A Big Fat Roundup

all the links 🔗 you might need right now

Hello friends.

The election has left all of us 😵‍💫 and I’m about to blast off to the writer’s residency Yaddo 🍂 to work on my next novel. My brain only works in bullet points and emojis at the moment so instead of a regular main meal essay and a smattering of cute links, I come to you this month with a roundup of all the links 🔗 you might need right now, divided into three parts:

1) Links to carve out space for creative work 📚 that are free or low cost and actually good. Now is not the time to abandon your projects about ideas and people that make the world richer and more complicated and more truthful and more reflective of our communities. They want us to do that, that is their goal. We will not do it.

2) Links to thrive as a fat and/or body liberated 🫀 babe right now. We need, as much as we can, to feel peace in our bodies in order to show up for ourselves and other people and the work.

3) Links with resources on how to prepare to live under 🍊 2 and create real systems of mutual aid and care. Done are we with posting to IG and calling each other out for stupid shit and thinking that is doing something. We are ready to actually get things done. Smarter people than I have thoughts about how.

Creative Work 📚 Links

• My Philly writing group The Claw sometimes uses a spreadsheet where we can track our goals and hold each other accountable. I made you this template so you can do the same with a few friends. Feel free to make a copy that you can edit and use!

• If generating words is a goal, are you signed up for the next mini 1000 words with

  Jami Attenberg
  ? It runs from January 3-7, 2025. If you’re new, the pitch is: write 1000 words a day on your project with the help of wise pep talk emails & energy generated from others doing the same thing.

• Mason Currey
  hosts virtual group writing/accountability sessions every morning called Worm Zoom. You are just there with other people, on Zoom, all of whom are quietly working on their projects. Cost is the price of his Substack. If you struggle to show up for your work, this might be for you.

• Chelsea Hodson’s Morning Writing Club is similar except for in addition to daily group Zoom work sessions, you also get access to special live interviews and Q&As with cool authors sharing tips & tricks for finishing projects.

• Esmé Weijun Wang
  ’s The Unexpected Shape offers “education for personal nonfiction writers & other creatives living with limitations” and is geared towards folks living with disabilities and chronic illness. Her One Day Writing Kickstart is free, and she has lots of other affordably priced self-paced options.

• Blue Stoop, the Philly-based community writing hub I co-founded, offers virtual creative co-working every Wednesday afternoon from 3:30-5:30 EST. Open to anyone, anywhere. Here is the next one on November 20.

• Ann Friedman of the Call Your Girlfriend Podcast & weekly newsletter is offering a fellowship for nonfiction writers. “It includes mentorship and editing; a $5,000 stipend; regular check-ins to provide structure and accountability; and space in my newsletter where fellows can publish and promote their work.”

Body 🫀 Liberation Links

• Lately, I’ve really been enjoying

  Virgie Tovar
  ’s weekly body image check ins. Takes one minute and helps set the tone for my week.

• If you are, like I am for back pain purposes, trying to move a little more and looking for a step counter that doesn’t come with all the calorie and weight loss info of a Fit Bit or Apple watch, I enjoy this one very much.

• The new documentary film about writer & star of the podcast Maintenance Phase, Aubrey Gordon, aka Yr Fat Friend is now available to watch online. May I suggest having some pals over and watching it together? “A film about fatness, family, the complexities of change and the messy feelings we hold about our bodies.”

• If you are in the market for a gift for your fat friend or your fat self, may I highly recommend these plus-size towels by We Are Towel.

• Kate Manne
  ’s book Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia. “In this urgent call to action, Manne proposes a new politics of ‘body reflexivity’—a radical reevaluation of who our bodies exist in the world for: ourselves and no one else.” Manne is a philosopher and now a National Book Award finalist, NBD, but this book is approachable, foundational, and dare I say — fun. Also a good gift for your relatives who are trying to get it.

• This episode of NPR journalist Ronald Young Jr’s podcast Weight for It in which he interviews Da’Shaun Harrison (Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness) about how “fat acceptance” and “fat liberation” are actually not all the way it and how the word “fat” is taking a similar usage path to word “Black” in our culture is my go-to recommendation right now.

• If you are raising a kid or know someone who is and you or they don’t want to pass on the same 90s diet bullshit you were raised with, may I suggest immediately ordering a copy of Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture by

  Virginia Sole-Smith
  ’s which comes out in paperback on December 10.

• Do you want to read a fun, hot literary novel about two fat women in a historical western town falling in love and having some fun sex in which one owns a general store? I did and it’s called Martha Moody by fat literary icon Susan Stinson who I am lucky enough to get to do a book event with in Western Mass TOMORROW 11/18.

Democracy 💪 & Community Care Links

• 10 Ways to Be Prepared and Grounded Now that Trump Has Won. Emotional, logistic, and community-oriented, this list is gold. “The key to taking effective action in a Trump world is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.” Exactly what we did NOT do last time.

• Trainings to use for small group gatherings & large group mobilization (linked in the above).

• “Organizing for Revolution, Not Crisis Avoidance” on Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. What it sounds like.

• If you’re looking for a model that we might emulate, I really enjoyed this short documentary, “The Response: How Puerto Ricans Are Restoring Power to the People” which “explores how mutual aid centers (Centros de Apoyo Mutuo – also known as CAMs) sprung up across the island in the wake of Hurricane Maria with the ultimate goal to restore power — both electric and civic — to the people.”

that’s all, wishing everyone so very well,

Emma

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