Why I Need A Village
Villager Certificate
Storytelling is my vocation. I tell stories that bear witness to terrible trauma, and to our amazing capacity to survive and heal, stories that rescue history that has been lost or stolen and give us back roots and pride, stories that challenge us to forge strong alliances, some of them unexpected, to expand our hopes and refuse to surrender our dreams. That's my life work--to keep learning how to tell better, more powerful, more medicinal stories.
I hear from a lot of people who tell me that the stories I tell, the essays and poems, radio broadcasts and speeches, have been important to them, that my vision of what's possible inspires them, that my stories of trauma and healing, of resistance and solidarity, bear witness to their lives and give them courage.
This is my life work, but as a chronically ill and disabled artist, I don't have access to a day job that pays my bills. I don't have the option of teaching, offering writing workshops, or freelancing in order to make ends meet.
For years, as I slowly grew sicker and sicker, I tried to survive as most artists do: teach adjunct college courses, hustle to sell books, wear myself out giving university lectures, join one underfunded project after another for what ends up being minimum wage, apply for grants and residencies in competition with every other underpaid artist, and spending myself down into exhaustion. As a result, I've written a lot less than I have in me to write, and I'm still sick and poor.
I want to write what I believe is urgently needed, not what I can package into a book that will sell. I want to be a writer, not an author, to write instead of marketing myself, to write instead of pitching projects, to write. I don't want economic pressures to decide which books I throw my heart and soul into.
So I'm trying something new. I'm asking the people who value my work to pay me to do it. I'm looking for 1000 working people who will pledge to send me at least $5 a month. Each one who does will get a personalized and numbered copy of this beautiful certificate.
SUBSCRIBE TO MY LIFE RIGHT HERE:
I hear from a lot of people who tell me that the stories I tell, the essays and poems, radio broadcasts and speeches, have been important to them, that my vision of what's possible inspires them, that my stories of trauma and healing, of resistance and solidarity, bear witness to their lives and give them courage.
This is my life work, but as a chronically ill and disabled artist, I don't have access to a day job that pays my bills. I don't have the option of teaching, offering writing workshops, or freelancing in order to make ends meet.
For years, as I slowly grew sicker and sicker, I tried to survive as most artists do: teach adjunct college courses, hustle to sell books, wear myself out giving university lectures, join one underfunded project after another for what ends up being minimum wage, apply for grants and residencies in competition with every other underpaid artist, and spending myself down into exhaustion. As a result, I've written a lot less than I have in me to write, and I'm still sick and poor.
I want to write what I believe is urgently needed, not what I can package into a book that will sell. I want to be a writer, not an author, to write instead of marketing myself, to write instead of pitching projects, to write. I don't want economic pressures to decide which books I throw my heart and soul into.
So I'm trying something new. I'm asking the people who value my work to pay me to do it. I'm looking for 1000 working people who will pledge to send me at least $5 a month. Each one who does will get a personalized and numbered copy of this beautiful certificate.
SUBSCRIBE TO MY LIFE RIGHT HERE:
Building A Collective Queen
What if instead of spending my time marketing my products, people paid me for my process, and I could give the books and workshops away? What if, instead of a Medici patron like Leonardo's, or Shakespeare's Queen Elizabeth, keeping me housed, clothed, fed, and supplied with ink and paper, I had you, my collective queen, a web of people who want to hear me, each of you paying me a little to create, to stay alive and speak, to keep doing what I do.
Imagine what I could write, if I was free of the grinding worry of being too sick and exhausted to do all the marketing I have to do to sell all the books I have to sell to pay for food, shelter, medicine, internet. I could write and rest. I could delve deep. I could write what needed saying, and not have to put it in book form and sell it to pay the rent. I could share my work freely, as blogs, as broadsides, as pamphlets and posters and, yes, books, and let people pay whatever they wanted. I could send books to literacy programs and prisons. I could teach for nothing, for air and connection, knowing you had my back. If I'm lucky, if I have room to breathe and eat well and heal, I have another 30 years or so to do what I came here to do. What if you, my queen, freed me up to do it?
Imagine what I could write, if I was free of the grinding worry of being too sick and exhausted to do all the marketing I have to do to sell all the books I have to sell to pay for food, shelter, medicine, internet. I could write and rest. I could delve deep. I could write what needed saying, and not have to put it in book form and sell it to pay the rent. I could share my work freely, as blogs, as broadsides, as pamphlets and posters and, yes, books, and let people pay whatever they wanted. I could send books to literacy programs and prisons. I could teach for nothing, for air and connection, knowing you had my back. If I'm lucky, if I have room to breathe and eat well and heal, I have another 30 years or so to do what I came here to do. What if you, my queen, freed me up to do it?
A snowshoe instead of a pogo stick, not one rich aristocrat, but a thousand working people, sending a dollar or five or twenty each month.
Twice now, people have mobilized to save me during a deep crisis, have joined forces and pulled me out of snowbanks that went far above my head, but if I had snowshoes, I could walk lightly, and not fall in. Not like a CSA box, so many pounds creativity a month, by subscription, but the knowledge that you have enriched the soil from which the produce grows, that you're a citizen of the village it takes.
Twice now, people have mobilized to save me during a deep crisis, have joined forces and pulled me out of snowbanks that went far above my head, but if I had snowshoes, I could walk lightly, and not fall in. Not like a CSA box, so many pounds creativity a month, by subscription, but the knowledge that you have enriched the soil from which the produce grows, that you're a citizen of the village it takes.