My dentist and hygienist are awesome. Very kind and non-lecturey, which is just so wonderful after my LAST dentist who was a horrible human being--he'd berate his staff in front of the patients and this one time he made me chew those red pill things that are used with 5 year olds to show them how bad they are at brushing--I was in my mid-30s. Then there was the time they called me while I was driving to my appointment to tell me that if I was even one minute late that they wouldn't be able to see me because the hygienist wanted to go home early--and then after I got there RIGHT ON TIME had me cool my jets in the waiting room for 15 minutes. The final straw was that they called to cancel one of my appointments and didn't offer me another appointment.

My current dentist is AWESOME and my husband found her at random--her practice is near his work. They're very kind and gentle and only minimally lecturey (mostly about the flossing; I just got one of those handle things that you snap the pre-strung floss heads into and it's a LIFE-CHANGER because I can actually REACH MY BACK TEETH--my mouth is pretty small, apparently).

F.J. Bergmann used this very poem to harass another speculative poet, Rose Lemberg, at WisCon 36 two years ago. I am deeply appalled and horrified that it is being published here. The incident is being re-examined and discussed within SFF fandom in the wake of the discovery that WisCon sat on Lemberg's complaint for 10 months--after soliciting a report from them--and allowed Bergmann to volunteer at registration this year (WisCon 38).

Details of the harassment incident are here: http://radishreviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/... (edited link to a screencap at request of the person who posted the letter)
I've written about the issue with WisCon in more general terms here: http://radishreviews.com/2014/06/01/wiscon-and-ha...

I'm not convinced that "The Freshman" is about abortion--I attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and Verve Pipe was a local band and I used to have a copy of their first album (called "I've Suffered a Head Injury")--the story, even then, was that it was about a girl who tried to (and was maybe successful) commit suicide with pills.

However, there is John Wesley Harding/Wesley Stace's "MissFortune" which opens with the line, "I was born with a coat hanger in my mouth" and it's basically about a person born via botched abortion and who is a boy brought up as a girl in Victorian England (Wes later wrote a book, "Misfortune", about this character, it's really quite good).

This is absolutely wonderful, but I have a tiny wee nitpick: N.K. Jemisin did not cancel her SFWA membership and says so in the italicized portion at the top of the post linked.

I really appreciate that you guys pay your writers--that's really important and I'm so glad you do it. One of my goals for the next year is to start pitching articles and since you guys do pay, you're definitely on my list of potential markets.