With this Written Word, Spoken Word blog, I hope to help do my part to create and sustain a vital local literary counterculture here in St. Francois County and the surrounding area. As I discover the works and readings of other daring authors, I will publicize their events and share my responses to their works. I will also explore the possible sources of writerly inspiration available here and foster where possible crosscurrents with musicians and fine artists who via their work make our hearts beat faster and/or blow our minds. In the continuing absence of any other alternative media, I hope to bring attention to businesses, individual efforts, movements, activities and events that offer non-religious inflected social or virtual spaces for the advancement of critical thought, political freedom for all, and maximum personal liberty right here in the Missouri Bible Belt.
The blog is ancillary to my Written Word, Spoken Word booth (Elevating the Discourse with Style) in The Factory in Farmington, Missouri, where for money or barter I provide personal, business and creative writing and conversational services. Part performance art, part social provocation, part "business as unusual", I aspire to model for other literary artists and intellectuals a potential way to make a modest living in a bucolic setting in the hopes that they will leave their toxic urban ghettos, sooner rather than later, and fan out across the country for all of our mutual survival.
I am much encouraged by your endeavor! I think it is admirable. I want desperately to join a literary guild or some such reading/writing group, be it formal or informal. My time of late has been sacrosanct. Juggling work, school and family while walking that tightrope called time, I balance everything but leave little for myself. This is something I need to change. My comp professor asked if I had an outlet for my writing. This sounds like just the thing. Thank you! -- Amanda
ReplyDeleteIf time permits you, Manda, perhaps we could collaborate on some posts in the future. I am really interested in LGBT experience in St. Francois County and also in the military—my sense is there are some fascinating stories needing yet to be told. I’m also gravely concerned with gynecological health issues. I find myself meeting a number of young women who have no health insurance and are not getting regular check-ups, not even an annual pap smear!
ReplyDeleteWe should definitely talk. I believe the Rural Missouri experience for the LGBT community is unlike that of any other part of the country. Both conservative and liberal, southeast Missouri is rich with generosity and understanding and rife with mistrust and that famous Missouri cynicism. There ARE stories to be told, but they aren't always what one might expect of the usual backward rural community.
ReplyDeleteFantabulous--let's get this lit-party started!
ReplyDelete