Hey there!

As you may have noticed, Broad! has gone through a sweeping change in the ranks.  Remember when I posted a while back looking for an assistant editor?  Well, we were lucky enough to land three editors: two to form an editorial board and an associate editor.  Brittany Lynn Goss, T.R. Benedict, and Hannah Baker-Siroty are all pretty amazing women, so get excited.

The other editors and I will begin posting to this blog regularly, a few times a week — book reviews, brief articles, discussions of news events/issues in the literary world, et al.  (If there are topics/issues you would like to see covered on the site, please contact broadzine@gmail.com with “Blog Idea: [Topic]” in the subject line.  We make no promises, but will take it into consideration.)

T.R. and Hannah will be writing posts on this blog to introduce themselves over the next several days.  Meanwhile, here’s the first of our fabulous newbies: Brittany!

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Good evening broads,

My name is Brittany Goss and I’m introducing myself today, in the first Broad! post of what I hope will be many posts to come. A bit about me as a writer: reading and storytelling have been my passions since I was very young, and though I’ve wandered off for brief periods of time (an anthropology major declared freshman year of college; two semesters of teaching for Denver public schools), I’ve always found my way back to a blank piece of paper and a pen. Right now I write mostly fiction, though I also write poetry and similarly strange things. Since it’s in my nature to question boundaries of all forms, I am hyperinterested in how the boundaries between genres dissolve. So hybrid or mixed-genre work is one thing I am playing with at the moment. I’m from Maine and even though I’m currently living in Colorado, most of my stories seem to be set in or around New England, with characters who reflect the spirit of that place.

I recently joined this magazine as a member of the editorial board. Somehow, last year, I found Heather Lefebvre on Twitter and added her to two of my lists: literary magazines and social justice. When the first two issues of Broad! were published, I was so pleased to see that not only was the magazine supporting women writers, but the writing was of high quality, fresh and inspiring. When Heather started looking for some assistant editors, I knew I had to get involved. I’ve been a human rights and feminist activist for some time now, and I am particularly drawn to issues where social justice and literature intersect. Organizations like PEN America, VIDA, Girls Write Now, and the OpEd Project have a special resonance for me. Unfortunately, freedom of speech is not internationally considered an inalienable human right. Writers are persecuted globally by states who are threatened by the dissident literature they produce. I am lucky to live in a country where the government is consitutionally obligated to protect my freedom of speech. And yet, speakers without platforms or audiences cannot be heard by many. This is the case with women in publishing: many of us are speaking, but we have yet to gain the same platform space and audience of our male colleagues. Whether this inequity begins with a lack of opportunities in education and writing, or is a gap maintained primarily by the publishing industry, I can’t say. My educated guess is some of both. And if I’m correct, the solution to this problem lies in increasing literacy and writing opportunities for women, while creating more space for us to publish. I am proud that Broad! has stepped in to create a little more space for women in publishing.

I’ll write more in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep writing and sending it out!