This was originally published on Medium; thanks for all the views, recommendations, and comments you left there. I appreciate your support! As a college student, I became obsessed with ecovillages. Ecovillages are modern-day Utopian housing projects, community-building in “harmony with nature.” My thoughts ran like this: “People are lonely and isolated. The planet is being…
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When the Black Lives Matter protests happened outside my Oakland office, many of my white friends were annoyed, worried about their commute and their safety. When I said, “We shouldn’t be avoiding the protests. We should be joining them,” my words fell into a little nervous silence. When I blogged about joining the protests, some…
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This video I took while marching in the Ferguson protests in Oakland contains one of the most memorable and important moments of my life- a young organizer begging his fellow protesters not to intimidate and frighten a trapped white businessman. “We’re not going to let each other be split apart. That’s what they want us…
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Children are praised for their creativity. (“Of course you can be a ballerina, honey! You’re the best dancer in the world!”) Adults are told not to waste time on creative pursuits. (“Remember when I told you that you could be a ballerina? IT WAS A LIE! There are only room for a handful of ballerinas…
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Today is a big day- I get to officially unveil a project I’ve been working on for weeks. A group of writers, including me, have created a website dedicated to promoting strong female characters in literature. Check us out! Website: Rewriting Mary Sue Facebook: RewritingMarySue Twitter: @RewriteMarySue My friend Amy who started the group said she…
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As a child, I envied the children in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, for their ability to open a door into Narnia. I would stare at the back of my own closet with a wistful yearning in my heart, wishing the same was possible for me. Once at my grandmother’s house I even…
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In my lifetime, I’ve seen society move from reviling nerds to glorifying them. It’s an incredible social change. But does the revolution go far enough? We’ve embraced the positive: the nerd’s endearing love & enthusiasm for obscure branches of knowledge. But there’s still discomfort with the dark side of nerddom, aka social disability. That is not to…
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I’m very upset about Robin William’s suicide. He was my favorite actor. The characters he depicted were in terrible, tough situations and dealt with them using humor. I’m wondering now how much his characters were based on himself. Society treats depression like a character flaw you can overcome using willpower. People feel they have a…
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Hello, Earthlings. I was invited by the lovely lady Willow Becker to join a blog tour for writers to talk about their writing process- you can read her blog tour post here. This is Willow’s bio: “Willow Dawn Becker is a purveyor of words, often very small ones with lots of scary undertones. She dabbles…
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I’ve been writing literally since I was three years old, when I would dictate stories for my mother to write down & illustrate them with crayon. My most prolific period was 8th grade when I wrote a novel about a girl who was friends with a dragon. I continued to write throughout all of high…
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