Category Archives: Personal Empowerment

Since coming onto the music scene back in 2014, Halsey has proved shes not afraid to get personal.

The singer has been famously outspoken about her bisexuality, her personal experiences with sexual assault and rape, anda year after suffering a miscarriage onstage in 2015even her reproductive health. Recently, though, Halsey revealed that she wishes shed kept the latter to herself.

In an interview with The Guardian published at the end of February, Halsey opened up about her miscarriages, a part of her personal journey that made her the target of online abuse. Its the most inadequate Ive ever felt, she said. Here I am achieving this out-of-control life, and I cant do the one thing Im biologically put on this earth to do. Then I have to go onstage and be this sex symbol of femininity and empowerment? It is demoralising.

The singer has endometriosis, something she publicly spoke about dealing with in 2016. Endometriosis is a disorder characterized by the growth of endometrial tissueuterine liningin abnormal places such as the fallopian tubes and ovaries. The condition can cause infertility, but its hallmark is sometimes debilitating, chronic painpainful menstruation, urination, bowel movements, and sexual intercourse.

This pain, which Halsey herself has called excruciating, was also a source of anxiety for the singer before she was diagnosed. At first, medical professionals thought she was dehydrated, stressed, or dealing with chronic fatigue. When the singer was finally given the news that she had endometriosis, she recalled feeling relieved, as well as dispirited by the realization shed have to live with the condition forever.

Two years later on a special segment of The Doctors, Halsey shared the story of her onstage miscarriage, caused by her endometriosis, from a few years before. The sensation of looking a couple hundred teenagers in the face while you're bleeding through your clothes and still having to do the show, and realizing in that moment [] I never want to make that choice ever again of doing what I love or not being able to because of this disease, she told the doctors.

She followed by revealing to them that the experience pushed her to seek treatment and undergo surgery. I feel a lot better, she told her interviewer.

Despite Halseys willingness to share her diagnosis and use her celebrity status to educate others on endometriosis, her bravery wasnt always met with sympathy and understanding. When she first came forward about her miscarriages, people claimed she was lying and actually had an abortion instead. Some even came to one of her shows in Toronto and held up bloody baby dolls in the crowd. Her WhatsApp account got hacked and she received multiple pictures of fetus parts.

Still, the singer continues to share her struggle with the disorder and several miscarriages, along with their impact on her dream of being a mother. In her new song More, released this past January, she sings about her intense desire to have a child and the feelings of hopelessness and hopefulness surrounding successfully conceiving. One of its most touching lines is And when you decide it's your time to arrive / I've loved you for all of my life.

Its easy to take away from Halseys story that celebrities like her wield the power to bring important publicity to sensitive issues like miscarriage and reproductive disorders given their major public platforms. Thats true, but I believe Halseys candidness about her feelings of inadequacy following her miscarriages bring something else to light: the link we reinforce between womanhood and maternity.

As women, we often place a lot of our value on our bodies: their sizes, shapes, what they do for us, and what they can sometimes lack. For some, the body is a source of power, pleasure, and joy. For the majority of women, its also a source of trauma, inadequacy, and pain, which can bring up conflicting emotions. Womens bodies are vehicles that carry with them the stress of not being able to squish into the right pair of jeans, or the fear of being violated without our consent. They can also be things that house lifelong cycles of pain, through menstruation, giving birth, miscarriage, or menopause.

For Halsey, the female body is seemingly defined, in part, by its biological function to bring life into the world. So, for her, its exceedingly frustrating to struggle with infertility. As she said in her interview with The Guardian, its demoralizing for her to go onstage and be an empowered sex symbol of femininity when she cant do the thing she feels she should biologically be able to.

In other words, she seems to feel that her womanhood is threatened by her lack of control over her body and its workings.

The heartening part of Halseys difficult story is that, when women share stories like Halseys, our collective concept of womanhood can expand. Miscarriage or endometriosis doesnt have to be seen as an anomaly or unwomanly. Instead it becomes part of the larger experience of being a female-bodied person. In the same way, being inclusive of age, ability, race, class, gender identity, and sexual orientation opens up our idea of womanhood for everybody who identifies as a woman. It makes the umbrella term woman more inclusive.

Given the personal nature of her struggles, Halsey has every right to feel demoralized about her situation. Shes also allowed to wish she never told anyone. But I hope that she knows that, by being honest about her experience with a miscarriage, shes helped to expand the concept of womanhood.

The ability to reproduce and the inability to do so is all part of being a woman. Halseys struggle isnt something that excludes her from being a womanits something that expands what being a woman means.

Originally posted here:

Halsey's miscarriage story expands the definition of womanhood - Queen's Journal

Lady Gaga is publishing an anthology of personal stories by young people calledChannel Kindness,which is scheduled for release on Sept. 2, 2020.

The collection, which also features messages of empowerment from the pop star, is all about sharing the power of kindness.

"Channel Kindnessis an embodiment of the everyday acts of kindness that uplift communities and instill a sense of hope in each of us. If it inspires one act of kindness, then we've accomplished our mission," saidLady Gaga in a press release.

Stories include a young writer who discovered the power of self-love after being bullied at school, someone who started a movement to lift the stigma around mental health and another who created safe spaces for LGBTQ youth.

The book is part of Lady Gaga'sBorn This Way Foundation, which she co-founded in 2012 with her mother Cynthia Germanotta.

Lady Gaga has won 11 Grammy Awards, as well as two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. She recently released the singleStupid Love, which will be on her sixth albumChromatica.

Original post:

Lady Gaga is publishing an anthology of inspirational stories by youth - CBC.ca

Max Deeb March 10th, 2020 - 12:00 PM

If theres one thing to be said about the Birds of Prey soundtrack album, it is that it is chock full of energy. Artist after artist brings their all in what ultimately results in a myriad of invigorated performances. Birds of Prey: The Album, composed of a wide variety of female artists, comes as the soundtrack partner to the recently released Warner Brothers film by the same name. While obviously struggling through the same general turmoil of commercialized production that any soundtrack album will inevitably deal with, it is a decent showing of each involved artists personal style and approach to the thematic concepts of empowerment and chaos. That being said, there are a few major hang-ups within this album that just cannot go unnoticed.

This album is very much in the theme of powerful female figures. Nearly every song is modeled off this general theme. However, unfortunately for the message, the content itself is often utterly lacking in depth. Despite extremely high production values, choruses are often undeniably clich, rock themes are heavily overplayed and single-line repetition is at an all-time high. And yetthis album ultimately shifts between stages of palatability.

The album itself opens rather robustly with a number of hard-nosed tracks from stand-out artists such as the much loved Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion, meant to titillate and excite new audiences and their previously existing fans. The middle of the album seems to be a bit empty, with no tracks of worthy mention jumping out as hits nor outliers. Each song is nearly a full departure from its predecessor; however, the latter half of the album tends to cool down a bit, likely reflecting the post-climax tone of the film itself.

Insomuch as this, it is not until just prior to the albums conclusion that tracks such as Summer Walkers Im Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby and Jurnee Smollett-Bells rendition of James Browns Its a Mans Mans World provide a breath of fresh air to listeners, as more authenticity is returned to the lyrical contentrather than what can, at times, feel like overproduced pop lines written merely for a check. These specific tracks work to expand the rooted and foundational genre-based elements within this album but do so in a way that respects the trajectory and arc within this album relative to the film. Through the incorporation of this albums more practiced elements, the ultimate result elevates this album to something that will undoubtedly be enjoyed by many.

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Album Review: Various Artists Birds of Prey: The Album - mxdwn.com

By Sophie Bateman*

Opinion - It's a sad thing to realise the ideology you once defined yourself by no longer holds the same urgent pull.

"Choice feminism" has ground the movement to a halt (stock picture). Photo: AFP

Like many women my age, I was introduced to feminism in my late teens through the infinite blue scroll of Tumblr. Dominated by other highly-strung youngsters prone to cancelling people for minor transgressions, it was an imperfect place to hone political praxis. But the seething anger of thousands discovering the extent of women's oppression made for a chaotic, passionate and boundary-pushing realm of ideas.

Tumblr's not what it once was, and neither is the women's movement. Feminism in 2020 is scrubbed clean, dolled up and wearing a $100 t-shirt that says 'Yass Queen' in pink italics. The once derisive label "feminist" is now used to sell everything from dating apps to sex toys. But its current mainstream appeal masks the fact that the movement has no momentum, no goals and no new ideas.

"Choice feminism", in which every decision a woman makes is virtuous and beyond scrutiny, has ground the movement to a halt by trapping feminists in a self-defeating loop of the empty word "empowerment". My choice to wear makeup that makes me more conventionally attractive, my choice to take my husband's name, my choice to take on the bulk of the childcare responsibilities - in an earlier age, such decisions would be seen as conforming to oppressive societal expectations. Today, it is sanctimoniously branded as "liberation."

It's what I choose and therefore it's empowering, despite conforming to oppressive societal expectations.

Rather than shaking off the shackles of patriarchal values, we're bound to them ever more tightly under the guise of inclusion. Feminists once rejected the notion of beauty as a woman's only worth, now they insist all women are beautiful.

People are so fixated on seeing women in positions of previously unheld power (First female president! First Marvel movie with a female lead! First all-female paramilitary death squad!) that they fail to consider whether such power should be held by anyone.

The intoxicating thrill of representation, the hint of your own potential for greatness in an inspiring figure that looks like you, tends to blind us to the faults of the system being led by said figure. New Zealand has had three female leaders, a huge number for a young democracy, and none of them managed to shift the country's staggering rates of domestic violence.

The problems with today's feminist movement are inseparable from capitalism's insatiable need to co-opt and commodify political energy. "Feminists should end our dangerous liaison with marketisation," American theorist Nancy Fraser warned in 2012, as though foretelling the sea of Frida Kahlo pins and "Smash the Patriarchy" t-shirts and clitoris-shaped necklaces that would flood the market in the coming years.

Repulsively childish portmanteaus have elevated minor moments of social dissonance to the forefront of the discourse - manspreading, mansplaining. It's personal branding rather than revolutionary rhetoric, and the inflation of personal grievances over structural oppression has given way to an entirely self-absorbed form of feminism.

This week's onslaught of tweets from (overwhelmingly white) American women possessed by the vengeful ghost of Hillary Clinton, announcing they're switching their support from Elizabeth Warren to Joe Biden to spite the 'Bernie bros' they accuse of misogyny, encapsulates the problem perfectly. Ignoring that the ailing Biden will lose soundly to Donald Trump, these women are making yet another empowering choice: denying women in more desperate circumstances the liberation of universal healthcare, free education and a humane immigration system.

Elizabeth Warren Photo: AFP

Feminism might not be dying, but it is very sick. The movement has splintered along generational fault lines, with Second Wavers unable to reconcile the physical nature of their political triumphs - birth control, abortion rights, sexual freedom - with the introduction of transgender women into the sisterhood. Meanwhile millennials and Gen Z are turning away from feminism in favour of a greater affinity with socialism, a mass awakening in class consciousness bringing to light that there are other barriers to human flourishing that mean women will only ever be as free as the poorest among us.

If older women are peeling away in favour of radical transphobia and younger women see the movement as shallow and irrelevant, the only feminists left will be those comfortable few guided by their own self-interest rather than any desire for tangible change.

The way forward can only be for feminism to become more challenging, less comforting and a whole lot uglier. No more coddling women so they never have to question their choices, no more celebrating figureheads at the expense of collective action, no more Handmaid's Tale costumes please god I'm begging you.

The movement would benefit enormously from more acknowledgement of the existential anguish of womanhood (something the abrasive American writer Andrea Long Chu successfully captured while documenting her transition) rather than an insistence we're all queens who can do no wrong.

There is no perfect feminism. Everything we do is a massive push towards a goal that still seems unattainably distant. It has to go "too far", it has to demand radical change on a political and societal level, it has to try things that are unpopular in order to overcome the inevitable pushback.

Decent society has grown far too comfortable with feminism, and feminism in turn has grown weak and self-satisfied. It's time to take off our pussy hats, put down our Nasty Woman mugs and start genuinely repulsing people once more. Maybe then we'll actually get something done.

*Sophie Bateman is a New Zealand journalist currently based in London.

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Feminism now 'personal branding rather than revolutionary rhetoric' - RNZ

Roxane Gay. Courtesy CSUDHRoxane Gay keynote speaker at annual Cal State University Dominguez Hills Womens Conference

CARSON (MNS)Celebrated author,New York Times opinion writer, and the first African American woman to write for Marvel Comics, Roxane Gay, will keynote the 7th Annual Womens Conference, March 18, at California State University, Dominguez Hills, 1000 E. Victoria St., Carson.

In 2016, Gayco-wrote the acclaimed six-part Marvel Comics series World of Wakanda, a spin-off toBlack Panther.

She is also author of the best-selling essay collection,Bad Feminist, and short story collect,Difficult Women.In her keynote address, she is expected to discuss the trajectory of modern feminism, and her personal experiences in publishing.

The daylong conference will occur from 9:30 a.m. to8p.m., on the third floor of Loker Student Union, and will feature empowering sessions on diversity, equality, and unity to help women address critical issues in the workforce and in life. The conference is free and open to the public.

Guests will have a unique opportunity to engage with experts during workshops and panels such as Identity and Professionalism, Feminism in Practice, and Empowerment Self-Defense. For a full list of the sessions and activities, visitcsudh.edu/womensconference.

The lunch lecture begins at 11:30 a.m. and will be followed by a Q&A and a book signing with Gay.

Space is limited and advance registration for the conference is recommended. To register, visitcsudh.edu/womensconference.

For more information, emailwomensctr2@csudh.edu.

Metropolis News Service.

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Author Roxane Gay conference speaker - Compton Herald

The Savannah College of Art and Design is presenting Patrick Kelly, the Journey, which is an exhibition of work by the multidisciplinary artist Derrick Adams and is on view through July 19 at the SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion and Film in Atlanta.

Adams is a Brooklyn-based artist who works in painting and sculpture as well as performance, video and sound, SCAD FASH noted in a statement adding that his work focuses on the fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, exploring the shape-shifting forces of popular culture on self-image.

Patrick Kelly, the Journey emerges from Adams extensive exploration into the archive of the late African-American fashion designer Patrick Kelly (1954-90), SCAD FASH stated. A prolific and groundbreaking artist, Kelly was famously the first American to be admitted to the Chambre Syndicale du Prt--Porter, the prestigious governing body of the French ready-to-wear industry. Adams immersed himself in the Kelly archive at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, where he discovered a trove of correspondence, sketches, swatches, photographs and other memorabilia.

SCAD FASH noted that the archive also included a proposal for a book about Kellys life written by his friend, the esteemed poet Maya Angelou, who delivered the address and received an honorary degree at SCAD Commencement in 1998.

Here,Derrick Adams is interviewed by Alexandra Sachs, executive director of SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion and FIlm and SCAD Atlanta exhibitions.

Alexandra Sachs: The title of your new exhibition at SCAD FASH Patrick Kelly, the Journey draws from a book proposal about Patricks life written by his friend, Dr. Maya Angelou. What parallels did you discover between your personal journey as an artist and Patricks?

Derrick Adams: I was already somewhat familiar with Patrick from seeing him in my sisters fashion magazines when I was a kid. What I discovered through my research were glimpses of his thought process and certain gestures that lead to finished objects. Through other materials, I learned general similarities like both of us moving to more metropolitan areas for greater opportunities and remaining receptive to input and advice from leaders in our midst.

A.S.: The exhibition emerges from your exploration of Patricks archive at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. What role does research play in your creative process?

D.A.: Similar to many artists, research is a foundational element of what I do I start with an interest and try to find out more. When I first saw a rarely seen image of Dr. Martin Luther King on vacation with his family in Jamaica, I became interested in creating images of black leisure life. Inspired further by seeing family members on pool floats, I Googled pool floats for inspiration and was unable to find images of black people on the floats online. That simple search brought that need to my attention and was the genesis of my Floater series.

A.S.: Creating this work must have required a certain amount of piecing together of Patricks history and legacy. What captured your imagination about Patricks story?

D.A.: I loved learning the importance of his grandmother and how her personal style directly inspired his iconic collections. She would sew on buttons and appliqus to embellish her garments. That those looks would eventually make it to the runways of Paris and onto the backs of icons like Bette Davis is so gratifying to me personally because the many women in my family have been such a huge source of inspiration and strength.

A.S.: In your practice, youre exploring ideas of identity and representation. How does fashion intersect with the ideas youre exploring in your work? What does Patricks story teach us about the importance of inclusion and representation in both the fashion industry and the art world?

D.A.: Fashion is somehow attached to identity in the way people look at you and what you have on which suggests a reflection of your personal taste and interest. If anything, Patrick taught me that if you are excluded, you create a space for yourself.

A.S.: Youre a truly multidisciplinary artist your practice spans many mediums. What drew you to the medium of collage for this body of work?

D.A.: Collage was a natural choice because the basis of this body of work is the mood board, or the collection of images, objects and elements, which inform the outcome of a final product. As mood boards are used often in many creative disciplines but especially in fashion, I wanted to explore and celebrate Patricks logic and creative process and influence, as Im certain his work found their way to many other creatives mood boards.

A.S.: The works in Patrick Kelly, the Journey are abstract, but they also reference the figure through their scale and the incorporation of Patricks vintage clothing patterns. How does the figure coexist with abstraction in your work?

D.A.: I incorporate the clothing patterns both for their interesting shapes but primarily to suggest the physical form. To me they read as the figure moving and posing, almost like the figure is walking through the structure altering its formation.

A.S.: The works in the exhibition also borrow from the bright colors, patterns and geometric forms of Patricks joyful designs. Do the formal qualities of these works have other personal resonance or meaning?

D.A.: The show gave me the opportunity to explore using hard-edged geometric forms more expressively other than the more clear forms of representation to think about certain levels of gesture that could be created through abstraction and color. The physical act of making the work felt a lot more playful.

A.S.: You recently joined your friend, cultural critic Antwaun Sargent, in conversation at SCAD Atlanta and you spoke about fashion as an almost democratic way of expressing ones power of creativity. How important is it for you to create a sense of empowerment in your work and how does that inform how youve engaged with Patricks story and history?

D.A.: Im not setting out trying to create empowerment, Im trying to represent histories that are important to me and hope these histories inspire others to think differently about contributions to contemporary and modern culture that are not the most obvious or talked about.

A.S.: Before finding acclaim in Paris, Patrick spent several years in Atlanta, after moving from Vicksburg, Mississippi and his ties to the South are an important part of the exhibition at SCAD FASH. Why is it meaningful to reflect on Patricks formative experiences before he found greater success?

D.A.: Like with many artists, its important to know the origin of their experience, starting from the beginning, and all the things he went through to get to where he is. That Atlanta is where he first started designing is a valuable piece of history.

A.S.: Patricks legacy is particularly poignant for our fashion students at SCAD. On the occasion of your exhibition, we launched the Patrick Kelly Initiative competition as a platform for the work of recent alumni. We asked the participants to create an original design of their own using Patricks vintage patterns as a point of inspiration.

Did you feel a kinship with our alumni as they took similar inspiration from Patricks life and work? What did you find most moving about the garments they created?

D.A.: When you look at the history of people whove influenced society, as a creative you take away different things based on your personal interest in that history. Thats what was important about having this exhibition in a fashion museum with young fashion designers: it gives them a different way to look at their own practice and how it could be influenced by designers from various backgrounds, and be able to use that exposure to explore what can make their work unique and determine what elements of their practice are essential.

I was amazed at the time constraints given to make the garments and understood their passion. It was interesting to see how people can be directed towards a single inspiration and accomplish such varied looks.

A.S.: The winning garment by Nafisa Eltinay (SCAD B.F.A., fashion, 2019) is now on view at the museum in dialogue with your exhibition, and all of our alumni were honored to have the opportunity to share a moment in your artistic journey. Its one of the many reasons why our fashion program is so special and we thank you for being a part of that.

As youve developed as an artist, who were your most formative mentors and how do you pay that forward?

D.A.: New York is my mentor. I listen to what is going and observe and take note and let those things influence my decision-making. I pay it forward by taking all that information and passing it on to those who ask and listen. I try to assist other artists to get things done. For those not in New York, the key seems to be to engage with your community and process the positive and share what you know.

A.S.: Like Patrick, youve defined your own vision and your own point of view, but within that, youre constantly evolving too. So, whats next for Derrick Adams?

D.A.: More creating. Work is play for me. I have a show just opened at the Hudson River Museum and also beginning work on a film. Ill be expanding the Patrick Kelly inspired Mood Board series into larger-scale works for an upcoming show at The Henry in Seattle as well as a project with the Milwaukee Art Museum, Salon 94, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, all in 2021.

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SCAD Exhibit by Derrick Adams Born From Archives of Patrick Kelly - WWD

Adam Ryan Morris for BuzzFeed News

Kate Elizabeth Russell grew up on a lake in the 1990s, in a rural Maine township, listening obsessively to Fiona Apple. She briefly attended a private high school but left for personal reasons before graduating, and then went on to attend a state college in Maine. As a teen, she had relationships with older men. As a twentysomething, she wrote about her teenage experiences online.

If youve read My Dark Vanessa, Russells debut novel, all of these characteristics will sound familiar: They almost perfectly match the titular character, Vanessa Wye. But Kate Russell is not Vanessa on that point she wants to be incredibly clear. What happened to Vanessa did not happen to her. There is no real-life version of Jacob Strane, the 42-year-old English teacher who grooms 16-year-old Vanessa for a relationship that lasts into her early twenties and rattles her life well into her thirties.

Unlike Vanessa, Russell, 35, never learned to drive. Her father is still very much alive. Shes married and has been, to a geographer, for three and a half years. And unlike Vanessa, who struggles as an adult to come to terms with the #MeToo movement and surfacing allegations that Strane attempted to develop relationships with other teenage girls Russell has been thinking about these questions, and how to weave them around the character of Vanessa, for the better part of two decades.

Vanessa is so real to me, Russell recently told me, curled up on the couch of her cozy Madison, Wisconsin, apartment. And Im so connected to her. But shes completely separate from me to the point that I joke to friends, oh, she created me, rather than the other way around. I picture her showing up at my door, or Ill be out walking down the street, and Ill see a girl who looks so much like her.

The years she spent with the character made Russell really protective of her, and of the story overall. Thats why shes flatly refused any sort of coy or clichd marketing campaign and has been, in her words, very, very, VERY careful about offers for film and television adaptation. Russell is not Vanessa, but Vanessa is hers.

Ive always been a fiction writer, Russell explained. But Im rooted in the personal. Thats where my stuff comes from. And I suspect many fiction writers are this way, but theres a stigma around it. Ive always been engaged with the line between genres of nonfiction and fiction, and always been thinking about what that shift gives us to me, the writer, and to the reader. So much of what it offers is a shield. And a solace.

I still dont know exactly what the book isor how I feel about it, but when I was done, I wanted everyone to read it so we could talk about it.

My Dark Vanessa is whats considered, in the industry, a big book. It was acquired by a big publisher (William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins) for a big advance; its getting a big marketing push; its positioned to be a big thing. Part of that is because it invokes and grapples with the very timely issues of #MeToo a point driven home when, last month, the defense attorney for Harvey Weinstein attempted to remove a juror in the trial for reading the book. Then there are the conversations that accompany a debut with a seven-figure number attached and about which stories about abuse get these kinds of deals.

But what makes My Dark Vanessa feel big beyond its initial publicity push are the questions the story itself raises the way that it interrogates the boundary between memoir and fiction, between honesty and sex positivity, between consent and abuse. The format is straightforward, alternating between Vanessas high school and college years, where we trace her developing, troubling relationship with Strane, and the present, in which a 32-year-old Vanessa attempts to synthesize the ongoing revelations of #MeToo (including new accusations against Strane) with her own experiences.

Russell spent nearly two decades writing, editing, researching, and rewriting the novel over the course of earning a BFA, an MFA, and a PhD in creative writing. The end product is a page-turner about a young woman gradually realizing the extent and ramifications of her abuse. It does feel of the moment, but it feels even more like the product of the 90s and 00s when Russell and so many other women were surrounded by profoundly contradictory ideas about what womens empowerment looked like.

Russells rendering of that time and Vanessas attempt to find agency within it, as well as her relationship with Strane, is bewildering and infuriating. And the way in which the book straddles established publishing classifications its neither literary nor pulp only accentuates the discomfort. I still dont know exactly what the book is or how I feel about it, but when I was done, I wanted everyone to read it so we could talk about it. Thats what a big book does. And as an academic whos spent the last decade unpacking the conversations and discomfort around other memoirs and fictive accounts of sexual abuse, Russell has found herself fascinated by others responses to the text, but also by her own.

The plot is fictional, but the emotions of it thats what feels so personal, Russell explained. Thats what I cant divorce myself from. She feels compelled to make clear that the book is both fiction and personal and thats not a contradiction in terms. I have these moments of wondering, Is this just me, being stubborn? she said. This subject matter is not something that I just thought, Oh, this would make a good story. I do have a stake in this. But why do I feel so compelled to get that across?

Items on Kate Elizabeth Russells desk.

When I first met Russell, she was mostly just relieved I was there in Madison, in her apartment, with her things and her dog, a Catahoula Leopard Dog mix named Tallulah Barkhead. It was 5 degrees outside, and Russell was cocooned in a soft, sage green wool cardigan and shearling boots that might or might not have been Uggs. (Clearly, Ive just given up, she said jokingly.) Shes an introvert and a self-professed homebody, and has found the publicity process thats accompanied her book release discombobulating.

For the last profile, they asked me to pick a place in New York that Id always wanted to see, she said. ButId never been to New York, and its not really my thing. (She picked a Georgian restaurant because there are so few in the United States, and shed grown to love the food while accompanying her husband on research trips to the Ukraine and Georgia.)

Russells apartment is filled with light, books, and Russian maps of America. Above her desk, there are quotes handwritten on paper: two pieces of encouragement from friends, and another with the complete poem that served as the title of Fiona Apples second album. On the bookshelf, theres a trove of books Russell read as she completed her PhD, focusing on the Lolita trope in 90s and 00s literature: Suzette Henkes Shattered Subjects, Angela McRobbies The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Change, Cathy Caruths Trauma: Explorations in Memory. All of these books, plus dozens more films, plays, poems, and memoirs, are included in Russells Reading List, which is posted on her personal website. Some authors cloister themselves from the world when they write and from all other stories that might overlap or interact with theirs. Others immerse themselves in those stories, which Russell did in part because her PhD demanded it.

This level of domestic comfort is a new development for Russell and her husband, Austin, who up until her book sold in 2018 were making ends meet on less than $30,000 a year. They both had six figures in student loans. When they moved to Madison from Lawrence, Kansas, after her husband landed a postdoc position at the University of Wisconsin, they realized their lifestyle could change, too. We were like, Lets get a nice apartment, she told me, and we were able to get it in a day. I was so mad: I saw how easy it was for people with money to do things.

The apartment is new but still modest. The loans have been paid off, but its unclear whether Russells husband will land a tenure-track teaching job or where theyll end up next. This sort of transitory life is the opposite of what Russell grew up with: in one place, on a small lake in a small town outside of Bangor, Maine, much like her character Vanessa. At the time, the township was just around 500 people, with everyone spread out. In the novel, Vanessa says that her family is the only one that stays on the lake over the winter.

Thats an exaggeration, Russell explained. But as a teenager, growing up in a really rural environment, the isolation just felt so intense, and magnified, that I ended up writing it that way. The public schools she attended as a child would draw from several townships in the area; often, shed get on the bus before dawn and spend upward of an hour in each direction. In the book, its like theres no one else around, Russell said. And then my parents read it and were like, We had neighbors! But thats how I write: Im trying to get the feeling across.

Thats how I write: Im trying to get the feeling across.

When Russell was in fifth grade, her music teacher started a unit on Phantom of the Opera, and Russell found herself immediately obsessed. Shed never seen the musical, but she would direct her classmates in reenactments during recess. (Youre not supposed to say girls are bossy anymore, Russell joked. But I was.) Russells father had been a DJ at a popular Bangor classic rock station since the 1970s. As a tween in the early 90s, she didnt have the internet at home, but when she went with her dad to work, she could poke around its early iteration which is how she happened upon Phantom of the Opera fanfic for the first time. I remember thinking, This is AMAZING, Russell recalled, and then I started writing my own, but not posting it online just writing out of the pure joy of it.

Russells dad regularly brought home music from the radio station, including Fiona Apples first album, Tidal. I remember laying the booklet out on the kitchen table and being like, Mom, shes so pretty! Russell said. And my moms like, I dunno, she looks kinda sad. Apple became Russells new solitary obsession in her teenage years (shed record hours of MTV2 on a blank VHS tape while she was at school, hoping to find a Fiona Apple video somewhere on it when she got home).

The video for Criminal was one of her first exposures to the sexualized teen iconography that would come to imbue the 90s. It was so artful and weird, so uncomfortable and so alluring, Russell said. Apple also spoke frankly about being raped which provided the backstory to the song Sullen Girl. Theres a scene in the book where Vanessa goes into an internet rabbit hole and realizes, Oh, thats the first time I heard someone talk about rape.

But Apple also provided a lesson about how society processed women like her. When, in 1997, Apple won the award for Best New Artist at the VMAs, she famously accepted the award by declaring, This world i.e., the music industry is bullshit.

I remember watching that and thinking, Shes doing exactly what she wants, Russell recalled. I looked up to her so much and then I saw how people responded to her. I remember that response, too: Suddenly Apple, the wunderkind, was ungrateful, a bitch, unhinged. The things you internalize from that, Russell sighed. Like, if you speak your mind, youre just going to get ridiculed and misunderstood.

For college, Russell went to the University of Maine at Farmington, which she described as the affordable public option for kids that couldnt afford to go to private college. Many of her classmates were, like her, the first in their family to go to college. She enrolled in creative-writing classes, where she submitted stories that would eventually coalesce into My Dark Vanessa and received reams of criticism, but almost always paired with the (sometimes backhanded) praise that this was very readable.

I had the idea that I wanted to be a writer, but I knew that just being a writer wasnt an option, Russell explained. So I thought, Whats a job and lifestyle where I could make money, but be a writer? A professor! Then I could be a writer, and I could be in school forever. Id watched the film adaptation of Wonder Boys so many times, so I had this idealized, romantic idea of what being a creative-writing professor was like.

When she was an undergrad, Russells professors encouraged her to apply for MFA programs. In hindsight, there was a lot of narcissism there, she said. Like, Of course you want to go do the thing that I did. Itll be great. Itll work out for you. No mention of six figures of student debt. But I was so driven that I was like, This is what I want to do. She went straight from undergrad to the MFA program at the University of Indiana, and like many other hopeful young writers entering similar programs in the 2000s, she thought that shed finish her degree, sell a book, and get a job as a professor. But then, she said, that very much didnt happen.

Kate Elizabeth Russell and her husband, Austin, at home in Madison, Wisconsin.

In 2010, Russell graduated from her MFA program and right into the aftermath of the Great Recession. She spent three years working shit jobs that barely let her feed herself; she couldnt even begin to chip away at her student loan debt. To an outsider, it makes zero sense that, with a newly clear-eyed understanding of the academic job market, she then chose to apply to PhD programs in creative writing. I went into the program knowing I wasnt on the tenure track, Russell said. But I knew that I would finish that program with a book.

Russells PhD program in creative writing was nestled within the English Department at the University of Kansas, and she focused her official studies on memoirs about sexual violence and their reception. But most of her support both in terms of helping her push her thinking and critiquing her writing wasnt necessarily from the program. Instead, she found it online, specifically in LiveJournal communities primarily composed of young women, starting in 2008, up until around 2013.

We were all sort of coming into ourselves as feminists and political thinkers, Russell recalled. We had these ongoing conversations that were so community based, with all of us fucking up and calling each other out and getting pissed at each other, but then working through it.

Unlike contemporary social media, it felt like a private space. We all knew each other and were invested in each other, Russell said. And it felt much more genuine, and more in good faith. There was still virtue signaling that went on, but it wasnt for public consumption. And no one was monetizing their identity based on what they were posting in the community. Shed post sections of writing and receive a very different form of critique and encouragement than she received in traditional creative-writing seminars.

As part of Russells PhD course of study, she also began to work her way through every memoir of sexual abuse she could find and, just as crucially, each books critical reception. She was especially fascinated by The Kiss, a memoir by Kathryn Harrison, which detailed the sexual relationship between Harrison and her father, who had been estranged from Harrison for much of her life. Its so clearly abuse, Russell explained. But at the same time, she doesnt feel like she has access to that term, because of her own complicity in it. At the time of its release in 1997, it was savaged by critics. Its such a difficult piece of writing, but so beautifully written, Russell said. And the reception was so terrible. People saying things like Do you think she calls him Daddy in bed?

Tiger, Tiger, a memoir by Margaux Fragoso that describes years of abuse by a pedophile who eventually dies by suicide, had a similarly negative reception. She didnt write herself as a victim, but as someone who is willing in the way that a kid can be willing, which is not willing at all, Russell said. And people were like, What is the value of this? What is this except for a manual for pedophiles?

Russell wanted to figure out why readers were so attracted to these sorts of memoirs and why, in turn, they were so maligned. On one hand, memoir is widely seen as more righteous than fiction, as Russell put it, because its true but that also makes it easier to dismiss as somehow less artful. On the other hand, if you shield something that actually happened to you under the guise of fiction, then its interrogated in a different way: Is this true? people ask. Can you prove it?

At several points throughout our conversation, Russell mentioned but did not want to delve deeper into the specifics of relationships with older men. But despite her own experiences, there was never a point when she thought, Maybe this book should be a memoir, or even, Maybe this should be autofiction the subgenre used to describe the self-referential novels of authors like Rachel Cusk and Ben Lerner. She did attempt, for a brief period of time, to make her drafts more literary, adding long sections of exposition, before realizing just how belabored it felt and how it lost the momentum that other readers had praised.

I just wasnt good at it, she explained. Im good at writing a scene. Im good at dialogue and having characters move around on the page, and once I realized that I could just write a novel doing what I was good at meaning, writing scenes then it would be much easier, and a much better piece of writing.

Kate Elizabeth Russells bookshelf.

During the five years Russell spent earning her PhD in Kansas, My Dark Vanessa shifted in several meaningful ways: The setting moved from public school to private school to boarding school; the first sexual interaction between Vanessa and Strane changed in character and timing; the number of significant friends in Vanessas school life dwindled from three to one. But the bigger shifts had less to do with setting, or the number of characters, and more to do with Russells overarching thinking about the dynamics at play between Vanessa and Strane, and what cultural influences would have been informing Vanessas own conception of what was happening between them.

I read Judith Hermans Trauma and Recovery, which is more of a clinical text and is out of date in some ways but she argues for disentangling PTSD from military veterans and extending it to a lot of women in domestic life whove experienced trauma, Russell said. And I discovered girls studies, which was just this feverish oh my god moment, treating this subject matter in such a serious academic way. It was there that she first encountered explanations of postfeminism a term used to describe the attitude that the goals of feminism had been achieved, and women could instead focus on the liberating embrace of consumerism, sex, and girl power.

For many women who came of age in the 90s and 00s, learning about postfeminism is like finding a skeleton key to your life: Oh, thats why there was an obsession with sex and purity rings, with Sex and the City and Britney Spears virginity. Thats why the Spice Girls were so popular and why Fiona Apple was received in such a markedly mixed way. The concept outlines so many of the mixed messages women like Russell internalized as teens knowledge that she then mapped onto Vanessas own late-90s, early-2000s experience of the world.

Over the course of several drafts, she rewrote the first sexual encounter between Vanessa and Strane. The scene arrives a quarter of the way through the book, after Strane has spent weeks sidling up to her physically and psychologically. Hes given her books, hes praised her writing, hes identified her vulnerabilities and her unstable sense of self, and hes proffered his own secure sense of who she is: unique, dark, sexual, special.

Vanessa sees that this version of herself is beloved and regardless of how alien or unfaithful it might be to her actual self, she begins to shape herself to fit it. She devours the copies of Lolita and The Bell Jar and the poems of Emily Dickinson that Strane gives her. I start to realize the point isnt really whether I like the books, Vanessa narrates. Its more about him giving me different lenses to see myself through. The poems are clues to help me understand why hes so interested, what it is exactly that he sees in me.

Shes first becoming aware of the male gaze, Russell explained. But also, as an aspiring poet, she has this English teacher hand-selecting books for her its so easily romantic, but also academically legitimate in some way? Its all so complex in her mind.

Strane first tests her by putting his hand on her thigh, then kissing her and eventually inviting her to spend a night at his house. The scene that follows is astonishing, abject, and, like so many other scenes in the book, impossible to stop reading. Strane performs oral sex on Vanessa, she has an orgasm, and Strane promises they wont go any further. Vanessa turns liquid-warm at the thought of sex being nothing more than him doing that to me. But then Strane wakes her up in the middle of the night and compels her to have intercourse all the while asking Is this okay? but only after hes already swept her along in the action.

I wanted her to have an experience thats just pleasurable, where she orgasms, and uses this language thats bordering on clich to describe it, Russell explained. Because this is the first sex shes ever had and shes working with these ideas of what having an orgasm is like that are based on things that shes read or the movies that shes seen. But Russell also wanted to show, even if just for a moment, that the relationship could theoretically be okay. So maybe he was abusing her, but when hes giving her pleasure, how does that complicate the reaction?

When I asked Russell if she thinks its appropriate to call the interaction a sex scene, she cocked her head for a second and said, I do. Because thats what it is to her. That is how Vanessa conceives of it, both during and afterward even though, in the moment, she thinks of her reaction to touching Stranes penis as like a dog hacking up garbage thats been sitting in its stomach for days, that violent, full-body gag.

This is the tension that I had in mind throughout the whole writing process, Russell said. In the first chapter, you see her, in the present day, still relying on phone sex with him. It might come across jarring to readers because you see this character interacting with her abuser in a way that were not used to seeing. Her sexuality has been so defined by it.

Not all sex is either good or rape. Sometimes sex is just really bad. And sometimes thats all you know.

And then theres the fact that a whole lot of sex even between people who are the same age is complicated in ways that mirror what happened, and continues to happen, between Strane and Vanessa. Not all sex is either good or rape, Russell said. Sometimes sex is just really bad. And sometimes thats all you know. But thats directly at odds with the overarching sex positivity that accompanied postfeminism.

When I think about that scene, I mostly feel Vanessas full-body gag. I think of the moment when Strane penetrates Vanessa with his finger: Im stunned, Vanessa thinks. And my body plays dead.

So much of the emotions of being uncomfortable during sex, those are things that I experienced, even with boys my own age, Russell told me. Not the explicit details, but the feeling of being taken off guard, of not feeling like you could stop it. Youre just figuring out, Oh, okay, this is whats happening now and never having the space of time to think, like, Do I want this? Am I enjoying this?

In the book, the power dynamic is so extreme. But I was trying to explore and unpack what sex meant to me, as a teen and a young adult, and trying to zoom way out, and lift the filter of sex positivity off my eyes, and realizing that sex can just be a bad thing. It can just be bad.

Even in a society thats increasingly frank about sex, a surprisingly small number of people especially women seem comfortable talking about that idea. People think that to have a quote-unquote healthy sex life means to have a really active sex life, Russell said, and that you cant be a happy, well-rounded person without that. Theres especially pressure if youre a survivor of sexual violence, because if you dont adopt a positive view toward sex, then youre still broken, youre still damaged.

Russell had switched the setting of her book to a boarding school early in her PhD, when she began reading accounts of serial abusers that first began to emerge in the 2010s, including women sharing their experiences in personal essays online. Before any of the revelations around Weinstein and #MeToo, thats how Russell had Stranes abuse initially becoming public: A former student whom Strane had attempted to seduce writes an anonymous essay that then makes its way to Vanessa and usurps her life. But Russell kept returning to the question, Would the reader really understand why a student would wait so many years to come forward?

Then, in the fall of 2017, the allegations and news stories that would eventually coalesce into the #MeToo movement began to emerge. Russell was in the final year of her PhD, finishing up her dissertation and the final draft of the book and, at least at first, she didnt think that it had much bearing on her project: It was something in the celebrity world, and about the media, and Weinstein in particular. But then it just kept happening, she recalled, and so much of it was playing out on social media, with people making posts and sharing their stories, and I thought, Holy shit, this really is what Im writing. It freaked her out.

After a while, I realized this was the context in which this book was going to be read, no matter what, Russell said. And I could use this as a chance to trust the reader more: that they would understand, whether they agreed with it or not, that coming forward years after the fact is something that people do. The Weinstein news became a part of the present-day narrative, and Vanessa learns of Stranes abusive behavior toward other students the way so many women learned of others abuse: through a #MeToo post on Facebook.

Copies of My Dark Vanessa.

Still, Russell never imagined that My Dark Vanessa would actually become intertwined with Weinsteins story in such an explicit way. It was never, never fathomable to me that this book, that Ive been working on for so very long, would even be in the same realm, she said. After all, as the #MeToo movement continued to grow over the course of 2017 and 2018, Russell finished her dissertation, prepared her manuscript for submission, and began querying agents and heard nothing.

She started with the agents of writers whose work she really admired and heard nothing. She expanded her querying circle to even more agents and still heard nothing. She continued to widen it, and widen it, and nothing. The agent I ended up with, Hillary Jacobson, wasnt even someone I queried, Russell explained. The manuscript got passed along to her, and the thing shes best known for is [Tomi Adeyemis YA fantasy] Children of Blood and Bone, a book Russell wouldnt have necessarily grouped with her own.

Russell eventually attracted the attention of six different agents, but Jacobson was the only one who immediately saw the connection between her work and more ostensibly literary books like Julie Buntins Marlena. She understands so much about the book, Russell said, but she was also contradicting all of these assumptions I had about the type of writer I was, and the type of agent I was going to end up with, and the type of agency I was going to end up with.

When Jacobson submitted the manuscript to potential editors, there was a bidding war, but the imprint that won out William Morrow again didnt seem like an obvious fit. Russell had long dreamed of getting signed to Riverhead, which is where she thought literary writers ended up. But as Russell explained, Going through this experience just showed me how much I didnt understand about how all of this works.

Going through this experience just showed me how much I didnt understand about how all of this works.

My Dark Vanessa has more in common with the novels that thrilled Russell as a young reader than it does with the products of most MFA workshops. I loved books like White Oleander [by Janet Fitch] and Shes Come Undone by Wally Lamb, she told me. Those are the novels that I loved, and those were even subconsciously the models for what I wanted to write. And those were novels that were super successful and got really wide readership."

Russells editor, Jessica Williams, immediately saw that My Dark Vanessa could be one of those books. This novel basically swallowed me whole, she told me. It consumed me. She also understood that My Dark Vanessa was a deceptively complex novel that could essentially be marketed to two different audiences: to mass market readers and to traditional literary audiences, who might expect a page-turner and be surprised to find a book thats doing as much as it is. It could be a book club book, a Target book, an airport book, and a book reviewed in the New York Times. The cover, which features a moody black-and-white photo of a young woman with a butterfly over one eye an image that could double as a high school students self-portrait for photography class attempts to bridge that divide. Same for the prominently featured blurb from Stephen King.

Russell has had that particular bit of praise preserved in her email since 2017, long before she had an agent, or a publisher, or anything resembling a big book. Russells radio DJ father is such a local fixture in Bangor that when King (a Bangor resident) was writing It, back in the 1970s, he name-checked DJ Bobby Russell twice over the course of its thousand-plus pages. In 1995, King and his wife bought the radio station, and he effectively became Kates dads boss: not close friends, but close enough that her dad calls him Steve.

In 2007, after Russell finished her MFA, her father asked King if hed look at one of her short stories about Vanessa. He responded with a line edit and a paragraph-long email: The older man / younger woman situation is hardly new, he wrote. The narration is smooth, the pace is smooth, the dialogue is crisp and clean, probably the best thing about it. He also said that she had the makings of a terrific writer.

It was a confidence boost that sat preserved in Russells archived email, evidence of the time that one of the most famous authors in the world had read her work. When, after she finished her PhD, agents werent responding to Russells manuscript, her dad wondered if it would help to send it to Steve again. Kings response, several weeks later, struck a markedly different tone than before: Tell me what youve done with it, and who youve shown it to, he wrote. Im frankly puzzled that youre having trouble placing it, because its not just literary, its a very well-constructed package of dynamite.

A poster for Stanley Kubrick's 1962 movie adaptation of Lolita on the wall in Kate Elizabeth Russells apartment.

The first time I heard about My Dark Vanessa, it wasnt because of the novels subject matter a story that, as the editors note proclaims on the thousands of galley copies that went out to readers in the months leading up to publication, she believes will be era-defining. It was because of how much money Russell had been paid for the book.

When people hear that an author especially a first-time author gets a big book deal, they often make certain assumptions. If youre generous, the assumptions might be that the book is really good, so good that the bidding war escalated into the millions. The more jaded take is that the book is overhyped, the author is overpaid, and the seven-figure price tag is mostly indicative of an industry in ongoing crisis.

Over the past decade, seven-figure advances once unheard of for debut authors have become increasingly common, a phenomenon generally attributed to fiercer competition for a smaller number of potentially blockbuster projects. At the same time, mass audience publications like Entertainment Weekly have made the size of a book deal (like the size of movie budgets and weekend grosses) public knowledge. Or, at least, the size of some book deals.

When youre a debut writer, and no one really knows anything about you, and you dont have any fellowships that show this is an up-and-coming literary writer, people are like, What else can we point to that generates interest? Russell said. So they include the size of the deal with the write-up with the book. But there are big books that get sold and reported, and big books that get sold and not reported or at least not the size of the deal.

On Halloween night, in 2018, Russell sold My Dark Vanessa and a promised second book in one of those massive deals. Six weeks later, a write-up of the sale appeared in Entertainment Weekly under the headline My Dark Vanessa: Why This Lolita for the #MeToo Era Is the Seasons Biggest-Selling Debut, explaining that Russell would receive an eye-popping seven-figures. Since then, a massive prepublication campaign has positioned My Dark Vanessa as one of the biggest, and buzziest, books of 2020.

No one should feel sorry for me or any other writer in this position, Russell said. But I do kind of envy the writers who dont have this discourse around their book. Its easy to understand why: The book is judged less on its own ideas or merits, and more on whether or not it and, by extension, the author, who in these scenarios is almost always a young, white woman is worthy of seven figures. No matter that, as agent Anna Sproul-Latimer recently pointed out on Twitter, after taxes and commission, a seven-figure deal actually ends up being around $127,500 a year (and that might be stretched significantly further if, like Russells, the deal is for multiple books). A massive advance hovers over the book like a spell that cant be broken.

No one should feel sorry for me or any other writer in this position. But I do kind of envy the writers who dont have this discourse around their book.

Sometimes especially if the book never sells well enough to earn out that big advance that spell is more like a curse. When you put a big number next to a debut authors name, they take on the weight of every other debut author with a big number next to their name, writing about disparate topics, in very different forms (from Emma Clines 2016 Charles Manson novel, The Girls, to Kristen Roupenians short story collection, which featured the viral essay Cat Person, last year). And when publicity began to ramp up for My Dark Vanessa, thats what happened to Russell only her book was shadowed by Jeanine Cummins controversial novel American Dirt, the result of another seven-figure deal with a massive marketing push behind it.

The problem with American Dirt wasnt that it wasnt selling; it debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Its that it was written by an American author who, until recently, identified as white, and filled with what Esmeralda Bermudez called the worst stereotypes, fixations, and inaccuracies about its Mexican characters and setting evidence of what happens when Latinos are shut out of the book industry. Author Wendy C. Ortiz who published a memoir called Excavation in 2014, which describes her teenage relationship with a much older teacher saw a similar dynamic at work with My Dark Vanessa. In an industry that is continually taken to task for being extremely white and making decisions that reflect as much, here is a 7 figure book deal for a fiction book that is being marketed eerily similarly to my book, she tweeted, and has made many of my readers ask, Why does this feel so familiar?

Vulture reported last week that My Dark Vanessa had been slated to be an Oprah's Book Club pick until, soon after the January controversy around American Dirt, it was suddenly dropped. Publisher William Morrow said in a statement that they are disappointed by the decision but confident that readers will continue to respond to the novel. Russell told me, I'm just excited to publish my first book.

Readers of My Dark Vanessa and Excavation will recognize, as New York magazines Lila Shapiro put it, that beyond the central premise of a woman reevaluating her teenage relationship with her teacher, the two works dont have much in common. (Ortiz later clarified that she did not intend to imply that Russell had plagiarized any part of Excavation.) The subject matter is familiar because the trope of the older male teacher and young female student, as King himself pointed out, is just that: a trope, nearly a genre, a thing that happens and that people feel enormously compelled to write and read about. But that doesnt obviate Ortizs larger point: that her book, exploring her experience of that trope, was ignored by the mainstream publishing industry, while Russells was (eventually) embraced and richly rewarded.

Kate Elizabeth Russell with her dog, Tallulah Barkhead.

That industry is reactive, and conservative, and often decides on acceptances and advance figures through an opaque calculation that, more than anything, has to do with previous market behaviors. Add in the fact that those making the decisions are overwhelmingly white, and urban, and from elite backgrounds, and you end up with the sort of maxims that, stated or unstated, rule the industry: ideas like memoirs about sexual abuse dont sell, or only white women buy books and, by extension, the only way to market a book about sexual abuse is to have it be written by a white woman and to make it fiction.

Russell said she believes that talking about biases in publishing is a really important conversation, and finds the argument that It shouldnt matter whos telling the stories; as long as its a good book, thats all that matters to be so inadequate, it makes my skin crawl.

And when Ortiz started tweeting (and, later, writing) about My Dark Vanessa, Russell recalled finding the online conversation that ensued weirdly fascinating. This was what I was studying! she told me. So much of this is in the book. Russell had spent years of her PhD work trying to figure out the critical and industrial rejection of this sort of memoir and studying the discourse around them: analyzing it, disassembling it, situating it. Now shes a part of it.

It's not just that the industry will more likely embrace the fictional narrative of abuse over the memoir, Ortiz, who is currently working on an essay about the aftermath of publishing her essay, told me in an email. There's the fact that the industry does not appear to be interested in a story in which the protagonist is a young girl of color who, in essence, saves herself. So the question presents itself: When your story is one the industry is interested in, how much responsibility do you have for its actions moving forward? As Ortiz put it, I wonder if Kate would have ever been in position to talk about [bias in publishing] if my essay hadn't come out.

At the end of my afternoon with Russell, the winter light was just beginning to fade in the window. Tallulah Barkhead pawed at both of us, asking for a walk. The Bon Apptit test kitchen videos that had served as a muted backdrop for the entirety of our conversation streamed on, with Claire Saffitz re-creating one junk food after another. After four hours of talking, words had begun to fail both of us.

But I wanted to ask Russell about something that had unsettled me throughout the reading process: Every time the narrative switched to Vanessas adult perspective, I found myself desperate to return to the past. It took me a long time to realize that among all of the inexcusable things Strane did to Vanessa, one of the worst was to hollow her out entirely. Shes not unlikable, per se, so much as nothing, and no one.

The 32-year-old Vanessa doesnt even care if shes likable or not, Russell told me. She isnt trying to be nice. Shes not trying to mean. Shes just lost all that ambition and drive that she had as a teen. And when she graduates from college and loses her allure to Strane, all she has is a giant void. With characters, we always want them to be active, not passive, going on adventures and shes the opposite of all of that.

Russell thinks Adult Vanessa makes many readers uncomfortable at least judging by reviews on Goodreads in part because shes so relatable. She isnt a villain, Russell points out. She isnt physically repulsive, or slovenly. Shes had the same job for eight years. She goes to work; shes competent at her job; she doesnt have a terrible relationship with her mom; shes going to therapy. In a lot of ways, she does have it together. Shes just barely holding her head above water and is a mess under the surface. And I think a lot of people are like or, at the very least, have had points in their lives when they were like that. And that can be uncomfortable to encounter on the page.

Whatever, and however, anyone wants to respond to Vanessa, I think its valid, Russell told me. Any reaction is valid. There are some that I might agree with more than others, but this book is an offering to readers. Everything in it is an offering.

I had to write it in a way that would make that possible, she continued. Which means it had to be fiction. It had to be artifice. Because otherwise how could I stand it?

Mar. 10, 2020, at 16:21 PM

Kate Elizabeth Russell is not an only child. A previous version of this post misstated this.

See the article here:

How "My Dark Vanessa" Became One Of The Biggest Books Of The Year - BuzzFeed News

If not for the coronavirus, there would be a womens metropolis within the metropolis of New York this week, its hotels and restaurants filled with the 12,000 civil society participants of the UN Commission on the Status of Women conference. The commission, however, has indefinitely postponed the event, which was also meant to mark the 25th anniversary of the landmark Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing and its declaration and platform for action.

What a shame, this postponement. The late feminist icon Betty Friedan said of the 1995 conference that the meeting was the message, and so it was. You put together tens of thousands of women to agitate for change, and change is bound to occur within their global causes but also for them individually.

Back in 1995, I was a journalism student at Concordia University and a brand-new, part-time reporter at The Canadian Press. My friend Carol McQueen (today, Canadas ambassador to Burkina Faso) and I were co-news editors at Concordias newspaper, The Link, and we had this crazy idea about going to cover the conference in Beijing.

Over the months, we fundraised from every possible source, and finally scratched together the money to make a go of it. I also set up a freelance gig with the now defunct weekly Montreal Mirror.

The Conference was being held only six years after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. China was a very different place at the time, in the very early stages of major economic reforms. Here it was, welcoming tens of thousands of equality activists, and also media from around the world. China was under the global spotlight in a way it had never been before, and we, too, were being scrutinized. Most of us were surveilled in some way during the conference, and at the massive NGO Forum on Women of 30,000 civil society delegates that was held before the official conference. Just a few months before the opening of the forum, the Chinese government abruptly moved it to the woefully underprepared town of Huairou, about 50 kilometres away from Beijing. The Chinese government and the Vatican had also tried to block certain womens groups from attending.

In Huairou, the infrastructure was rough. Rainy weather turned the grounds into a Woodstock-esque mud pit. Women with disabilities relied on others to help hoist wheelchairs up stairs or into tents. Tibetan exiles from around the world battled with Chinese police on a daily basis. The LGB tent received constant visits from authorities, and its pamphlets would go missing.

Still, the energy at the forum was electric. There were women from every corner of the planet there, picking their way around puddles and collapsing tents to attend speeches and panels, and rallying behind those who had the most harrowing stories to tell of genital mutilation, domestic abuse, enslavement, wartime rape, and sexual orientation conversion therapy.

One day, on the morning shuttle bus from Beijing to Huairou, I sat beside Betty Friedan herself (had it happened today, of course, I would have had a selfie). Other feminist celebrities were there Gloria Steinem, Sally Field, for example. It was in Huairou that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton made her first major international speech.

But it wasnt the big names that made the impression, it was the dozens of delegates who we interacted with.

There was Regina Cammy Shakakata of Zambia, who was a pioneer in getting women online in Africa. Shakakata, who has since passed away, worked at the conference press centre helping delegates get online as part of the Association for Progressive Communications. Clogged inboxes wouldnt be a thing for many more years.

I met Satoko Watanabe, who went from activism at her kids school, to running successfully for a seat in the Kagawa prefecture in Japan. We talked about womens representation in parliaments around the world at the time, under 10 percent internationally. Years later, Watanabe would help create camps for children affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The stories stayed with us.

Lifelong Tibetan rights activist Carole Samdup was another Montrealer who attended the conference, part of an international group of exiled Tibetan women who made it to Beijing and managed to capture the attention of international media around human rights abuses.

In a recent phone conversation, Samdup told me that while the conference might not have discernibly improved the human rights situation inside Tibet in the long run, it did have lasting impacts. Their group made lasting connections with other NGOs around the world, gained expertise in dealing with international officials and journalists, and were able to individually influence many fellow delegates. Samdup says she still meets people who remember the Tibetan delegation in Beijing.

Many of those people have gone on to be something in their lives and carry the story with them, Samdup said.

Twenty-five years after the Fourth World Conference on Women, in February 2020, I found myself once again at a womens gathering. This time, a leadership academy for women in the media put on by the Poynter Institute. Two very different contexts, of course, but in the end the personal impact was similar.

When women get together for professional, social or activist reasons, there is an easiness and a feeling of empowerment. Perhaps it is because we spend much of our lives living within larger societal institutions that were originally built for men our legislatures, newsrooms, factory floors, universities, boardrooms, and offices. Together, we temporarily create a space that is resolutely ours, and where we can imagine different ways of living and working. Within this space, we can hopefully also understand how race, colonialism, disability, mental illness, sexual orientation, income level and religion specifically impact the trajectory of each others lives. In these gatherings, we are seen.

Critical masses of women, such as the group in Beijing in 1995 and the #MeToo movement, are difficult to ignore. The late American womens activist Bella Abzug said in a plenary speech in Beijing that a global movement for democracy, had been born with the adoption of the final declaration by 187 governments.

It is an agenda for change, fueled by the momentum of civil society, based on a transformational vision of a better world for all, Abzug said. We are bringing women into politics to change the nature of politics, to change the vision, to change the institutions. Women are not wedded to the policies of the past. We didnt craft them. They didnt let us.

Alas, the struggle for gender equality, womens health, education, and personal security continues, and advancement is not happening nearly as quickly as we had all hoped when we got together in Beijing 25 years ago. Around the world, womens gains are being threatened or rolled back. As Gabrielle Bardall has written, the worlds autocrats have either been using feminist gestures to undermine democracy, or have been overtly targeting women especially online.

Canadas own assessment of the progress it has made since 1995 notes a number of persistent challenges, including underrepresentation in leadership roles, the gender wage gap, and high rates of gender-based violence. There are new concerns, too that women are being shut out of the new technology-oriented world of work.

Despite all of this, I have to believe the imprint the conference made on the tens of thousands of attendees is important. Hopefully, once the threat of COVID-19 has passed, a new generation of equality seekers will be able to come together en masse for the UN conference. Sometimes it is in the act of gathering that we can both command wider attention, but also recognize our own personal potential to affect change.

Main photo: Delegates at the NGO Forum on Women, September 1995. By Jennifer Ditchburn.

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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have shared unseen pictures and footage from their meeting withyoung leaders of the Queen's Commonwealth Trust (QCT).

Harry and Meghan, who are president and vice-president of the charity, hosted the group at Buckingham Palace last week as part of their farewell tour of the UK.

The duke was caught in a moment of laughter sat on a sofa next to his beaming wife in a black and white photograph from the event shared on the Sussex Royal Instagram page on Tuesday.

A YouTube video shows the relaxed-looking couple discussing mental health, equal opportunities and youth leadership with the group, all of whom work with QCT.

The charity aims to champion, fund and connect young leaders working to change the world.

Those invited included social entrepreneur Kenny Imafidon, founder of the sTandTall charity Esther Marshall, and co-founders of Birmingham-based female empowerment organisation GirlDreamer, Kiran Kaur and Amna Akhtar.

In a video clip of the conversation, Harry says: "Without something to aim for, you can't unlock the potential, right?"

"I bet it's made all the difference, right, to connect all of you guys."

Harry and Meghan bid final farewell after last outing as senior royals

Megan adds: "To build this network, the QCT, so you have a support system and a sound board to continue to bounce these ideas off of."

The Instagram post came after Harry and Meghan's last official appearance with the Queen, Prince of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall and Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on Monday.

The Commonwealth Service brought to a close their whirlwind UK farewell tour, where they also attended the Endeavour Fund Awards, a military musical festival at the Royal Albert Hall and Meghan's secret visit to a school in Dagenham, east London, to celebrate International Women's Day.

The couple have a few more weeks before they officially step down as senior royals, but as they left the event at Westminster Abbey it was the symbolic end of their life supporting the Queen.

From March 31, the monarch's grandson and American former actress Meghan will no longer use their HRH styles as they pursue a new life of personal and financial freedom, mostly in North America.

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It can be easy to think of contemporary art as something removed from our everyday, reserved for the hushed and hallowed halls of galleries and museums where it awaits our thoughtful reflection. But one of the gifts of art is its ability to transcend those walls and enter into our daily lives indeed, into our consciousness prompting us to consider anew the quotidian objects and rituals we so often overlook.

Case in point: Permanent and Natural, the current show at New Albanys Carnegie Center for Art and History that brings together nearly 30 works by more than a dozen artists from across the U.S. in a diverse and spirited exploration of hair that crowning human feature that is as permanent as it is infinitely mutable, and as natural as it is subject to outlandish manipulation.

Installation view featuring work by Stacey Vest, Y. Malik Jalal and Sonya Clark

For the shows curator, Daniel Pfalzgraf, it was important to approach the subject from a diversity of perspectives and through an array of mediums.

I really tried to mix up the artists we show in this show, the type of artwork exhibited, the medium, as well as the themes and ideas behind the artwork, he said. Theres a mix of some work thats based on history with, for example, Gabrielle Mayer, who shows Victorian hair wreaths. Then theres cultural references dealing with pop culture such as baseball or punk rock music. And then theres more cultural aspects relating to the politics of hair, dealing with discrimination, dealing with public and private spaces relating to hair, like barbershops and salons.

Seventies Baseball Hair Elite, Steve Spencer, 1983, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 24 in

The result is an incomplete but illuminating and engaging survey of hair throughout history: as personal expression, as cultural signifier and sometimes even as political instigator, as in Steve Spencers painting Seventies Baseball Hair Elite, a delightful tribute to four of the sports more audacious dos. With cartoonish colors and gleeful expressiveness, Spencer portrays four players who, through their proud afros and wild, unruly locks, illustrate the rebellious spirit that had taken hold of the nations youth and was now infiltrating its most patriotic of pastimes.

By the end of the decade, the pioneers of punk rock were taking what had been a little friendly counter-culture rebellion and pushing it into full-blown anarchy, with the hairstyles to match. Alison Brauns black-and-white photographs of the Los Angeles punk scene captures The Misfits Glenn Danzig and Jerry Only, as well as other musical mainstays, with all their Mohawks, devilocks, leather, spikes and self-righteous anger. Pfalzgrafs informative wall texts shed light on the cultural misappropriations that led to the Mohawk hairstyles name.

Rapunzel, Gabrielle Mayer, date unknown, human hair, wire, glass vitrine, 118 x 12 in

And the shows contemporary artists dont limit themselves to the recent century. New Albany artist Gabrielle Mayers hairwork, for instance, revives the Victorian-era practice of creating jewelry and other decorative objects out of human hair in the kind of maudlin gestures that characterized the period. Most compelling of Mayers delicate works is Rapunzel, a miniature representation of the fairy-tale maidens golden mane and attendant braid. Mayer supports the flowing tresses with wire and places the vertical sculpture under a glass vitrine, creating an uncanny resemblance to a brain and spinal cord in an antique specimen jar one 19th-century curiosity exchanged for another. Meanwhile, artist Stacey Vest eschews human hair for synthetic; wrapping, twisting, looping and layering the artificial filaments to fashion elaborate headpieces in which hair and hat become one.

Watch the Throne, Fahamu Pecou, 2019, altered barber chair and three television monitor installation

One of the shows strengths is its inclusion of multiple works that speak to the African American experience. Its grandest expression is in Fahamu Pecous Watch the Throne, an installation that includes three television monitors showing tightly cropped videos of black men getting their hair cut against solid backgrounds in Easter egg hues. In front of the screens is a barber chair, its framework painted gold and its cushions reupholstered in a rich yellow and grey batik fabric with a vaguely African motif. Through these alterations, the artist elevates the utilitarian object to noble adornment, transforming barber chair into royal throne and, it follows, all those who sit in it into kings.

Long Pan; Red Rice, Y. Malik Jalal, 2018, mixed media on canvas, 48 x 48 in

In his mixed media work Long Pan; Red Rice, Y. Malik Jalal tenderly depicts the neatly braided cornrows of a young African American girl. We see only the back of her body from the shoulders up, her brown skin and cerulean top sharply outlined against a background of thick, creamy white brushstrokes. Jalal saves his detailed brushwork for the geometric patterns of her cornrows and the multicolored plastic beads that punctuate their ends, his attention conveying the same care and reverence for this ancient African tradition held by those who carry on this time-consuming practice. The addition of mixed media elements, such as a cartoon sticker and vinyl letters obscured by layers of paint, fix the work in the contemporary moment, adding the girls unique, personal experience to the collective narrative of her ancestors.

Sophisticated Soul, Kahran and Regis Bethencourt, 2017, Chrystal archival print, 30 x 20 in

Its a narrative that expands to include elements of the Victorian, Baroque, steampunk and high fashion in the photography of Kahran and Regis Bethencourt, whose portraits of young African American girls wouldnt be out of place in the pages of Vogue or Harpers Bazaar. Clad in couture-like ensembles, the girls wear extravagantly beautiful hairstyles that command an even greater presence than the clothes and serve to amplify the distinctive textures, curls and kinks of Black hair. The girls look directly at the camera; their gazes are focused, determined and powerful. They will not be deterred.

Diana Vreeland, the legendary editor of both Vogue and Harpers Bazaar (and an early champion for women of color in the once lily-white pages of those magazines), once wrote, Fashion is part of the daily air and it changes all the time, with all the events. You can even see the approaching of a revolution in clothes. Certainly Permanent and Natural proves that the same can be said of hair, and if the Bethencourts photographs are any indication, the empowerment of the Black experience is approaching and a most welcome revolution that will be.

Disclosure: Curator Daniel Pfalzgraf is married to an employee of Louisville Public Media who has no influence over WFPLs news coverage.

Permanent and Natural is on view at the Carnegie Center for Art & History until April 18th, 2020. The Carnegie Center is located at 201 E. Spring Street, New Albany, Indiana and is open Monday Saturday, 10 a.m. 5 p.m.

Support for this story was provided in part by the Great Meadows Foundation.

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Carnegie Centers Permanent And Natural Is A Diverse And Spirited Exploration Of Hair - 89.3 WFPL News Louisville