Lori Henriksen

author of The Winter Loon

Tag Archives: Choices


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Goldie Awards

 

A few days ago I attended the the Golden Crown Literary Society Conference held in 110 degrees, Las Vegas. Whew! I didn’t step outside for three days.

Every year this amazing group of lesbian fiction writers get together to  learn from each other. I attended great classes and panel discussions with the best take away being the support, rather than competition, these women feel for each other. In that vein, I offer my congratulations to the winning authors in the Debut and Historical categories.

Even though a finalist in both those categories, The Winter Loon didn’t take home a Goldie award, but I still feel like a winner and am honored to be in the company of these fine writers.

In the Debut category the Goldie awards went to:

 

 

 

 

 

And the winner in the Historical category is:

 

 

You can check out all the rest of the 2018 winners here:

https://www.goldencrown.org/page/2018Winners

and all the finalists here:

https://www.goldencrown.org/page/2018Finalists

Thanks for stopping by.


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Sunday Love

Untitled design

I loved reading this story today from the Huffington Post. I can only imagine how many people Gloria Carter’s story will touch, giving them the courage to also step out of the shadow. I admit I’m more jazz than hip-hop and more Gloria Carter’s generation than Jay-Z’s, but I admire him for giving his mother a platform to tell a part of her story.

 

Gloria Carter, Jay-Z’s Mom, Comes Out As Lesbian On Rapper’s ‘4:44’ Album

Noah Michelson is the Editorial Director of HuffPost Voices 

Gloria Carter, Jay-Z’s mother, came out as lesbian in a new track featured on the rapper’s just-released “4:44” album.

The song, “Smile,” features both Jay-Z and his mother discussing her sexuality. It is the first time that either of them has publicly addressed her sexual identity.

“Mama had four kids, but she’s a lesbian / Had to pretend so long that she’s a thespian,” Jay-Z raps in the song, which contains a sample of Stevie Wonder’s “Love’s In Need Of Love Today.”

“Had to hide in the closet, so she medicate / Society shame and the pain was too much to take,” he adds before asserting, “Cried tears of joy when you fell in love / Don’t matter to me if it’s a him or her.”

Carter herself shows up on track to deliver a spoken word outro.

“Living in the shadow / Can you imagine what kind of life it is to live?” she asks on the close-to-five-minute track. “In the shadows people see you as happy and free / Because that’s what you want them to see,” she continues. “The world is changing and they say it’s time to be free / But you live with the fear of just being me… Living in the shadow feels like the safe place to be / No harm for them, no harm for me / But life is short, and it’s time to be free / Love who you love, because life isn’t guaranteed.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gloria-carter-jay-z-mom-lesbian

 

 

 


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Choices

Word of the day ~ regenerate. The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus says revise, revitalize, renew, breathe new life into. I’ve chosen this word because I’ve spent way too much time in the last few days trying to breathe new life the appearance of my blog site. Thanks to my website advisor, Maggie McLaughlin, changes are happening.

Perhaps the word should have been choices. So many choices in designing a website. So many choices in life.

My main character in THE WINTER LOON, Ruth Thompson, makes a choice early in her life based on what she doesn’t want. She questions the values she has been raised with and society’s expectations for young women in the 1930s. Her choice opens the door to a whole new life. Along the way there are many changes. Many times she must renew the direction of her life in order to follow her heart.

Still reading LOVING ELEANOR. I can’t help believing that Eleanor Roosevelt was the first blogger with her My Day daily newspaper column that ran in almost one hundred newspapers. Her choice to write the column took away from precious time she could spend with Lorena Hickok, the woman she loved. It was Lorena’s choice to suggest the column and to encourage her writing success that caused the whole world to fall in love with Eleanor.

Favim.com-cute-eleanor-roosevelt-quote-writing-134282