CFP: Get Your Feminist Anthology On

One mo' from Courtney...

I think for me it was a slow process, starting from when I was in the womb...

We were reading the Great Gatsby in high school English, and I came across this line: 'That's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.' I felt enraged, but none of my classmates even seemed to notice.

It was a rainy Take Back The Night rally my first year of college... I looked around at the women on every side, and thought about how strange it was that I'd ended up here, given my conservative Republican upbringing. I realized that if I don't identify as a feminist, no one really does.

One movie: Girls Town. Amazing.

A generation ago, feminists talked about their "click" moments: those split-second experiences that led them to join the women's movement. Today's young feminists come to the movement--which is looking less like a protest march and more like a blog--in myriad, often piecemeal, ways. It can be as simple as reading a book or attending an event or talking with one person or witnessing a horrendous act of sexism.

Deciding to identify as a feminist often requires a lot of learning and unlearning these days; so many of us have been exposed to the well-oiled machine of the anti-feminist movement. According to Newsweek, feminism might be dead. Charlotte Allen tells us that we're stupid, via the Washington Post. Some older women within our own movement wonder if we even exist.

J. Courtney Sullivan and Courtney Martin are editing a new anthology for Seal Press on the topic, and we want your ideas. Send us a couple of paragraphs--in the style and voice that you'd use in a full-fledged essay--proposing what you would write, along with your name, email address, phone #, age, and ethnic background (we understand that this might seem a little reductive, but we are committed to including diverse authors). We'll look them all over, then get back to you once we've accounted for a range of moments, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds.

We hope it will be a historic document, a totally entertaining gift, a course adoption text, and, most of all, a collection that makes young women who already identify with the movement feel seen and heard, and welcomes all those just growing into the still unfolding story of feminism.

Send your ideas to: clickmoment@gmail.com
DEADLINE: October 15, 2008

Bonus: We've already got some great feminist writers on board that you may have heard of, including (in no particular order):

Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan (well, obviously)
Jessica Valenti
Miriam Perez
Samhita Mukhopadhyay
Curtis Sittenfield
Rebecca Traister
Anna Holmes
Rachel Simmons
Winter Miller
Deborah Siegel
Alissa Quart
Hannah Seligson
Latoya Petersen
Shelby Knox
Jennifer Baumgardner
Amy Richards

Girl Gone MIA Today

Apologies for the lack of posting today! A GWP anomaly, and I missed you all!

I spent the day traveling to Washington DC, where my intergenerational feminist panel spoke tonight at George Washington University before the Women's Leadership Program--and an amazing group of women those WLPers are. Pictures coming soon. Tomorrow, we're keynoting at the Association for Women in Communications conference, and I'm excited to attend some of their sessions (and swim in the hotel pool) as well.

More from me tomorrow, I promise!

Authors These Days...

I recently received an advance copy of a new book by Alix Kates Shulman, To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), which is excerpted in Salon this week. Many of you will know Alix from her much earlier novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen. Her latest--a gut-wrenchingly true-to-life memoir this time--is breathtaking in its poignance. That's all I'll say. You can read from it right here.

And from a book publicity perspective, I'm fascinated at the way savvy authors now are doing video trailers. Alix has a wonderful one--check it out, here. And to hear Alix on writing, check out this podcast. Kudos to the ex-prom queen on each and every front.

Out of the Woods (Notes from a Writing Retreat)

So in spite of the fact that someone put a rather important convention and tons of enticing coverage smack in the middle of this writing retreat I'm on, I've finally had a little breakthrough. After a few days of a hellish start out here in writer's paradise, I'm settling in on my chapter and slowly making headway. The whole experience has got me thinking about how fragile one's sense of progress can be when one has chosen, for whatever fercockte (Yiddish for nutty) idea, to be a writer.

For anyone who's ever gotten stuck in the middle of a writing project--meaning, in other words, anyone who seriously writes--a few upbeat quotes to share this morning:

"Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching." -Harlan Ellison

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." --Thomas Mann

"All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand." --George Orwell

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." --Oscar Wilde

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia." -~E.L. Doctorow

Hey wait--all the writing-is-hell quotes I could find were by guys. Got a favorite writing-is-hell quote by a woman? I know they're out there. Please feel free to illuminate us and share in comments.

Drum Roll Please...

It's live! It's live! My personal website is now live at: www.deborahsiegel.net

I'll likely change the domain name to my name, since the GWP blog is going group and all, but that's where the individual stuff lives for now. I've listed upcoming talks and past writings and all the usual suspects, and now info on the consulting and coaching and training that I do is listed there too.

For those of you needing to make (or redo) websites, it's a Wordpress template, with a personal redesign engineered by Kristen Loveland the Brilliant. Kristen, you are a goddess. (And I hope you are getting some rest.)

Join Me @ Woodhull Nonfiction Writers Intensive Sept 5-7!

What better time to kick those new writing projects into gear than early September? Once again, I'll be joining Kristen Kemp (feature article maestro) and Catherine Orenstein (op-ed mistress) for a weekend of nonfiction instruction up at the Woodhull Institute's retreat center in Ancramdale, NY. Here's a description of the module I'm teaching:

How to Write a Book Proposal

In this module, instructor Deborah Siegel will teach the group how to take a subject about which they are passionate and generate from it an exciting, marketable, serious non-fiction book proposal. She will cover the proposal itself, the chapter outline, the bio, and the marketing section. Deborah will then walk the participants through the cycle of submission to an agent; the agent's submission of the proposal to multiple houses; the bidding process; the signing of the contract; the writing cycle; the editing and copy editing and fact checking cycle; the publishing cycle and the publicity phase of the hardback non-fiction book. She will show participants what the common mistakes are that writers make in crafting book proposals and will demonstrate the difference between an unpublishable and a highly commercial book proposal both of which are based on an identical subject.

More info on it all, including how to register, here.

Calgon Take Me Away

Ok, so my expectations for a week-long writing retreat were, dare I say, rather grand. The reality? I'm struggling. But trying to cultivate compassion and not harsh on myself too much.

The lesson here, I feel, is not so much be careful what you wish for, but be flexible. If one tactic for getting into what you're working on doesn't work, try another...right?

So today I'm working on a commentary that's due, and that's also connected to my chapter's argument. Bird by bird, as dear ole Anne Lamott would say, bird by bird.

Anyone care to share their I-was-stuck-but-now-I'm-found writing story? I'm listenin'.

Image cred

Into the Woods...Not Easily

I'm so distracted I'm so distracted--this convention comes right in the middle of a week where I've sequestered myself at a writers' retreat (blessed event!) and I'm having the DARNDEST time focusing. Fortunately, or unfortunately, perhaps, there's wireless here.

Just as ya'll helped immensely when I was at the outlining stage the other week, I turn to you, dear GWP readers, once again: Does anyone have any tips for avoiding checking convention coverage every 3 seconds? If you've got em, I'd love to hear them.

Attention Authorial Debutantes

For all you first-time authors out there, I just came upon a very cool find. The Debutante Ball is a group blog for debut authors (looks like almost exclusively women). They offer "takes on weekly bookish and not-so-bookish topics" and invite readers to "watch our collective sanity crumble as our debuts approach." Man, I know the feeling.

Thought I'd share some links from their blogroll, as they list a number of other group blogs about books that GWP readers may find of interest:

• Beatrice
• Channeling Erma
• Critical Mass
• Drunk Writer Talk
• Good Girls Kill
• Jungle Red
• Naked Authors
• Penny Dreadful
• Rocket Girls
• Writers’ Group Blog

And speaking of group blogs, I just heard a new term to describe them: "grog." I don't think I like. Sounds too much like "frog", or a drink you swig at an Irish bar, no? I think I'll stick with "group blog" when referring to the future incarnation of GWP. Unless anyone else has a suggestion? I'm open!

Where You'll Find Me in September...

Thanks to Speaking Matters, Lisa Johnson, Woodhull, and the Association for Women in Communications, here's where I'll be hanging out come September.

Hope some of you can join me!

SEPTEMBER 2 - “Girl with Keyboard: Making Waves in the Feminist Blogosphere”
University of South Carolina, Upstate
Noon workshop

“Talking ’bout My Generation: Youth, Gender, Race, Class and the 2008 Election”
University of South Carolina, Upstate
7pm talk

SEPTEMBER 5-7 - “Raise Your Voices”
Woodhull Nonfiction Writers’ Retreat
Ancramdale, NY
Workshop on nonfiction book proposals

SEPTEMBER 26 - “Women, Girls, Ladies: An Intergenerational Conversation about Work”
Association of Women in Communications Conference
Doubletree Hotel Crystal City
Washington, DC
12:45-2pm (luncheon panel)

I'm currently booking for December. To bring me to your campus, company, or organization, please email info@speakingmatters.com. Thanks!

What's Next...

Next week I'll be "shedding," as Marco tells me it's called, at a writers and artists retreat up in Massachusetts. I'll be blogging about writing process again (it was so helpful to hear your thoughts on outlining last week!) so stay tuned...Kristen will also be blogging, and I'm thrilled to announce that she will now be joining me as a regular contributing blogger each week here on GWP! More exciting changes around here coming soon. This fall, a whole new look...

Into the Woods...Part 2

Man, I hate the book proposal stage. It's so mushy! My writer friend in the woods with me today is in the final throes of her manuscript, and I have manuscript envy over here.

Thanks for those comments on my previous post (anniegirl, Renee) -- you gave me a push to give the outline thing a try today. And I have to say, it seemed far less anxiety inducing to work on an outline than it did to face a blank screen and start pushing words around on the page. Which is what I generally do, and which ends up taking me AGES.

As for my next steps, I like Renee's approach, which she describes as follows:

The key thing about that outline for me is that I use the outline to make a VERY detailed To-Do list. That is the list that I then work from in completing the work -- items on it might be as difficult/conceptual as "Restructure introduction to add in the literature on social movements...." or as simple as "Add citation to McClurg and Mueller..."

At the end of any work period, I decide on two or three things on the to-do list that I will work on the next day/work period -- so I can percolate on the conceptual tasks I've set for myself, and then I warm up on the work by doing the easier/simpler tasks.

I'm gonna give it a try. Anyone got an answer to Renee's question (see comments, previous post), about deviating from the outline once you've got it? How strictly do you outliners out there hold yourselves to it? Inquiring minds wanna know :)

Into the Woods...

I've tucked myself away at a fellow writer's house in the woods for the next two days to re-jumpstart myself on my current book proposal, which I've been away from these past few months. So in addition to some guest posts, I myself will be writing over here about, well, writing.

Since I'm all about beginnings this morning, thought I'd share this quip from James B. Stewart's Follow the Story, which I'm reading upon recommendation of my authors group (aka the Invisible Institute):

"The key to a successful lead [beginning] is quite simple: it must attract and hold readers by re-creating in their minds the same curiosity that drove you to undertake the story in the first place."

And here's Stewart's pitch for outlining:

"I have been amazed to discover how much time I have saved, and how much anxiety I have avoided, by having a clear structure in mind, if not on paper."

And I have been amazed to discover how difficult it is to get myself to outline. I'm always curious to hear about other people's processes. Tell me, dear GWP readers--many of whom I know are also writers--do you outline? Does it work for you? Tips?!

COMING SOON: Guest Posts from the Girls of Writopia Lab

So I've been spending part of this week teaching a blogging workshop for girls over at Writopia Lab. The posts these girls are writing are SO GOOD that I'm posting them here on GWP. Stay tuned for some thoughts from the next generation of thinkers and writers. They will knock your socks off. They are definitely knocking mine.

(cool logo design by Marco Siegel-Acevedo!)

Bitch is Back

So the deadline has been extended for the search for a program director at the Bitch headquarters in Portland, Oregon.

They're looking for "someone bright, with a deep talent and love for analyzing media/pop culture from a perspective rooted in social/economic justice, who’s passionate about both print publishing and newer (to us, at least) forms like online, audio, and video, someone excited about helping shape the future of the work we do at Bitch (and who recognizes Bitch’s potential), someone committed to DIY/grassroots operating, who understands Bitch’s role as both critiquing what’s crappy and praising what’s good, who’s as excited about Bitch as a multimedia organization as Bitch as a magazine."

Sound like anyone you know?

Some of the job duties associated with this position:
- Oversee the editorial and production process for the magazine
- Edit articles and help shape editorial tone and scope of magazine
- Manage writer’s agreements and payment for each issue
- Outreach, fundraising, and event planning
- Oversee editorial internship program

For more info, contact publishing@b-word.org. Deadline for apps is now August 15.

Get Your Feminism and Fashion On

Shira Tarrant, editor of the fabulous Men Speak Out, is at it again with a call for essays for a new academic anthology, this time on feminism and fashion, tentatively titled Feminism, Fashion and Flair: Confronting Hegemony with Style. Here's the description:

Fashion is a powerful way we express our politics, personalities, and preferences for who and how we love. Yet fashion can also repress freedom and sexual expression. Fashion encourages profound creativity, rebellion, and defiant self-definition while simultaneously controlling and disciplining the body. Fashion signals resistance to sexual morés and it can also promote a problematic consumer culture. Fashion creates collective identity, but also constrains individual voice. In other words, fashion contains the paradoxical potential for pleasure and subjugation, expression and conformity.

This book explores the productive tensions generated by fashion and style. We are interested in essays that take up questions of gender with special attention to race, class, sexuality, age, and ethnicity. This collection blends theory and pop culture analysis in exciting ways, focusing on contemporary trends and controversies.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
Theories of agency, style, and the presentation of self
Performing identity: race, class, gender and sexuality through style
Consumerist pleasure and anxiety
Fashion production in the context of global capital and trade
Bois, grrls, trannies and styles of queerness
Hardcore, metro, punk, and khakis: constructing masculinities through fashion
Body art and ethnic appropriations
Debates in plastic surgery and re-fashioning the body
Class identity and decorating domestic space
Feminist fashion: debates over style and politics
The ethics of green production and marketing
Everyday pornography and fashion fetish
Virtual style and online identities
Material culture and craft in a postmodern world
Slumming and radical chic: tensions of authenticity and irony
Vintage and thrift fashion: nostalgia and class signifiers
DIY Style: fashion off the corporate grid

Deadline for abstracts is August 15, 2008.

Format for abstracts: Word document, double-spaced, between 300 and 500 words. Include contact information and short bio.

Send to: FashionBook1@yahoo.com

Shira Tarrant
Assistant Professor
Women’s Studies Department
California State University, Long Beach

and

Marjorie Jolles
Assistant Professor
Women’s & Gender Studies Program
Roosevelt University

COMING SOON: Off the Shelf

Heads up over here about another guest poster coming to you next week, one who I am thrilled (THRILLED!) to announce will be contributing regularly here at GWP with a column featuring reviews of newly released books, called "Off the Shelf."

Elline Lipkin (pictured left) is a poet and nonfiction writer. Her first book, The Errant Thread, was chosen by Eavan Boland to receive the Kore Press First Book Award and was published in 2006. She is currently working on a book about girls for Seal Press and will be a Visiting Scholar with the Center for Research on Women at UCLA in the fall. She recently taught at UC Berkeley where she was a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Beatrice Bain Research Group.

Watch for Elline's review next week of Pamela Paul's latest,
Parenting, Inc, a book that investigates "the whirligig of marketing hype, peer pressure, and easy consumerism that spins parents into purchasing overpriced products and raising overprotected, overstimulated, and over-provided-for children." Parents, yes, and especially, perhaps, mothers.

And with that, I am signing off for reals--to go get married!!!

Where I'm Teaching Next: Woodhull, Sept 5-7

Last weekend's nonfiction writers retreat at the Woodhull house in Ancramdale was very energizing, and I wanted to send a shout out to all the participants (hi Lara! hi May! hi Leeat!). I absolutely loved working with everyone. And here's info on the next one:

Raise Your Voice
The Woodhull Institute Prepares Women to Be Leaders on the Page

Women are underrepresented as nonfiction authors and opinion writers. In a long weekend of writing instruction and one-on-one critique from expert instructors Kristen Kemp, Catherine Orenstein, and Deborah Siegel, participants gain fundamental knowledge of Op-ed pieces, features, book proposals, and pitching ideas.

When/Where: September 5-7, 2008 (Ancramdale, NY)

Early Registration: $455

Regular Registration: $495*

Learn more and register today! Substantial discounts are available to alumnae and members.

Would the Queens of Nonfiction Please Stand Up

Check out this article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, "Where Are the Queens of Nonfiction?" by Anne Trubek, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition at Oberlin College. It's excellent. And majorly depressing. Trubek riffs on the title of Ira Glass' new book, The New Kings of Nonfiction, an anthology intended to commemorate and canonize our current golden age of nonfiction writing. Writes Trubek,

Huh? Glass is a trailblazing icon of alternative, indie culture, a very with-it, 21st-century guy. What was he thinking? Why did he choose a gender-specific title for his book?

She goes on to do some byline counting:

A few years ago, two women — Ruth Davis Konigsberg, a writer and former editor at Glamour, and Elizabeth Merrick, director of a women's literary reading series — tallied the ratio of male to female contributors at those four magazines on their own Web sites. The numbers called attention to a significant gender disparity. According to Konigsberg, on womentk.com, during a 12-month period (from September 2005 to September 2006), there were 1,446 men's bylines and 447 women's bylines. At Harper's, the ratio was nearly seven to one, at The New Yorker four to one, and at The Atlantic 3.6 to one.

I did my own tally. From May 2007 through May 2008, Harper's published 232 men and 51 women (a ratio of about 4.5 to one) and The Atlantic published 158 men to 49 women (a ratio of about three to one). In 2008, The New Yorker has published 185 men and 51 women (about 3.5 to one). Things are not getting much better.

Then analyzes what does make it into print:

As disheartening as those statistics are, closer inspection of what women do publish in such magazines makes the disparity even more disturbing. Many of the women's contributions are not features. (At The New Yorker, they might be a Talk of the Town piece, a poem, a cartoon, or a dance review.) And many are about being a woman. For example, the March 2008 issue of The Atlantic contains three substantial pieces by women. One, by Eliza Griswold, is both political and reported, and it does not integrate her personal experience. But the other two use personal experiences to make claims about women's lives. And in an almost absurd twist, both argue that women should start settling for less.

That other Atlantic piece of course is "Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough," by Lori Gottlieb.

For a great analysis of what gives, read the rest.

Want to Write for HuffPo?

This just in from The Huffington Post, where I occasionally post commentary when I feel like not getting paid. Publishing at HuffPo is a great opportunity for exposure, but for working journalists, well, let's just say I've slowed down my contributions over time. Nevertheless, it is a WONDERFUL opp for visibility and I can't recommend it enough for those seeking to break into print. So here's the announcement about their new initiative, because I definitely want to help them spread the word (and because I hugely admire the new initiative's clever logo, and because I recently met -- and loved -- Eat the Post editor Rachel Sklar!):

It's the electoral race of the century. Political maps are being redrawn, and rules are getting rewritten across the board. Fundraising records have been broken. The candidates are even comparing the sizes of their email lists.

The mainstream media is tripping over itself to report on every last press release and campaign announcement. But do any of us REALLY know what's going on?

With you helping from the frontlines, the Huffington Post can change campaign coverage. OffTheBus is HuffPost's citizen-powered and -produced election site, and we're depending on readers like you to tip us to what's going on or, better yet, to write up the stories you think should be covered.

WOULD YOU HELP US?
Chances are you're a political junkie. That's why you got involved in HuffPost's community as a commenter. But why stop there?

By becoming a member of HuffPost's OffTheBus, you can publish op-eds and news stories to the Huffington Post. You get first-hand access to editors. The best citizen reporting is cross-posted to the politics page and homepage. Or, you can jump into our collaborative reporting assignments, like our Superdelegate Investigation or OffTheBus Party Map.

GET PUBLISHED AT HUFFINGTON POST.
Last October OffTheBus members dropped in on Sen. Barack Obama's Nationwide Canvassing Day from more than two dozen locations. Hours later every observer independently relayed to us that the economy, not the war, was the voting issue. Twenty-four hours later we reported on the significance of the economy, beating the mainstream media to the punch by a few weeks.

As our numbers grow, the same collaborative reporting model that got HuffPost's OffTheBus the scoop on the economy may tell us a lot more about what's happening nationwide.

YOU GAME? JOIN HUFFPOST'S OFFTHEBUS.
Click here to sign up.