Feckin' hell! Thank you for your direct and passionate advocacy for the word and for the freedom to express and share the individual's experience through the magic of the written word. I appreciate you and your ferocity. Thank you also, for your acknowledgement of the holy spaces and the value and beautiful, magical essence and importance of those places. You matter, and I am grateful for you!
Clementine! I run a very small school library. Would it be ok with you if I printed this paragraph to hang on the library wall?
“It is not arrogant or conceited of me to acknowledge that my writing is a part of this conversation. Of course it is. I too am a voracious reader. I too have sought for writers who could show me something of the world and something of myself. I too have felt the shiver, the expansion, the recognition. I have folded down the corners of pages. I have changed the entire course of my life based on something I read in a book. And I have seen my words at work in others. I have seen the look on their faces when the writing hits the place inside they had abandoned. I have seen the gratitude and the challenge and the change. I have been told, over and over again, that my writing has saved lives and changed lives. I have watched my words change the culture. And I’m not surprised, because that is what writing is meant to do.” -Clementine Morrigan, 2024
thank you so much for your courage and your work. as someone who started to write just recently and out of trauma, who was inspired and propelled forward by a teachers, who feel now i should be excluded, because somehow what i came up with and the way i present myself, more proudly and with more agency and urgency, does not sit with their ideas of an ideal customer anymore, i know exactly what you are talking about and how hard it is to find your footing on your own. it is incredibly hard. i don’t have nearly as much experience or work to show for myself, but i do feel i relate to the way you feel about the injuries you received from the established industry and their disciples. the way the hurt personally sits with you and affects your entire life, while they, the once who distribute their opinions about you and your work and make the decisions about how you get treated, just go home and hang their conscience on the hook with their coats and forget about it.
i also feel that there is a big problem with how someone’s treatment as a human is dictated by people’s opinions about their work. of course, your writing and all writing is intrinsically intertwined with your own experiences and draws from it. but that should not entitle anyone to have their personal reactions to your writing affect their practice of how to treat you in a professional interaction. that is profoundly unprofessional and disrespectful to you. Even if there would be breaches of societal rules and borders (which is profoundly what writers and artists need to do), these people’s reactions should be reflecting on that factually and not on their interactions with you personally.
Wow. You couldn’t receive this email and not call a meeting with your staff, immediately. I hope you will share their response with us, I’m so keen (& quietly hopeful) to see how they respond to this.
Your writing has quite literally saved my life and changed the course of it. It deeply angers me that you have been so cowardly censored without explanation, and I’m rooting for you through your unwavering perseverance and dedication to your art and expression. It’s opened a path for me and has been such a catalyst in cracking open my heart, to see how much my writing is also needed, how much my silence, despite the box sitting bedside overflowing with filled journals and notebooks beginning from age 10, is preventing a gift from being shared. I hope they show up with willingness for dialogue with you.
Feckin' hell! Thank you for your direct and passionate advocacy for the word and for the freedom to express and share the individual's experience through the magic of the written word. I appreciate you and your ferocity. Thank you also, for your acknowledgement of the holy spaces and the value and beautiful, magical essence and importance of those places. You matter, and I am grateful for you!
Your direct communication is medicine. Anyone receiving an email like this should honestly feel honored. You inspire me :’)
Crying multiple times reading this and my heart soars for your email in defense of yourself and your work 💖
Clementine! I run a very small school library. Would it be ok with you if I printed this paragraph to hang on the library wall?
“It is not arrogant or conceited of me to acknowledge that my writing is a part of this conversation. Of course it is. I too am a voracious reader. I too have sought for writers who could show me something of the world and something of myself. I too have felt the shiver, the expansion, the recognition. I have folded down the corners of pages. I have changed the entire course of my life based on something I read in a book. And I have seen my words at work in others. I have seen the look on their faces when the writing hits the place inside they had abandoned. I have seen the gratitude and the challenge and the change. I have been told, over and over again, that my writing has saved lives and changed lives. I have watched my words change the culture. And I’m not surprised, because that is what writing is meant to do.” -Clementine Morrigan, 2024
Yes of course. I would be honoured.
thank you so much for your courage and your work. as someone who started to write just recently and out of trauma, who was inspired and propelled forward by a teachers, who feel now i should be excluded, because somehow what i came up with and the way i present myself, more proudly and with more agency and urgency, does not sit with their ideas of an ideal customer anymore, i know exactly what you are talking about and how hard it is to find your footing on your own. it is incredibly hard. i don’t have nearly as much experience or work to show for myself, but i do feel i relate to the way you feel about the injuries you received from the established industry and their disciples. the way the hurt personally sits with you and affects your entire life, while they, the once who distribute their opinions about you and your work and make the decisions about how you get treated, just go home and hang their conscience on the hook with their coats and forget about it.
i also feel that there is a big problem with how someone’s treatment as a human is dictated by people’s opinions about their work. of course, your writing and all writing is intrinsically intertwined with your own experiences and draws from it. but that should not entitle anyone to have their personal reactions to your writing affect their practice of how to treat you in a professional interaction. that is profoundly unprofessional and disrespectful to you. Even if there would be breaches of societal rules and borders (which is profoundly what writers and artists need to do), these people’s reactions should be reflecting on that factually and not on their interactions with you personally.
Wow. You couldn’t receive this email and not call a meeting with your staff, immediately. I hope you will share their response with us, I’m so keen (& quietly hopeful) to see how they respond to this.
Your writing has quite literally saved my life and changed the course of it. It deeply angers me that you have been so cowardly censored without explanation, and I’m rooting for you through your unwavering perseverance and dedication to your art and expression. It’s opened a path for me and has been such a catalyst in cracking open my heart, to see how much my writing is also needed, how much my silence, despite the box sitting bedside overflowing with filled journals and notebooks beginning from age 10, is preventing a gift from being shared. I hope they show up with willingness for dialogue with you.