Sorry for the lack of links this morning! We at Switchback are recovering from last night's Karaoke Idol, where we came in second! Now, here are some belated links to get your through the weekend! * Wikipedia editors were recently caught removing female novelists from the "American Novelists" category, leaving the list entirely male. * Grimes has some things to say about sexism in the music industry. * American Girl dolls have lost their political edge. * The Sci-Fi/Fantasy industry has done a count of their own, finding a relatively even gender split in who's publishing, but sadly not in who's getting reviewed. * Chloe Angyal on the revolutionary power of the song "I Touch Myself." Somethin
Our Classical Heritage (2010) from Elle Collins on Vimeo. In 2010, Switchback approached several filmmakers and video artists and asked for pieces based on Switchback books, to be shown at that year's Printer's Ball. Long before I officially joined the Switchback staff, I had the pleasure of making this collage video based on Our Classical Heritage: A Homing Device by Caroline Noble Whitbeck, featuring the text of the poem "Deathwatch." I tried to illustrate the tension between life and death, the present and the past, and the dialogue between the contemporary and the classical that runs through Whitbeck's work. Elle Collins is the web coordinator for Switchback Books, as well as a graphi
1. What do you do for Switchback? I am the Gatekeeper. Which means it's my job to make sure everything we say and do is on message and reflects our opinions and beliefs as a feminist press. I also do some PR, marketing, copywriting, and general think-tanking. I guess my real title is Communications Coordinator, but Gatekeeper sounds way cooler. 2. What do you feel like you get out of working for Switchback? Switchback gives me a space to put my problem solving and writing skills to use to benefit one of my favorite things in the world: smart, talented women. I am also surrounded by a staff of smart, talented women, who inspire me and I learn from at every meeting and during every projec
Switchback author Kathleen Rooney writes about Jack Handey's relevance to contemporary poetry for the New York Times. * The Everyday Sexism Project founder Laura Bates discusses the positive and negative responses she's gotten. * Samhita Mukhopadhyay digs into feminism's branding problem. * The beginning of a new chapter in transgender literature. * Alexandra at Feministing on Dove's Real Beauty ads and the "One Direction Theory of Unknown Beauty." * West Virginia high school student Katelyn Campbell takes on her principal over a school sanctioned abstinence assembly.
"I brush the air unseen. Is life disappointing? / Yes." -Cynthia Arrieu-King, "Setsuko Hara," Manifest
Our own Marisa Crawford, author of The Haunted House, has a new book out from Immaculate Disciples Press, entitled 8th Grade Hippie Chic. * The seventh and final installment of the Women Publishers Roundtable from Delirious Hem (featuring editors from Switchback Books, dancing girl press, Birds of Lace, Patasola, Sundress, & Noctuary Press). * "My So-Called 'Post-Feminist' Life in Arts and Letters," in which author and photographer Deborah Copaken Kogan tells it like it still is. * An interview with poets Lisa Russ Spaar, Aracelis Girmay, and Daisy Fried at Boston Review. * A tribute to the recently departed Mariam K. Chamberlain, the godmother of academic feminism. * Laura Hudson explains t
1. What do you do for Switchback? I organize fun things for people to do and come up with ideas to thank the people who give us donations and ways to impress upon people how very much we need/value their support. 2. What do you feel like you get out of working for Switchback? I believe poetry is important to society and that the voices of women are important. I’m less concerned with what I get out of working for Switchback than I am hoping that, through that work, what everyone can get out of amplifying women’s voices will become infinitely clear. 3. Where are you from, and how important is where you’re from to you? I grew up in Southern California. But I was born in Albuquerque, New Me
Delirious Hem posts the sixth installment of the Women Publishers Roundtable (featuring editors from Switchback Books, dancing girl press, Birds of Lace, Patasola, Sundress, & Noctuary Press). * Catherine Rottenberg calls out the Sheryl Sandberg model of feminism: "devoid of social justice." * Jessica Bozek on complexity in motherhood narratives. * Jennifer Lai offers Sylvia Plath's children's book as proof of the poet's humanity. * Monica Torres wrestles with language, education, and identity. * The problem with "Say No to Size Zero." s.e. smith on body policing in and out of fashion. * Here's a reading by Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, whose book Twerk just came out from Belladonna*.
For some people, it's National Poetry Month, NaPoWriMo, or even NaPoReMo. At Switchback, we're celebrating the cruelest month with a few exciting local events and one national event: Poet and 2013 Gatewood Prize judge Eileen Myles Now through June 1st Gatewood Prize EVERYWHERE Give us something good to read! Our editors read every manuscript that’s submitted to the Gatewood Prize and we want nothing more than to greet each morning with a new crop of daring, lovely, and downright exciting manuscripts. Won’t you send us something? This year's judge is the AMAZING and TALENTED Eileen Myles!! April 12, 7:30pm fAWP Publishers Reading (presented by our friends at Chicago Writers House & Curbside S
Introducing Gertrude Stein—Gertie for short—Switchback's official mascot and spokesdog. "My heart never fully pumps out its sorry." -Cynthia Arrieu-King, "Poem to My Younger Self," Manifest
Sorry if we freaked anyone out! At Switchback, we love April Fools Day, and we love you, our readers!
Switchback Books is pleased to announce that the feminist poetry press will publish actor/director/musician/handyman/model/writer James Franco’s second full-length poetry book, CUNTSTUFF: A Feminist Lexicon, in September of 2014. Switchback Books believes that publishing exclusively women constitutes a feminist act, but the press has now decided that publishing James Franco is also a feminist act. Franco is the first cisgender man the press has ever endeavored to publish. “It’s a bold move for us, and one we think will pay off,” says Switchback Books Co-Founder and Editor Hanna Andrews. “While those who have long supported our mission to challenge gender inequity in literary publishing may h