Writing by Writers and Tomales Bay

Tomales Bay, 2015

I received a fellowship to attend the Writing By Writers workshop at Tomales Bay. I worked over five days in close study with fourteen goddesses and one poet-god under the beautiful stewardship of Lidia Yuknavitch. She, along with Pam Houston, Mark Doty, Steve Almond, Dorothy Allison and Greg Glazner were all there, reading, teaching, talking, dancing and eating alongside us.

It seems, today, like a dream. I am over-full. Leaking over and out.

The TLFWTSCEVATPITM* and Women's Suffrage

Alice Paul and the National Women's Party August 18, 1920

Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on June 4, 1919, guaranteeing all women the right to vote. My proposal for today is that instead of spending one split second of time talking or even thinking about the *Too-large Family with the Strident Christian Evangelical Views and Tortured Pedophiles in Their Midst or even wondering why the TLFWTSCEVATPITM is and has been interesting at all in these United States, we reflect upon the enormous legacy a generation or two of extremely bad-ass women bestowed on us. As my friend, the writer Lidia Yuknavitch said today,

hey you mammals that think your rights just appeared from the old man wizard in the sky or thin air: wake up and read history. you're standing on some bones that mattered.

Check these women out:

Lucretia Mott

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Susan B. Anthony

Carrie Chapman Chatt

Lucy Burns

Dora Lewis

Alice Paul

Pauline Adams

Helena Hill Weed

Julia Ward Howe

Anticipate this: