Category: books & writing

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Word A Day

I love my Word A Day calendar. You rip off a page every day & get a new word — they’re not often new to me, but my vocabulary has definitely improved since I got into this habit. What I do is recycle pages of words I already use regularly AND words that I don’t think I’ll ever use or are too silly or specialized.

The others I leave in a stack on my desk and whenever I’m waiting – for a download, an upload, or for a game to load – I read them over & write sentences using them in my head.

Here’s some recent favorites:

  1. blandish – to coax with flattery
  2. abusage – improper use of words
  3. tyro – novice
  4. henotheism – worship of one god without disbelief in others
  5. deliquesce – to become fluid or soft with aging, as in mushrooms

An undgrad and gender studies tyro’s abusage was an attempt to blandish me into giving him a perfect grade on his paper, but instead I corrected him by explaining it’s nauseated, not nauseous.

(10 points to anyone who can use henotheism and deliquesce in one sentence that actually makes sense!)

I know you can get them emailed to you, but I kind of love the flash cards feeling of the word-per-page design.

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Honored Finalist: Yours Truly

As it turns out, A Room of Her Own Foundation chose a short list of their “Honored Finalists” and yours truly is on it. Yes, I used my legal name, and someday I’ll say more about that, but you’ll be able to tell from the bio that I’m still me, and I am quite honored to see myself in this list.

I’ve been a writer a long time & it’s really something to receive this kind of recognition – and that from other women writers and a foundation created precisely to fund people like me. What’s more interesting about this award is that it’s based on the writing, of course, but also on community service.

It’s certainly a lovely way to end Women’s History Month.

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Buy Books!

Some reports on book sales in this economy are none too cheery: GalleyCat reports on Books a Million, Barnes & Noble, and Random House.

Know who publishes the books you love the most and make sure you check out their catalogs and buy their books. Publishers need brand loyalty as much as the next retailer.

Of course I’m published by Seal Press, who rock. Their current Yes Means Yes, edited by Jessica Valenti and featuring a piece by Julia Serano, looks particularly ground-breaking.

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Lambda Literary Awards

This year’s Lambda Literary Awards Finalists have been posted. In the Transgender category:

  • 10,000 Dresses, Marcus Ewert & Rex Ray, Seven Stories Press
  • Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word), Thea Hillman, Manic D Press
  • Two Truths and a Lie, Scott Schofield, Homofactus Press
  • Boy with Flowers, Ely Shipley, Barrow Street Press
  • Transgender History, Susan Stryker, Seal Press

I highly recommend the last of these, which I’ll admit is the only one I’ve read this year, but I’m hoping to read Scott Schofield’s soonly.

In LGBT Studies, that Tomboys book is up for an award, & I hope it wins. It is the book I am most looking forward to reading now that I’m not teaching an excessive amount.

Even cooler is to see Diane and Jake Anderson-Minshall’s joint effort Blind Curves in the Lesbian Mystery category, and good luck to them!

(But I still think they need way more categories for transgender – maybe trans studies & trans memoir/other non-fiction to start, for instance. Surely there’s enough out there these days, & for years when there isn’t, they can just ignore the category.)

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Old Guys from Brooklyn

What I’d really like to do for the next year is find all the guys who are in their 80s or thereabouts who grew up in or spent significant time in Brooklyn & write down all their stories.

Really. Anyone know of any grants that would enable me to do that?

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Agile Gene Splitting

“Similarity is the shadow of difference. Two things are similar by virtue of their difference from another, or different by virtue of one’s similarity to a third. So it is with individuals. A short man is different from a tall man, but two men seem similar if contrasted with a woman. So it is with species. A man and a woman may be very different, but by comparison with a chimpanzee, it is their similarities that strike the eye – the hairless skin, the upright stance, the prominent nose. A chimpanzee, in turn, is similar to a human being when contrasted with a dog: the face, the hands, the 32 teeth, and so on. And a dog is like a person to the extend that both are unlike a fish. Difference is the shadow of similarity.”

Gorgeous, eh? It’s the first paragraph of Matt Ridley’s The Agile Gene, a book I’m currently teaching in Lawrence University’s Freshman Studies program.

It articulates in a new way the old adage about lumpers & splitters, or hedgehogs & foxes, but then it adds what I’d call a postmodern spin: lumpers can’t be lumpers unless there are eras when splitters hold sway.

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(Was a) Contender

I got a phonecall today, just moments after Betty finished talking to my Trans Lives course. It was a woman from A Room of Her Own Foundation <start holding breath>, who wanted to talk to me about my application for the $50k grant that they offer yearly.

She wanted me to know that I was among the top 6 finalists this year, and that the committee were very impressed with my work and hoped that I would keep writing.

& Then she clarified that I was in the top 6 finalists but had not won it. </end holding breath>

That close. Yes, I am happy to hear I was in such esteemed ranks. They received 750 applications, & someone who is better at math can tell me what percentage I made it into as one of the top 6. My name and my work will be featured in all the publicity materials about the award, and that’s cool too.

But wow. $50k. That close nearly hurts.

Still, I am incredibly pleased to be recognized as – well, as a contender.

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Story

One of my Christmas presents to myself is the news that this journal picked up a piece of mine that will show up in their Spring issue. It’s called “Cat of Nine Tale” — and yes, it is about DO & Aurora.

Working on this piece was one of the very many things I was doing this fall that kept me busy.