Ariel Gore, The Wayward Writer

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When your dream and creative passion is to write, how do you succeed without selling out or selling yourself short? Ariel Gore has spent her life solving this puzzle, writing and organizing her way towards a creative utopian vision, where storytelling is a form of resistance and writing is an outsider art. In this follow-up to her national bestseller How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead, Gore offers a lyrical call to literary revolution paired with practical exercises. Through her own experiences and interviews with other authors, publishers, and agents, she shows you how to chart your own creative education, vanquish shame and imposter syndrome, cast off oppression, cast a spell on your readers, step into your unique powers, and build your own literary community where respect and honesty reign—and where you can be a writer and survive. Gore presents an alternative narrative structure to the patriarchal hero's journey, with a focus on tapping into myths and hidden places. She urges us to not be precious about where or when we write, or to apologize for who and what we are, or to stop short of telling the truth about our lives. The result is an impossible to ignore rallying cry for writing dangerously to create a liberatory literary utopia—and a helpful guide through the thorny landscape of publishing your work.

Includes interviews with Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Johnny Temple, Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Reyna Grande, Michelle Ruiz Keil, Jisu Kim, Adrian Shirk, Mai'a Williams, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Laura Mazer.

About the Author

Ariel Gore is a journalist, memoirist, novelist, nonfiction author, and teacher. She is the author of 10 books, including F*ck Happiness, and the creator of the zine Hip Mama, a winner of the American Alternative Press award. Her anthology Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City won the LAMBDA Literary Award in 2010 and her own writing has been called eloquent, sensitive, and revolutionary. She also keeps a website, www.arielgore.com and teaches online workshops at Ariel Gore's School for Wayward Writers. She lives and works in Portland, OR, and Santa Fe, NM.

Fatima van Hattum

Fatima van Hattum is a researcher, writer, poet, and comic artist from Abiquiu, New Mexico. Fatima is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Language, Literacy & Sociocultural Studies at University of New Mexico and works as Program Co-Director of NewMexicoWomen.Org, the statewide women’s fund. She holds an MSc in Globalisation and Development Studies from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Her academic work, commentary, and satirical comics have been published in: Critical Inquiry in Language Studies: An International Journal; Intersections: Critical Issues in Education; Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas En Letras Y Cambio Social; and openDemocracy. Her poetry has been published in CALYX Journal, apt, Portland Review, and New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims Anthology, edited my Kazim Ali. She is a member of Alas de Agua art collective and contributor to the collective’s ongoing Poetry of the People zine.