existed. It was there inside of me. And it existed in the world, there just wasn’t a language about it. And the first time that I heard the phrase, non binary, I was in my 40s. And it was a story about, sadly about a young person who had been attacked, because someone didn’t know what their gender was. And they were using they them pronouns. And it was really quite shocking, how violently people were reacting to pupils, not saying I’m neither male nor female. And the violence that comes with that is always shocking to me. Because it doesn’t affect me. And it usually doesn’t affect the people that are so up in arms about it. It’s just one person living our truth are a group of people living their truth with saying what they want their pronouns to be. And this argument that we don’t call people, they them, a single person like them is just untrue. And true. And if you think about it, you can say, Oh, this is there’s talking about a single person, right is an example of that.
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And who are they is another great example of that, and talking about a single person, the violence that comes with being part of the LGBTQ plus community. Captain, sometimes within the community itself, there’s a really sad movement of anti gay erasure, that people are saying that adding all of these letters to the LGBTQ plus community is erasing the gay community. And I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think, the more diversity we have, the bigger our tribe, the louder or voice, the more power we have, we should embrace everyone under the umbrella because I think that’s what the mainstream does. It teaches us not to trust each other, it teaches us to fight amongst ourselves. So now we’re distracted. And we’re not looking at what the mainstream is doing. What the mainstream is, is planning on what their agenda is, how they plan to quiet our voices, how they plan to dole our shine, and take away our rights globally. So for me, I don’t engage in that, that infighting. I’m not interested in it. It’s not interesting to me. I’m more looking towards unity, and, and how, you know, how we look at Unity, and how we think about unity? And also how do we talk about the pain and loss and our community? And what do we do about that pain loss, and our community? How do we help our community heal? And where do where are the safe spaces? And I hope that everyone always finds us to be a safe place for that to come and share their stories. You know, we have the flash fiction contest because I wanted To celebrate more authors I talked about a couple weeks ago. And we also have the E zine and looking to when we have open subs and stuff and know that it’s a safe place to turn in these stories, and that we’re not going to be looking to change them, we’re just going to be looking at is this a good story, and enjoying the story and celebrating the author. There was there a few authors who had submitted to us and then decided to go with a different press. And I celebrate those authors, I celebrate their publication, I promote their publication, I review their books, and do what I can to help them succeed, even if it’s not with our press. So getting on our radar and communicating with us on social media, creating that bond creating that closeness does lead to us supporting you, even if it’s not, by publishing with our press, supporting you, in terms of review supporting you in terms of writing a snippet for your website, supporting you in terms of publishing flash fiction, and really helping you promote yourself on Twitter, helping gain followers and such, and helping you have have interactions. Because we love celebrating authors is something I’m really, really passionate about. And I want others to feel like their voices is heard and welcomed, and that their point of view is welcomed and that their voice is welcome. And I think if I would give one piece of advice to people on the LGBTQ i i plus spectrum is, for me, I would say lead with your identity, at least when you’re communicating with us. If I know that you have diverse identity, and I know if I know you’re part of the of the community, I do met feeling drawn to and feeling connected to those authors and wanting to uplift and celebrate them and help them publish and all of that, to the best of my ability, you know, I have limitations of what I can and can’t affect, but to the best of my ability, really letting them know that they’re valued and giving them hope, and talking with them about what they can do and looking to, you know, where they can submit and what places are looking for these types of things. I always read, I do my best to retweet, I follow a bunch of easels and an MD presses on Twitter.
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And I do my best to retweet when they have calls when they’re open for subs. And I find looking at all of the getting a list together of all of the magazines that are out there just spending some time on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, whatever social media you’re on, whether it be tic tac, anything like that YouTube, and getting a list of publishers that have magazines and publishers that do writing contest. And people that do writing contests and the different writing prompts that are available on on Twitter, or other social media platforms and taking part in those is a great way to get to know a publication. And a great way to get your work out there and a great way to bring in a little bit of cash, some of them pay some of them don’t I know we pay for stories. And we pay our flash fiction winners and such. Not everybody is at that that place. But I think getting out there never pay to publish. That’s a major pet peeve of mine. But getting sort of the list of people that you’re socializing with the list of people who magazines and pub and presses an individual on Twitter, that are like minded and publish and promote the type of writing that you do. I think that that’s, that’s really important. Michael as a publishing house, is to make sure that we’re always celebrating authors at our core. And I know that we’re not perfect in this and we are a work in progress. But it is something that’s very near and dear to my heart. And looking at people from all of my backgrounds in my community. I hope that that they feel welcomed when they submit to us and I hope that they feel seen heard and validated and appreciated. And for me, I just I want to keep going, you know, I want to have more diversity and I want to have more To celebrate more authors and, and get more work out there, and that’s why we have so many different levels of publication with the flash fiction and the writing prompts and the E zine, and, and books because I want to publish as many authors as possible and get as many stories out there as possible with as much diversity as possible. So that’s my ramble about the LGBTQIA plus community and my feelings about pride and my joy of, of celebrating. And I hope that everybody is enjoying Pride Month and staying safe and having fun and feeling seen, heard and validated. And I hope that the community and everyone outside of this community continues to celebrate LGBTQ i plus voices and uplift voice those voices beyond Pride Month, right? Let’s get this going 12 months a year, and he has, we’re awesome. And we have awesome stories to tell. And thank you for listening to this week’s writers triangle. And I appreciate all of our beautiful cinnabar moth and you can be any kind of math you want to be. Or you can be a butterfly, but I’m not Mariah Carey, so I’m trying to bite her Ryan, talk to you next week. Bye