Posts by Laurie King
Takeback Tuesday: women’ place is in the House, and Senate, and Governor’s mansion, and…
As I’ve said before here, under the current regime we’re having to outsource many of those basic services that until recently we could trust our government to perform for us. Things like protecting the weak, and welcoming the assaulted, and healing the sick. One of the friends of the “Resistance” is a group called Emily’s…
Read MoreThe OTHER Laurie R. King
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the kinds of stories that I can’t tell inside the world of Mary Russell. So I decided to write a few blogs about those stories, and what I could do with them, and them alone. I’ve been thinking about the non-Russells partly because I’ve been writing a standalone novel—but also because the act of…
Read MoreTBT: Them radical librarians
I spent my childhood in libraries. Their stacks, their people, were my sanctuaries, the safe and nurturing places where my real community lived (rather than these changing cities where my family seemed to continually be moving). So it makes sense to me that libraries are now declaring themselves as sanctuary spaces—although with political overtones that…
Read MoreLockdown’s Looks…
Career Day at Guadalupe Middle School: a day given to innocent hopes and youthful dreams. A day no one in attendance will ever forget. A year ago, Principal Linda McDonald arrived at Guadalupe determined to overturn the school’s reputation for truancy, gang violence, and neglect. One of her initiatives is Career Day—bringing together children, teachers,…
Read MoreTakeback Tuesday: women’s work
Among the more interesting people I have met in this lifetime of odd people were John and Wink Allen. On the books, John was the Swahili scholar, but in fact much of what he did was based on Wink’s ability to wander into the women’s huts and chat. Before John and Wink, anthropologists generally assumed…
Read MoreLocking down Lockdown
My life at the moment is a barrage of emails from what seems like fourteen different Yahoo forums (forae?) that confuse me no end, since a reply will come in and I think it applies to discussion A and so I research and write out my comment only to realize that no, the subject line has…
Read MoreTakeback Tuesday: our rights
Takeback Tuesday is Team LRK’s weekly vote of confidence in the future, when I talk about steps our community of readers can make in asserting the good. My husband Noel was born in what is now Pakistan. He grew up among Muslims, lived in Africa for many years, and had friends of all religious persuasions…
Read MoreAnatomy of Innocence
Can you imagine being arrested for a crime you had nothing to do with? A crime so horrible, you’re nauseated just thinking about? Can you imagine finding yourself in a courtroom, trusting that the system works, so it can’t possibly find you guilty…except it does? Can you imagine spending your life behind bars for a crime…
Read MoreTakeback Tuesday: a woman’s voice
Takeback Tuesday is Team LRK’s weekly vote of confidence in the future. After a week that’s seen a flood of Impossibilities, from Bannon to #MuslimBan, gush across the country, I begin to suspect the strategy is to dump so much on us that we go whimpering away. I don’t think that’s going to happen, and…
Read MoreGleeful cackles of plot
A question writers are often asked is, “Where did that story / that character / that idea come from?” Usually the answer boils down to something small, some tiny piece of grit that lodges in the mind and accumulates ideas, images, snippets of dialogue like a pearl in an oyster. (Though admittedly, some pearls end…
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