BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
Here's some notable stuff on the interwebs:
How worshipping a 'Mother Goddess' can disempower women at The Establishment:
"I never expected my childlessness would leave me feeling ostracized by feminist spirituality."
Shirley Jackson's disappearing act at New Republic:
"Jackson once billed herself as 'the only contemporary writer who is a practicing amateur witch.'"
Alexandra Kleeman and Lincoln Michel conversed at BOMB:
"You don't need a monster to be weird, you don't need tentacled rats coming out of the walls."
Literary Hub has some October reading recommendations. Get it.
Rogue Agent's new issue is out. Melissa Eleftherion kills it:
"Cave
where the ocean broke
in tiny waves
it came crashing"
Study links birth control to depression, via The Washington Post:
"Women who used the combined birth control pill, a mix of estrogen and progestin, were 23 percent more likely to be prescribed anti-depressants than nonusers, and progestin-only pills raised the likelihood by 34 percent. With the patch, antidepressant use doubled; risk increased by 60 percent for vaginal rings and 40 percent for hormonal IUDs."
PJ Harvey is working on an ambitious new multimedia project with poetry written by young refugees and migrants:
Tori Amos talks about sexual assault and her songwriting for the new documentary Audrie & Daisy:
"One night during that 1994 tour something awful happened — a girl fainted during the show. She was brought backstage. I could see she was young, underage even. After she came to, she said to me, 'If I go home tonight, my stepfather will rape me, just like he did last night and the night before.'"
Layne Ransom on her sexual assault at Quaint Magazine:
"He let go after seven or eight seconds, and realizing what he’d done corralled me with his arms, pulling me upstairs toward our apartment while I gasped over and over: You choked me. You choked me.
Later I found out the proper term is strangled, but choked feels like how it happened–one heartless syllable.
I thought about trying to slip his grasp, but what if I couldn’t? What if he hurt me in return for trying? He seemed less aggressive as we lurched upstairs, apologizing and making excuses, and I did not want to risk angering him again."
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (forthcoming 2016, ELJ Publications) & Xenos (forthcoming 2017, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Feminist Wire, BUST, Pouch, and elsewhere. She also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets.