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Thank you, Bookslut (from obscure woman writers and micro presses)

As I found out in sadness and gratitude today in Guardian's essay by Bookslut's founder Jessa Crispin, the wonderful book review site is closing down today forever. Jessa wrote: 

"Which brings us to the hard truth. In order to make enough money to run a real publication, you have to write about books everyone has already heard of. You have to indulge in clickbait. You have to narrow your conversation down to the one that is already happening elsewhere. This reinforces the white male-dominated paradigm, where one type of voice is elevated above all others. It’s not just the publications that prefer these voices, it’s the readers themselves. I saw time and time again how little interest there was in radical voices, writers of colour, obscure women writers..." 

(Earlier in Crispin's essay she wrote about how she and her gang had loved the freedom in those good old days of the early Internet and blogging - before corporations discovered them and hooked them into ads - the freedom and unbridled passion to pursue novels from small unknown presses and faraway cultures - such as my novel Flight of the Goose, published by the very obscure micro press Far Eastern Press of Seattle, myself as an utterly unknown woman author writing about "exotic" cultures in Alaska with characters who are not Western/Anglo/Caucasian and with a female protagonist, a troubled sorceress-shaman who isn't even so "likable" or "sympathetic" to some readers...and dare I say my story apparently has a  radical/subversive ("anti-war and deep green sensibility").

With gratitude and respect and sadness I say to Bookslut and the writers there, thank you for a good run, a good trip. 

Here is their old insightful review of Flight of the Goose by Colleen Mondor (herself an amazing author and bush pilot).