I have a 13 year old son and I want to beat the cowboy shit out of his dad for doing that.

Your post doesn’t say anything about the reality of the author’s emotional life - you aren’t her, you don’t know her or her experience, and you are clearly uninterested in even trying.

I don’t have the vocabulary to fully articulate how close to home this beautifully written piece hit. All I know is that this part:

My Godbrother was murdered over a decade ago. We were 6 months apart and it’s so difficult not to think of the life he should’ve had.

I want to save your reply to use again and again on hateful trolls like that person. I think you have them pegged. Thank you.

Hot like Bea! Thank you.

For fuck’s sake, who on earth got this out of the grays?

Not the place for #notallwhitepeople. I heard a young BLM organizer say it so succinctly just last Monday: “If this were happening to any other group of people it would be considered an epidemic. And something would be done to stop it.”

My brother was murdered in New York in 2009. I think about him every day. Thank you for what you wrote.

Sometimes, I’ve felt guilty for my family surviving and doing well. There were so many American Indian families that weren’t as lucky as mine. We’ve had our troubles but we still been able to manage. A lot of American Indians are still struggling. I’m not. I was able to get a good education and a good job. I felt a…

When a family member dies its always hard but I think when the death is related to a crime especially one that remains without a face to associate without blame. But when it is political there is another layer of suffering and another layer of unresolved emotion. Whilst black peoples lives are still lost due to…

Wierdest thing when my brother shows up in my dreams is I am so much older than he was when he died, but he’s still my older brother.

When I was 15 one of my best friends was killed. I was supposed to be there, but by fluke went to a different gathering that night. Your story brought back so many of those feelings from those first years, and made me wonder how much I still hang on to that is now just hardcoded “surviving”. And then I thought of my…

To paraphrase the Holocaust “survivor” Eli Weisel, author of the iconic memoir “Night,” in his response to a woman who expressed her guilt at feeling sad and depressed over trivial things, as her suffering could never match Weisel’s, he essentially told her this...”we all have our own pain, which fills us to the brim.…

thanks for writing this, i appreciate the time and thought you put into this post

This is a really well written, clear, thoughtful piece that put into words many feelings I couldn’t quite articulate about this kind of accusation.

I was at Iowa when the affair with the unnamed professor happened. It was common knowledge, and it was fucking sad. Even sadder: I had totally forgotten about it until one of my friends from the program texted me a link to this article. I sincerely hope what’s happening is in fact a sea change.

Sadly, that’s not nearly the case. I’ve seen so many insufferable, thoroughly mediocre male writers get break after break after break. All the while acting like total assholes. It’s not the quality of the writing that determines how much of an asshole you can be and still be successful in the literary community, it’s…

A few years ago, poet Roger Bonair-Agard was publicly accused of rape by several women, most of whom he had mentored while they were still under 18. The literary community responded by nominating him for a national book award, and he continues to book readings at colleges on a regular basis.

Iowa poetry grad here to say that this was exactly my experience; I never knew if my poetry was valued by my male professors, or if I was simply paid more attention because of my sexuality. I unfortunately got the short end of the stick with the one female poet I had workshop with, too, as she was a hack and very much…