Exciting news! Persistence co-editor and butch storyteller extraordinaire Ivan E. Coyote has a collection of stories for young adults coming out this spring. The book’s called One in Every Crowd and it’ll be out in April.
(cover art by the very talented Elisha Lim)
Shit People Say to Femmes
We sincerely hope that no one in your life says these things to you. If they do, however, you might want to remind them of this. Or this. Or this.
Call Me They by Elisha Lim and Coco Riot
Elisha Lim (the artist who drew our beautiful book cover) and Coco Riot collaborated on this stop-motion animation video, “Call Me They.” They dedicate it to their trans community.
Elisha and Coco post new trans pride art on their blog every Thursday.
Help Tara Hardy, amazing queer femme poet, get well!
Tara Hardy is a working class queer femme poet who writes and teaches in Seattle. She’s also one of our heroes, and a dear friend.
Tara’s recently been having serious health problems - basically, she’s got incredibly low platelets (cells that help our blood clot). To help Tara, a full-time working artist who earns her living from writing, performing, and teaching, cover the cost of her medical expenses, a group of Tara’s friends have organized a fund drive. Want to know more? Want to support an amazing femme artist? Check out Boost Tara’s Platelets.
(The video embedded here is Tara performing her poem “Femme Mystique.” Another favourite of ours is “Femme Alphabet.”)
Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme recognized in 2012 Stonewall Book Awards
We love librarians (and lesbrarians). A lot. They’re defenders of intellectual freedom and they work hard to keep our libraries stocked with queer and trans literature.
So naturally we were super delighted to find out that the American Library Association named Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme an Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award Honor Book as part of the 2012 Stonewall Book Awards (which recognize English-language works of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience).
Thanks, American Library Association! Thanks, librarians!
Photo credit: Sarah Leavitt
Flamingo Rampant! Gender Independent Kids Books
Persistence contributor S. Bear Bergman has launched an amazing new project - Flamingo Rampant!, a children’s book series featuring trans characters. You can support this project through Kickstarter. Tell your friends!
In December Ivan appeared on the CBC radio program Definitely Not the Opera, telling a story about an unexpected gift.
Videographer: Ken Stewart
The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
We both just finished reading The Chronology of Water, a memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch. The writing is so beautiful, so powerful that it brought us to tears more than once. Do yourself a favour and add this book to your 2012 reading list.
Rae Spoon fans! Lovers of the song “Stand By Your Trans!”
It’s your lucky day, ‘cause you can stream Rae Spoon’s forthcoming album “I Can’t Keep All of Our Secrets” on the exclaim! website.
Femme activist and author Minnie Bruce Pratt recently published an essay called “The Struggle to Write.” In it, she talks about the connections between art and activism. You can read the piece in full here.
“What kind of woman, what kind of person is she who has not been imagined yet? We knew only—from memory and scraps of story and flimsy pages—that we were the daughters of the great mass liberation movements of the United States in the 20th century. We knew that living on within us were the people who had fought the labor union battles of the ’30s, the people who shaped the Black civil rights and other national liberation movements of the ’50s and ’60s, the anti–Vietnam war and women’s liberation movements of the ’60s and ’70s.
We were creating in a space that had been cleared by these people, those struggles, a space into which we were writing our lives and histories.”
- Minnie Bruce Pratt, The Struggle to Write
Photo credit: Leslie Feinberg
