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The Story of Writing
@sownow.bsky.social
1.5K followers 1.9K following 3.8K posts
A daily podcast about writing and writers that changed things, like minds, the world, etc.
https://storyofwriting.com
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The Story of Writing @sownow.bsky.social · May 15
The Story of Writing podcast rules:

-Talk about writers and writing that made the world better
-Every episode should include women and people of color
-Feminism is equality for all
-Stay woke
-Encourage reading
-Respect short attention spans
-Find joy and share it
#BookSky #History #OTD #Authors
Story of Writing
storyofwriting.com
sownow.bsky.social
On this day in 1885, the landmark American novel "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was published in the U.S.
#BookSky #Huck #Finn #History #OTD
It was one of the first books written in a regional vernacular, in this case a Missouri drawl. Author Samuel Clemens knew it well from his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri. Written under the pen name Mark Twain, the book about Huck Finn was both a satirical look at the Mississippi River culture of the 1850s and a bright light on the region’s racism. According to the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, before Huck Finn, Twain had written an explicit exposé of racism, but his publisher refused to print it – saying the subject matter was too sensitive for readers. So, Twain wrote about Huck facing the imprisonment and violence that characterized slavery. When Huck escaped, he found Jim, a slave, escaping as well, though it was illegal for Jim to run away from the same treatment Huck received. More than 21 years after the book hit shelves, the Library Journal found that Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had been banned somewhere in the U.S. every year since it was first published. It hasn’t hurt sales. Readers have bought more than 20 million copies of the book. The cover of a firs-edition copy of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Image source: Raptis Rare Books
February 18, 2026 at 7:18 PM
sownow.bsky.social
Happy Toni Morrison's birthday!

Write for your people:
“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean.”
February 18, 2026 at 5:31 PM
sownow.bsky.social
“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
-American writer Toni Morrison, born on this day in 1931
#WriterSky #BookSky #Beloved #Nobel #History #BOTD
Her best known works include The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1993, Morrison became the first Black woman to be awarded any Nobel Prize. The Swedish Committee that selects Nobel recipients recognized Morrison’s contributions to literature by saying her writing, “gives life to an essential aspect of American reality in her books, which are characterized by visionary force and poetic import.” Morrison was also known for remaining steadfast in her intention to have the world see her as a woman in full. Shortly after her death in 2019, a senior editor at PBS wrote: “While American society lacked imagination in understanding Black lives, Morrison filled in the details. Pulling from African literature, slave folklore or Black history, Morrison portrayed her Black characters as complex, vibrant, and flawed people, transforming American literature. As a writer, she recognized the need to capture the experiences of Black women, who seldom saw themselves in the center of their own stories. As an editor, she introduced a slate of new Black voices into the American publishing world. When asked about the characters in her book Beloved being “larger than life” — Morrison said that the criticism was small-minded, adding ‘My characters are not bigger than life, they are, in fact, big as life.’” An undated photo of author Toni Morrison Photo credit: Deborah Feingold/Corbis/Getty Images Image source: Rolling Stone Magazine
February 18, 2026 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by The Story of Writing
naethanapollo.com
been wanting to perform this cover ever since that guy got kirked
February 17, 2026 at 11:48 PM
sownow.bsky.social
“The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.”

— Simone Weil, “Waiting for God”
February 18, 2026 at 12:39 AM
sownow.bsky.social
A militant Black activist, a gender-fluid explorer and a rabbi walk into a podcast...

If there's a thread through all three of today's featured writers - Huey Newton, Isabelle Eberhardt, and Chaim Potok - it's making our lives meaningful.

Also, pissing off right-wing nut jobs, but that's just fun.
February 17, 2026 at 2:22 PM
sownow.bsky.social
Happy Chaim Potok's birthday!

Life is over in the blink of an eye. Make it mean something:
“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. I learned a long time ago that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. –Chaim Potok, "The Chosen," 1967
February 17, 2026 at 2:16 PM
sownow.bsky.social
Happy Isabelle Eberhardt's birthday!

Explore everything:
“A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is a deliver- ance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out.” –Isabelle Eberhardt’s notebook
February 17, 2026 at 2:11 PM
sownow.bsky.social
Happy Huey Newton's birthday!

Fight for freedom and justice - and everything else that leads to equity, equality, and self respect for all:
“I do not think that life will change for the better without an assault on the Establishment, which goes on exploiting the wretched of the earth. This belief lies at the heart of the concept of revolutionary suicide. Thus it is better to oppose the forces that would drive me to self-murder than to endure them. Although I risk the likelihood of death, there is at least the possibility, if not the probability, of changing intolerable conditions. This possibility is important, because much in human existence is based upon hope without any real understanding of the odds. Indeed, we are all—Black and white alike—ill in the same way, mortally ill. But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is the result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.” –Huey P. Newton, "Revolutionary Suicide," 1973
February 17, 2026 at 1:37 PM
Reposted by The Story of Writing
rbreich.bsky.social
-A living wage
-Guaranteed healthcare
-The right to join a union
-The right to vote
-The right to choose when, how, and with whom you start a family
-The right for you and your family to live free from gun violence

These are the foundations of real freedom.
February 16, 2026 at 8:01 PM
sownow.bsky.social
“I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.”
-American Rabbi Chaim Potok, born on this day in 1929
#WriterSky #BookSky #FathersAndSons #History #BOTD
He may be best known for his book The Chosen, a coming-of-age story that tries to make sense of faith, friendship, father-and-son relationships, & the secular intellect. An undated b/w photo of author and rabbi Chaim Potok Image source: National Book Foundation
February 17, 2026 at 1:17 PM
sownow.bsky.social
At my first radio station (2004), the general manager said, "You have to ignore the opinions of about 12 percent of the population because that's how many people think Elvis is still alive."

New metric, same data:
gtconway.bsky.social George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 1d
Good grief. Everyone knows they were just friends.
February 17, 2026 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by The Story of Writing
admirablewomen.bsky.social
Metallurgist Constance Tipper was born #OTD in 1894.

Her groundbreaking work on the brittle fracture of metals saved countless lives during #WWII & laid foundational principles for modern fracture mechanics. First female FT faculty member at Cambridge Dept of Engineering (1949). #WomenInSTEM (1/2)
Black-and-white historical portrait of Constance Tipper, the pioneering English metallurgist and crystallographer. She is gazing directly at the camera with a calm, intelligent, and composed expression. Tipper has short, neatly styled dark hair parted on the side with soft waves framing her face. She wears a patterned blouse or dress with a high collar, evoking early-to-mid-20th-century professional women's attire. The soft lighting highlights her determined features against a plain, neutral background, capturing her as a trailblazing scientist whose work on brittle fracture revolutionized materials engineering and saved lives during and after World War II.
February 16, 2026 at 11:53 PM
Reposted by The Story of Writing
jubilado251.bsky.social
www.nbcnews.com/news/obituar...
Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon and two-time presidential candidate, dies at 84
“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said in a statement Tuesday.
www.nbcnews.com
February 17, 2026 at 10:05 AM
sownow.bsky.social
It is the birthday in 1877 of the gender-fluid explorer and author whose story is like no other. Her name is Isabelle Eberhardt.
#WriterSky #BookSky #Lover #History #BOTD
From a young age, she lived in Switzerland and learned French, German, and Italian. She also spoke Russian and learned Greek and Arabic as well. Eberhardt dressed as a boy, read philosophy and poetry, and, in her teens, began correspondence with two people in North Africa. One was her brother, who had joined the French Foreign Legion, the other had placed an ad for a pen pal in a Swiss newspaper. Eberhardt took the ideas from these letters and turned them into short stories. Using a male pseudonym, she wrote about and published work on a sweeping range of topics, from a medical student with an attraction for a corpse to religious life in North Africa. Despite learning about Africa and its cultures only through letter writing, Eberhardt’s stories had vivid details and a strong authorial voice that was considered knowledgeable and opposed to colonialism. When she was 20, Eberhardt and her mother went to Algeria, soon converted to Islam, and largely abandoned European acquaintances and any semblance of a European lifestyle. Eberhardt continued to dress as a man and, according to a friend, “drank like a Legionnaire, smoked like a hashish addict and made love for the love of making love.” And she continued writing. She died at the age of 27 in a flash flood in Algeria. Her written work has been interpreted as feminist and one spark – among many – that flared into the early 20th-Century anti-colonial movement of North Africa. For all that, Eberhardt and the life she lived raised far more questions than she answered. Biographers and others have been fascinated by her life and work for more than 120 years. An undated and grainy b/w photo of writer and explorer Isabelle Eberhardt Image source: WNYC
February 17, 2026 at 12:13 PM
sownow.bsky.social
“Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws.”
-Co-founder of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton, born on this day in 1942
#WriterSky #BookSky #Revolutionary #CommunityOrganizer #AntiRacist #Intercommunalism #Activist #History #BOTD
From racism and inequality to police violence and the debilitating effects of systemic incarceration on communities of color, many of the political, social, and economic problems he saw still dominate today’s public debates. Newton’s extensive writing includes books and essays on a number of topics. His idea of “intercommunalism” offered a prescient perspective on the convergence of politics and social control. Newton wrote that traditional nation-states were being replaced by global networks dominated by corporations and other unelected and unfettered capitalist power structures. With Bobby Seale, another co-founder of the Black Panthers, Newton co-wrote the Party’s 10-Point Platform. These points included freedom, justice, peace, and people’s community control of modern technology. Newton also wrote the book "Revolutionary Suicide," an autobiography and manifesto that provides a framework for understanding inequality – from the perspective of those forced to endure it. A black-and-white photo of Huey Newton speaking at UMass Amherst in 1970 Photo credit: Jeff Albertson Image source: UMass Amherst
February 17, 2026 at 12:02 PM
sownow.bsky.social
Is history repeating or rhyming here? Both?
US Sec of State Marco Rubio said the word “civilization” 12 times in his address to the 2026 Munich Security Conference.
To rightwing Americans, that means “christian white people.”
#Hate #WhiteSupremacist #Christo-Fascist #USPolitics #History
It’s a bit odd to hear such obvious white supremacy coming from Rubio, who – as the son of Cuban refugees – is Latino. But his comments are certainly an echo of US right-wing authoritarianism. Terms like Western “civilization,” “culture,” “heritage,” and “tradition” are often used as coded language for white supremacy to avoid direct, overt hate speech while spreading the same ideology. The neo-fascist Proud Boys claim Western civilization – and its chauvinism – is superior to other civilizations or ways of thinking. Alt-Right groups, like Identity Evropa use the word “civilization” as a proxy for racial identity and white, Euro-centric culture. White nationalists like Jared Taylor equate “Western civilization” with white supremacy and, often, the “white genocide” conspiracy theory. Nick Fuentes and his America-First groyper army argue that America is a fundamentally Christian, white Western nation that is being destroyed by immigration. In an echo of history, Rubio, et al, are repeating the hate speech that inspired slavery, Jim Crow laws, and segregationists in the U.S. “Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites, with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?” –Allen Shattuck, Alaskan Territorial Senator, during legislative debate over Alaska’s anti-discrimination law. Shattuck was the son of a Confederate soldier who fought for slavery in the U.S. Civil War. “I would not have expected that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind them, of our Bill of Rights. Asking you to give me equal rights implies that they are yours to give. Instead, I must demand that you stop trying to deny me the rights all people deserve.” –Elizabeth Peratrovich, Tlingit woman and vice president of the Alaska Native Sisterhood. Alaska’s Anti-Discrimination Law, the first in the US, was passed on this day: February 16, 1945 Of course, saying that “Western civilization” supports christo-fascism ignores: -the Enlightenment thinking that inspired the founders of the United States -these philosophies were written by thinkers who were themselves inspired by Indigenous American nations -inspired because those nations presented a vital alternative to the monarchies and feudal systems that oppressed Europe during its cultural decline – or what we now call The Dark Ages Jean Jacques Rousseau argued that people were naturally free and that “civilization” – specifically European hierarchy and inequality – had corrupted this natural state. His belief that authority stems from the collective will of the people, rather than a top-down monarch, was influenced by reports of consensual decision-making within Indigenous American communities. John Locke used the phrase “state of America” to represent his theoretical “state of nature” in his influential Second Treatise of Government. This was the source of Locke’s idea that political authority was not divine but arose from consent of the governed. In Montesquieu's writing, he repeatedly pointed to Indigenous American political structures to his concepts of liberty and the separation of powers. This is why the U.S. has three branches of government. Benjamin Franklin studied the Iroquois Great Law of Peace which became the model for his ideas on how a nation could – and should – function without a central monarch, while maintaining both local autonomy and unity. Thomas Jefferson saw the freedom and equality in Native societies as a way to refute European class systems.
February 16, 2026 at 4:08 PM
sownow.bsky.social
It is the birthday of the musician who wrote,
“You give me fever.”
American wordsmith and hit maker Otis Blackwell was born on this day in 1931.
#MusicSky #WriterSky #Singer #Songwriter #History #BOTD
In addition to Fever, he also wrote or co-wrote Great Balls of Fire, All Shook Up, Don’t Be Cruel, and a long list of songs that shaped rock and roll. He wrote around one thousand songs, and sold nearly 200 million albums. Blackwell never became a household name, but his fellow musicians loved him and his compositions. He was among the first Black musicians to be inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Association and the U.S. Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. The Black Rock Coalition, a collective of prominent rock musicians of color, held a tribute concert for him at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Blackwell’s native Brooklyn. Blackwell himself took the stage and performed some of his favorite songs. The event is referred to as Blackwell’s “crowning moment.” An undated, black-and-white photo of singer-songwriter Otis Blackwell Image source: The Blues Foundation
February 16, 2026 at 1:14 PM
sownow.bsky.social
On this anniversary of the passage of the United States' first anti-discrimination law, let's remember the people who made it happen.

Elizabeth Peratrovich played a major role in ending segregation in Alaska:
“Asking you to give me equal rights implies that they are yours to give. Instead, I must demand that you stop trying to deny me the rights all people deserve.” –Elizabeth Peratrovich, testimony to Alaskan lawmakers
February 16, 2026 at 1:04 PM
sownow.bsky.social
On this day in 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in the U.S. went into effect - in Alaska.
This story is terribly relevant to the federal government's current forms of discrimination and hate.
#HumanRights #History #OTD
In 1945, Alaska was not a state but a U.S. territory. In 1905, the territorial authorities segregated native Alaskans from those with European ancestry. This created intolerant conditions similar to those imposed by Jim Crow laws in the southern U.S. Alaska’s employers could refuse to hire natives, and indigenous Alaskans faced literacy tests and other barriers to voting. In some parts of Anchorage and Juneau, native Alaskans were not allowed to buy homes. In the early 1940s, The territorial Governor said the discrimination toward natives was un-American. He drafted a bill to end segregation, but legislators voted it down. Enter Elizabeth Peratrovich, a Tlingit woman who served as vice president of the Alaska Native Sisterhood. She began lobbying lawmakers. Territorial senator Allen Shattuck said “Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites, with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?” In her testimony to legislators, Peratrovich said, “I would not have expected that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind them, of our Bill of Rights.” The Daily Alaska Empire newspaper reported that Peratrovich “shamed the opposition into a defensive whisper.” The anti-discrimination law was passed shortly afterward. This is one reason, in the year 2020, Peratrovich became the first Alaska Native to appear on U.S. currency. On the one-dollar coin, below her image, name, and a Tlingit sea hawk, are the words “Anti Discrimination Law of 1945.” This screen grab includes an image of the one-dollar coin bearing Elizabeth Peratrovich's likeness An undated, b/w photo of Elizabeth Peratrovich Photo: Alaska State Archives Image source: The New York Times
February 16, 2026 at 12:54 PM
sownow.bsky.social
(guffaw)
February 16, 2026 at 11:38 AM
sownow.bsky.social
Heh.
February 15, 2026 at 11:03 PM
Reposted by The Story of Writing
gracefacesplace.bsky.social
Oh so when a dog wears a vest that says “please don’t pet me, I have anxiety,” it’s fine, but when *I* wear one, it’s all “they make those for people?” and “where can I get my own?”
February 15, 2026 at 1:01 AM
sownow.bsky.social
The biggest mistake General William T. Sherman made was not pushing every goddammed rebel into the fucking sea.
finalgirlboss.bsky.social VaJenell Hugh-Briss @finalgirlboss.bsky.social · 5d
“Though Black women only account for about 14% of the workforce, they represented over half of all women’s job losses during the U.S. employment market’s most volatile months in 2025, like March, April, June, and December.”
February 15, 2026 at 6:57 PM
sownow.bsky.social
As a "white" male in the US, I say calling us "stupid" is redundant.
Every white male now has to prove that he's not an ignorant, hateful, man child.
Ask Spencer Pratt how he would want L.A. police to work with ICE. That should prevent him from serving in any official role within city government.
February 15, 2026 at 6:46 PM