Warning: long, angry rant ahead. Contains screen shots. Yes, I’m making an email sent to me public, and yes, I’m publicly calling out this particular writing workshop.
I first saw this flash fiction contest in a Facebook group. A colleague posted it there in its original form:
The highlighted portion reads “No swearing, profanity, explicit sexual scenes, graphic violence, LGBTQ.”
People responded by contacting Deborah Owen, so she changed it to this:
The new text, which you can see in full here, reads:
- All contests have parameters. We are not interested in the following genres:
- Stories with swearing or profanity
- Horrific deaths/torture/horror
- Romance in general
- Futuristic stories
- Sexual scenes
- Fantasy
- Sci-Fi
- LGBTQ – some have asked if they can use gay characters. It depends on the story and how it is written. The judges will make that determination.
(Side note: I read that to my kids. They both said, “Why don’t they just say they want literary flash fiction instead of listing pretty much every genre?” They also thought it was pretty funny that she listed “swearing” and “profanity” as separate and also listed “futuristic” and “sci-fi” separately.)
Aside from the poor wording, this still didn’t feel as if it addressed the overt discrimination. I should say here that one colleague said the site is Christian-based, but I didn’t see that when I went to the website. If anyone can confirm or deny, that would be appreciated. Not that being Christian excuses or even explains anything—there are plenty of Christians who are part of the LGBTQ+ community or are allies, and I doubt they appreciate Christianity as the reason why bigotry is acceptable.
Poet and writer Jan Steckel shared most of the above on her page, including the text of the emails she sent to Deborah Owen and the responses she received in reply. She urged us to contact Ms. Owen as well, which I did. This is the text of my email to her:
I am a published author and member of the LGBTQ community, writing about your flash fiction contest. I had seen the original call, which listed LGBTQ content as unwelcome for submission. I see that you have updated the parameters, but they remain discriminatory.
LGBTQ is not a genre. You have already stated that you do not accept romance or erotic content as well as other genres. There is nothing inherent to LGBTQ content that would place it in any of those genres. It is not necessary to list it as a separate category.
Stories should be judged based on whether they meet the criteria required by a contest. Unless a story with LGBTQ content fails to meet the other criteria, it should not be listed separately with a caveat that judges will decide whether it’s appropriate.
As it stands, there is no reason for me to recommend this contest to my colleagues. Given the discriminatory rules of the flash fiction contest, I also cannot in good conscience recommend anything else on this site either. I would have concerns that authors would face similar or worse antagonism.
I hope that you will reconsider removing any rules regarding LGBTQ content from this and future contests. If not, then I would expect a detailed explanation of why this policy exists and how you plan to address it. Otherwise, I will be sharing this with my writing groups as one place to avoid participation for their own benefit.
Sincerely,
Amy M. Leibowitz
To which she replied:
Does everyone have to like LGBTQ writing? I think not, and I don’t. Neither do I like a dozen other things, and we will not entertain those either. You are very welcome to enter like everyone else, under the same guidelines.You ask why LGBTQ is still on the list. Because they have defamed my name, slandered my school, hounded my friends, disrupted my live interview, jammed my mailbox with garbage, sent filthy pictures and stories, called me every name in the book, threatened me, and declared war on me without so much as approaching me in a decent and reputable way to begin with. And for that reason it will remain on the list like a flag on a ship that will not go down. LGBTQ does not own my school. Gay writers are more than welcome to enter under the same guidelines as everyone else. I hope you will think for yourself, write an amazing story and win!Thank you for your letter.Deborah Owen
No one is asking her to “like” LGBTQ writing. And not one of us is suggesting that we “own” her school, so I am not sure where that is coming from. I cannot fathom what other way besides contacting her in the only method she has provided would be more “decent and reputable.”
She can certainly do what she likes; it’s her school and her contest. I actually don’t much care if she changes her mind on any of it, nor do I particularly care if she hates me personally or the entire LGBTQ+ community as a whole. Lots of people already feel both of those ways, so it isn’t as though it is life-ruining to discover one more person with that attitude.
A bigger problem for me is that her spoken rule is an unspoken one in a lot of other corners. Authors frequently can’t even get to the agent stage, let alone a publishing contract, if they are offering LGBTQ+ stories. It’s even worse for people who publicly identify as part of the community and are writing LGBTQ+ characters and themes. Many LGBTQ+ books are published by small presses or are self-published.
The rare few books that do make it into the mainstream are often written by straight authors, and there are definite rules for how those stories must go. Even something like Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, which is now a major motion picture, suffered from this problem. It’s intended to be an uplifting meet-cute teen romance, but the problem is that the plot relies on a particularly tired trope: the gay kid being “punished” via bullying and public outing. Does that happen? Yes, of course. But exactly zero percent of heterosexual teen romance includes some form of tormenting the protagonists for a vital part of their sexual orientation.
I don’t fault Becky Albertali necessarily for this problem. The best I can say is “she tried.” I wouldn’t be surprised if her agent or editor recommended she include this little morality-play-type gem (or if that was what made it easier to gain acceptance). Although she did a similar thing with her book about a fat girl, so it’s entirely possible this is how she sees the world: teenagers having to endure shame in order to end up happy. In any case, it poses a distinct problem for LGBTQ+ writers which is connected to the above issue with Ms. Owen’s contest.
Jan Steckel accurately referred to calling LGBTQ+ books a genre as placing our writing in a ghetto. We have few options as queer authors. Publish with a small press or self-publish; pull a Simon and write a book with a limited vision for queer teens; or don’t write. We’re not welcome in a lot of places in the publishing world.
I’ve been disappointed for a long time at the shape of queer literature. If we aren’t being punished for who we are, then we are expected to forgive or even befriend our tormentors (another problem Simon suffers from). We must make our sexuality overt on the page or else be presumed cisgender (not trans), heterosexual (rather than lesbian, gay or bi) and allosexual/alloromantic (rather than asexual/aromantic). Our books must fall into some combination of Issues Books, erotica, and romance, or our stories must be cleverly disguised via speculative fiction.
And the difficulty with all of that is how much it limits our freedom to explore what is really underneath our struggles to come out and live authentically as ourselves. If I choose to write about what it was like coming of age as queer in a religious community that did not accept me, then am I, too, relying on queer pain to sell books? Or am I owning my past self with all my scars? If I tell a story about grief and loss after a long-term partner’s death, am I falling into the trap of Kill Your Gays? Or am I sharing the heartache of my losses?
None of that would matter at all if we weren’t being judged on the sexuality and gender of our characters. If our books were viewed through the same lens as any other story, then people like Deborah Owen wouldn’t need to mention us by name as though we belong in the same category of “filth” where she slots graphic violence, sex, and swearing. It could be assumed that we understand what “no explicit sexual scenes” means and that we, like any author of heterosexual stories, would not include it.
This is a time for our allies to step up. Read our books. Promote them. Author colleagues, understand us and our lived reality when you write about us, and understand that some stories probably aren’t yours to tell—especially if they rely on queer-specific pain. And please, please, if you have a moment, let people like Deborah Owen know that they need to move themselves into the twenty-first century if their goal is to guide new writers to improve their craft.
A very eloquent ‘rant’ at that. I wonder what kind of response she expected.
Only this morning I posted a review of a mainstream novel supposedly written for LGBTQ+ young adults with the usual emphasis on sexual behaviour. It does appear to have been written by an LGBTQ+ author, sadly, but I guess we’re not immune to perpetuating heteronormative tropes.
Ah, I saw that. My kids generally have zero patience for a lot of what passes for YA fiction. It’s actually why I’m hesitant to write it and why I wasn’t entirely sure if mine is really YA or more aimed at adults who were teens in the same era I was. Bit of both, I guess.
I have been trying for ages to put a finger on why books like Simon and the attention it’s gotten are so off-putting. I finally figured out it’s that I dislike when non-LGBTQ people capitalize on our pain like it’s theirs to own and/or they are doing us a favor by putting it in print. As if we haven’t been doing the same (and better) for decades. Instead of underrated actually LGBTQ authors published with small presses getting that kind of attention, it’s an “ally” who can’t figure out a way to tell a story without punishing us for being queer. Then when we tell those stories, we get accused of doing it for the hetero gaze rather than because we need to be allowed expressions of our own hurts.
Anyway, with all of that background, it’s almost no wonder Deborah Owen and people like her would assume that LGBTQ characters would mean sex and/or violence done to LGBTQ people. Not that she’s right in her discrimination or her hateful rants, but she isn’t wrong that we’ve been shoehorned to the point where people don’t know anything different.
Great post, Amy, and thanks for the shout-out. Very thoughtful and illuminating. I will link to it on my page. Thanks also for the eloquent letter you wrote to Ms. Owen. I have heard a couple more things about her since. She claims tax-exempt status for her charity (teaching writing to cancer patients), but that status was actually revoked in 2017. She claims International Writers Workshop as a sponsor, but a representative of theirs wrote me today that they did not sponsor her and that they are absolutely appalled that she used their name and will put a stop to it. Keep up the good fight. The best thing we can do is write more stories with queer characters and keep striving to get them published both inside and outside of the literary ghetto.
That is honestly not surprising, that she would be dishonest about sponsors. I’ll be interested to see what comes of International Writers Workshop’s response to this. My guess is that she will double down.
Written with your usual eloquence Amy! It’s shocking that bigots (and evidently also fraudsters?) like Ms Owen still exist in 2018. Keep on doing what you do.
Thank you so much for your kind words.
To be honest, in the current US political climate, it doesn’t shock me people like her exist and continue to attempt this type of control. Too bad they don’t factor in all the people who will continue to fight them on it.
Bravo for your rant, Amy! I’ve been monitoring “religious” groups for over 20 years and this is pretty typical: a group that’s been tossed out of the mainstream but still uses those credentials.
That doesn’t surprise me at all. They know they have no real sway on their own, so they’re willing to use anything or anyone they can to give an air of credibility. These types of conservative evangelical groups are all pretty much cut from the same cloth.
Thank you for your rant and bringing this out of the niche it was in. *sigh* I’ve seen this before. In less than a minute one can find on Ms. Owen’s Facebook page that she declares herself to be a “Conservative Christian” and her Likes contain more than a few people and groups that are loudly anti-LGBTQ. So bully for her. I don’t agree with those views but they’re hers and she’s set up a site, or rather an institute, to help people write. That is what I’ll focus on.
The list of things to be excluded from this flash fiction contest is not only badly written (first alarm bell goes off) but also points rather badly to the kind of things this institute is looking for (all nine remaining alarm bells sound), all of which are the antithesis of good writing.
So let’s take apart the list of “genres” [sic] they don’t want:
1. “Stories with swearing or profanity” – So apparently they want genteel, Victorian prose or things so unemotional that no one, ever, loses composure.
2. “Horrific deaths/torture/horror” – Ok, nothing but peaceful passings, no abuse, and nothing dripping with blood. That might be ok by itself, but combined with the rest of the list severely limits the writing.
3. “Romance in general” – No romantic relationships? I guess all those genteel people not dying horrific deaths are all Platonic buds.
4. “Futuristic stories” – No speculation past the present moment? Does that also rule out anything that speaks about next Christmas? Or the Second Coming? Perhaps also no silver hair or rocket trips to Mars? Or a world like Star Trek where everyone mostly gets along?
5. “Sexual scenes” – It has already been established that the tasteful parlor of Victorian genteel, platonically related people who never lose composure is the setting so of course none of them will have any sex of any kind at anytime. Perish the thought! And bore the reader.
6 “Fantasy” – One can argue that this list of no-no’s is in itself a fantasy, but then again, this parlor of stiff-backed quiet folks can’t even stomach Tolkien? Or Peter Rabbit? Dull bunch.
7. “Sci-Fi” – Let no science-based stories intrude upon the parlor! One’s humors might be discombobulated if confronted with the periodic table. Or worse, talk of how the future might deal with climate change. Though it’s strange Sci-Fi and “futuristic” stuff is separated. Perhaps going back in time to a saner, better world, say, the Victorian era, would be acceptable?
8. “LGBTQ” – some have asked if they can use gay characters. It depends on the story and how it is written. The judges will make that determination.” No openly gay stories and if gays are there they must act straight, not be too obvious, and preferably die a tragic death just after accepting Christ as their personal savior, having repented all the bad stuff they did. Reminds me of white people talking about black people being “too uppity.”
So, someone tell me, with all these no-nos, who would actually want to be a part of this institute?
That made me laugh ridiculously hard. This is pretty much an expanded version of what my kids said when I read the list to them. Though they also did point out that “futuristic” is probably a subset of sci-fi and therefore covered.
1. I wonder if that includes substitute words like “oh, fiddlesticks.” Asking because I once heard a preacher say he thought teens shouldn’t say “oh, snap” because everyone knew what word they really meant.
2. No horror, but she does, apparently, like to quote Stephen King on her Facebook page.
3. Maybe Romance is off the table to prevent kids from going on unchaperoned dates?
4. I don’t think I can top “no stories about the Second Coming.”
5. I was bored before we even got to this stage.
6. I’ve run across these types of people before. Even Narnia is usually off the table for them. There’s a witch in there somewhere.
7. Pretty sure she wouldn’t believe in climate change anyway.
8. There’s no romance, so I think we could easily just pretend every single character in every single entry is gay. Works for me.
What gets me is that according to this list, even the books that were all the rage in the church where I spent my teen years would be disallowed. I read a lot of Frank Peretti–fantasy, some of which had violence and elements of horror. And that was on the approved conservative evangelical book list!
What the hell do they want people to write about then? This excludes just about every reason I would ever pick up a book. And the Narnia thing? They do realise that the Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are all themes used by Christian Priests whilst delivering sermons. Narnia is based on Christianity, for goodness sake.
This woman does sound like a rather bitter and twisted individual, after reading her reply to you and then reading what others have discovered.
I am going to write to her myself and will await her reply with bated breath.
Well, I saw an article which contained a snippet of a winning entry. Apparently, they want either fluffy bunnies and kitties, or they want stories about men watching women “wiggle” their way down the street. Can’t quite figure out which.