BURN PILE: Use Your Words

   Art as activism.
        Art as reportage.
             Art as truth-telling.

“Literature is a place where we can construct new realities together, but unless the literature available to us is representative, those new realities threaten to reconstruct the prejudice and discrimination of the world we live in.”
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, in ART AS ACTIVISM: AN EVENING WITH AI WEIWEI, from PEN America: Protecting Artists is More Important than Ever

PEN America's Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) "is an interactive hub that gathers, shares, and coordinates the many resources, services, and forms of assistance available to artists at risk. ARC aims to strengthen connections between threatened artists and the organizations that support them, and in doing so, hopes to aid all artists, regardless of discipline, public platform, or nationality in the fight for free expression."

Rokudenashiko, Ali Asgar, and Mohsen Namjoo. These are three artists, with three different disciplines, from three different countries, but all are in danger for their work. Read more about courageous artists like these and how the Artist at Risk Connection seeks to support them: artistsatriskconnection.org.

Language has seen a strong week, speaking in many forms, truth being its strength, especially when provoked. Here are a handful of memorable moments:

"Us Girls" -- Fiction from Amy Silverberg and (b)OINK

More from (b)OINK, poetry by Austin Beaton. "Resilience"

Lauren Duca at Teen Vogue: "Harvey Weinstein is More Proof That We Can Take Down the Patriarchy With Storytelling"

Deceptively small; subtle then slashing. Kathy Fish's new flash that has stormed the Internet: "COLLECTIVE NOUNS FOR HUMANS IN THE WILD"

The Mask You Live In follows boys and young men as they struggle to stay true to themselves while negotiating America’s narrow definition of masculinity.

"What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About" -- Lidia Yuknavitch tweets: "BOOM :: Michele Filgate opens it UP :: having come from a home where a mother did not stop a father, i can relate..."

"Untangling Gun Violence from Mental Illness." "The news often portrays people with psychiatric disorders as a danger to others, when suicide is the much greater risk." A currently relevant article from Julie Beck. July 2016 in The Atlantic. 

"Open Carry" by Rebecca Starks.
"It rains four inches a year in Las Vegas.
What if this isn’t the time to talk about umbrellas?"
Listen: https://www.rattle.com/audio/StarksOpen.mp3

So many more issues, so many more links for this list. Pin your finds or your creations here, too, in the comments. Share these voices. Get loud.

There is good news on the horizon, in small ways. There is this to look forward to:

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Witness a portrait of one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. Joan Didion: The Center Will Now Hold, only on Netflix October 27.