Yesterday Not A Pipe Publishing posted my story Guard Crow as part of their #TheYearofPublishingWomen short stories series.
I’m thrilled and honored to be a part of their year. I was lucky enough to hear their presentation at Willamette Writers Conference a few months ago, and I can say that I’m really glad to see the work they’re doing and even prouder to be a part of it.
I hope you’ll take a moment to send them some love, check out what they’ve done for the Year of Publishing Women, and of course, read my story; Guard Crow.
A couple weeks ago I got the opportunity to present Olympic College’s 5th Annual Diversity Conference. This was the first presentation I’ve done outside of school, and there was unsurprisingly a lot of procrastination involved. I wanted to take a moment and share some things about my topic, and what I learned during this experience.
I’m on the official schedule. And I have a ribbon!
“Sex education, sex positivity, consent, and bodily autonomy are ever important in this era of media addressing sexual harassment and accountability so prominently.
In this talk we’ll go over basic terms refining sexuality discourses, highlight the importance of sexuality inclusive social justice work, and give participants practical ways to advocate for healthy discussion of sexuality in their daily lives.”
When I wrote this description I had a lot of goals and expectations for myself, a lot of which got much simpler because of my inexperience in preparing for and executing a presentation. By the time conference time came, my main goal was to talk about the connections I was making between the tools used in social justice work and advocacy related to sex and sexuality, and ways to apply these tools more broadly.
On the day itself, I went over a collection of terms and ideas I enjoy thinking about, or that particularly frustrate me as the case was for several, played a video about Jacqueline Boxx (linked below) as an example of where there’s more work to be done, showed off some of the people I’ve found most interesting in my own learning, and mercifully my lovely participants had a wonderful discussion that interestingly took a parental approach focus. Though, there were quite a few interesting tangents and questions that I’ll be considering for my future projects.
Some Cool People Doing Cool ThingsStarting Point
I also got some really nice, and constructive, feedback. I have some ideas for where I want to go next, and what things I need to keep in mind for next time.
I’m incredibly happy that my topic was interesting, and that I got such positive feedback as motivation to keep pursuing it. I know I’m not the only person working on similar topics, and I’m looking forward to discovering new details and timing that make my thinking valuable contributions. I know I’m going to be writing more on the ideas I explored and my slightly haphazard way of learning them, but I make no promises for swift products.
As for the nitty gritty on the presentation side, I need more practice speaking itself. This is given. I need to be better about making time to prepare, and refine. (Basically, the opposite of procrastination.) I also want to include more points to include consent and actively build on the accessibility of my projects.
All in all, I had a wonderful experience, I learned a lot, and met some really awesome people. It great to build on my previous experiences at Olympic College’s Diversity Conference as an attendee, and I’m excited to keep working on more formal, academic-ish, researched work.
This week has been incredibly long and tiring. Some awesome things have happened, as well as the simply exhausting things.
Primarily, I attended Olympic College’s 5th Annual Diversity Conference, this year as a presenter myself. It was a great experience, though incredibly nerve wracking and highlighting my incredible skill in procrastination. I promised attendees that I would post slides from my presentation. Yesterday.
So, in keeping with the rest of my current schedule, let’s aim for a nice little reflection and information post next week.
Consider this your teaser post. (I’m considering it hanging onto my weekly post promise to myself a little bit longer.)
Awesome things in the works: (Theoretically, anyway.)
Presentation Reflections,
A few more previously published pieces,
Some awesome short pieces,
and for me, actually working on my novel.
From somewhere under the pile of things, Happy Pride!
Warped and lengthened timelines are fine. We can always celebrate cool things.
As part of my participation in the Seattle Erotica Art Festival this last week, I joined a poetry art tour called Wanderlust. Participating writers got to look at the gallery of visual art and write pieces responding to artworks they found inspiring.
Well Hooligan Lili, the artist for the work I chose, saw my writing and has featured my poem on her website!
I’m honored that my writing resonated so positively, and it’s amazing to see my work in awesome new places! I’m so happy we got to talk about art and inspiration.
To read my poem, and see Hooligan Lili’s fantastic artworks, visit Hooligan Designs!
I will have a piece of writing in this year’s Seattle Erotic Arts Festival Literary Anthology!
It looks like there’s going to be some really amazing artists featured, I’m honored to be included. I’m also very excited to be able to attend the festival and be a part of this awesome event!
There’s more information about the festival through the link below, and I’ll make sure to make more updates if anything particularly exciting or new comes up!
Zoe Brook 