Hello friends,

The fact that you’re opening this newsletter gives me a sense of relief. It means you’re here. It means you're safe and I’m so glad for both of those things. 

I hope you’ll stay with me despite a more somber tone this month. I feel troubled by the world around us and I know I’m not alone. 

Reading and writing have always been my place of respite and escape. We all need that. But stories are also where I turn to make sense of the world, to find meaning in grief and to gain courage and clarity in the midst of chaos.

So stick with me. Unwrapped some leftover Halloween candy and let’s see what sense we can make together. Let’s do our best to stay bold.

About a year ago, I had the gift of listening to Sabaa Tahir in conversation with Tomi Adeyemi. They are two of my favorite fantasy authors and Tomi’s autograph is in the picture above. They are masters of writing fantasy worlds that you can disappear into while also creating stakes that feel connected to the world we live in. 

Sabaa was promoting the launch of her book Heir. In the conversation, she was asked about why she writes books filled with war and death and seemingly endless hardship. She talked about the ways in which her Pakistani heritage influences her writing. Something she said really struck me. She said that she writes about imbalances of power and acts of inhumanity because she wants readers, especially young ones, to be able to recognize them when they see them in the real world. 

I often think about how society holds up epic narratives like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings and countless others. We praise the rebellions and are appalled by the empires. We tell ourselves that we would do what Frodo did. We feel certain that we’d be a jedi, never a sith lord. Yet when oppression is televised, when hate is spoken from our own podiums, when fascism is no longer being hinted at but on full display there are still those who cannot–or more accurately will not– recognize it. 

The rise of censorship, propaganda and misinformation in our country isn’t subtle. It didn’t just begin, but it is escalating. As a writer, as an educator and as someone whose life has been rooted in storytelling I have taken the right of free speech for granted because it is supposed to be granted. I see now that it is fragile. 

When people in power control the stories, they control us. So I can’t talk about writing without saying that our stories matter. Who tells them and how they are told matters. The ability to tell our stories on our own terms is a key aspect of freedom and when that freedom is threatened we need to, at the very least, be brave enough to recognize it. 

If we can recognize injustice and oppression then we can interrupt it. We can seek out facts and not just accept what we’re told. We can ask questions. We can pursue narratives that are different from our own. We can offer empathy and critique and call both of those love. And we can always, always tell our stories whether in a book, on a reel or around the dinner table. 

They cannot stop the stories. They’ve tried. They’ve failed. They will fail again.

In the words of Tomi, Believe in your Story.

I have two bookish updates for you this month. 

Bold & Bookish successfully launched its first writers groups, Critique & Cafécito. It was amazing to meet new writers. I felt inspired watching writers push past nerves or self-doubt to share their work. The levels of creative courage in the zoom room were off the charts. 

A friendly reminder that we take new writers on a rolling basis (aka, you can still join!). If you’re on the fence about it, I think you should do it. But also don’t take my word for it. Here’s what one of our writers had to say.