The Boston Chapter’s celebrated members’ books published in 2016 at its annual party, which featured brief readings that resonated with the civil rights challenges facing the country, including a transgender woman’s memoir, poetry about the early eugenics movement, and an essay about same-sex marriage. Some attendees came directly from a downtown Boston rally where tens of thousands protested President Trump’s crackdown on Muslim immigrants. Charles Coe shared a poem he’d just written: “We won’t go back to the back of the bus, to the back of the line, won’t line up for identity cards, while holding out our plates for corporate crumbs… we’re coming at you low and hard and in your face, or under your radar…whatever it takes.” Guest speaker Craig Lambert, author of Shadow Work, The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day, pointed our trends including “robo writers” and “pay per page view” gigs that threaten writers’ ability to make a living from their writing. The Boston Chapter’s collaboration with indie Porter Square Books continued with a third curated reading, featuring Charles Coe and Susan Fox Rogers, contributors to the new anthology, Inspired Journeys: Travel Writers in Search of the Muse (University of Wisconsin Press). Click here for the tull list of NWU Boston members published in 2016.
Photo: Guest Speaker Craig Lambert, author of Shadow Work. Credit: Gordon Webster
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