simonastudies

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WEBSITES FOR WRITERS {masterpost}

E.A. Deverell - FREE worksheets (characters, world building, narrator, etc.) and paid courses;

Hiveword - Helps to research any topic to write about (has other resources, too);

BetaBooks - Share your draft with your beta reader (can be more than one), and see where they stopped reading, their comments, etc.;

Charlotte Dillon - Research links;

Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;

One Stop for Writers - You guys... this website has literally everything we need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;

One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It's FREE!

Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;

National Centre for Writing - FREE worksheets and writing courses. Has also paid courses;

Penguin Random House - Has some writing contests and great opportunities;

Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;

The Creative Academy for Writers - "Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication." It's FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;

Reedsy - "A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book" It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;

QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I've never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);

Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It's FREE but has a paid plan;

Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;

I hope this is helpful for you!

(Also, check my blog if you want to!)

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Favourite works of literary theory?

“Against Interpretation” by Susan Sontag

“Against Decoration” by Mary Karr

“The System and the Speaking Subject” by Julia Kristeva

“Word, Dialogue, and Novel” by Julia Kristeva

“Walter Pater’s Eucharist” by Benjamin Taylor

Conclusion to The Renaissance, Walter Pater

“On Beauty and Being Just” Elaine Scarry

“Transmission & the Individual Remix” by Tom McCarthy

“The Laugh of the Medusa” by Helene Cixous

“Sesame: Of Kings’ Treasuries” by John Ruskin

“The Nature of the Gothic” by John Ruskin

“Tradition and Individual Talent” by T.S. Eliot

“Days of Reading” by Marcel Proust

“E Unibus Pluram: Television and US Fiction” by David Foster Wallace

“The Art of Fiction” by Henry James

The Pound Era by Hugh Kenner

Real Presences by George Steiner

The Art of the Novel by Milan Kundera

The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction

Heroines by Kate Zambreno

Literary Women by Ellen Moers

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alright y’all here’s my google drive folder of books, featuring somewhere around 400 books ranging from animorphs to 19th century surgical guides! most of them are epubs, which google drive refuses to directly upload, but they should be easy to download and unpack, virus-free 😊i hope you guys enjoy! let me know if there are any problems with any of the books!

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AFRICAN & BLACK PHILOSOPHY: Getting Started

Hello everyone! As many of us who study philosophy in some form are likely aware, people of color, especially black philosophers, are radically underrepresented in the field (composing only 1.32% of all philosophers in the US). In order to combat such marginalization, and in attempt to help amplify black voices within the field of philosophy, I have complied a series and links & information here for learning more about African/black philosophy, especially within the US. Please feel free to add to this post if you feel that anything is missing, esp if ur a black person!

Overview:

According to Wikipedia.org: “African philosophy is the philosophical discourse produced by indigenous Africans and their descendants, including African Americans. African philosophers may be found in the various academic fields of philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. One particular subject that many African philosophers have written about is that on the subject of freedom and what it means to be free or to experience wholeness.”

Articles to start with: 

“What African Philosophy Can Teach You About the Good Life.”

“A truly African philosophy.”

“African Philosophy.”

“Descartes was wrong: ‘a person is a person through other persons.’” 

“Does Western Philosophy Have Egyptian Roots?” 

“What You Should Know About Contemporary African Philosophy.” 

“Philosophy in Africa - A Case of Epistemic Injustice in the Academy.” 

“The African Enlightenment.”

“The Radical Philosophy of Egypt.” 

“The first God.” 

“African Philosophy Is More Than You Think It Is.” 

And some introductory texts:

Barry Hallen, A Short History of African Philosophy. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press (2009).

Samuel Oluoch Himbo, An Introduction to African Philosophy. Lanham et al.: Rowman and Littlefield (1998). 

Dismas Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press (1994).

Kwasi Wiredu, A Companion to African Philosophy. Malden, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing (2004). (PDF version linked here.)

Key essays:

“The Struggle for Reason in Africa” by Mogobe Ramose in The African Philosophy Reader eds. P.H. Coestzee & A.P.J. Roux

“Appeal,” David Walker 

“What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”, Frederick Douglass

“Ain’t I a Woman?”, Sojourner Truth 

“The Black Woman’s role in the Community of Slaves,” Angela Davis

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois (first chapter esp.)

“A Problem of Biography in African Thought” & “What Does It Mean to Be a Problem?” by Lewis Gordon in Existentia Africana 

“Racism and Feminism,” by bell hooks in the PDF linked here

“Recognizing Racism in the Era of Neoliberalism,” Angela Davis

“Nonviolence and Racial Justice,” Martin Luther King, Jr. 

“The Ballot or the Bullet,” Malcolm X

“The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” Audre Lorde

“Whiteness as Property,” Cheryl Harris

Important contemporary black philosophers:

Cornel West (political philosophy, philosophy of religion, ethics, race, democracy, liberation theology)

Angela Davis (also a writer and social activist & just a general badass, really worth knowing about regardless of whether or not you have an interest in philosophy)

bell hooks (race, capitalism, sexuality & gender through a postmodern perspective)

Lewis Gordon (Africana philosophy, black existentialism, phenomenology)

Kwame Anthony Appiah (probabilistic semantics, political theory, moral theory, intellectual history, race and identity theory)

Patricia Hill Collins (sociology of knowledge, race, class, gender studies)

John H. McWhorter (linguistics) 

George Yancy (Critical philosophy of race, critical whiteness studies, African philosophy, philosophy of the body)

Kwassi Wiredu (African philosophy)

Franz Fanon (20th century Marxism, psychoanalysis, colonialism)

Online podcasts, blogs, & videos:

Podcast on Africana philosophy (the website linked here also contains several useful links and resources for further reading)

Youtube series on African Philosophy

Award-winning blog run by a Nigerian-Finnish woman which “connects feminism with critical reflections on contemporary culture from an Africa-centred perspective.”

Other links & resources:

Journal on African Philosophy

Wikipedia page, which includes a list of African philosophers

History of African Philosophy

Online bibliography on African Philosophy

25 Black Scholars You Should Know

The Collegium of Black Women Philosophers

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a list of my favourite 2019 reads (in no particular order)

‘view with a grain of sand: selected poems,’ wisława szymborska

‘the complete collected poems of maya angelou’

‘art objects,’ jeanette winterson

‘by grand central station i sat down and wept,’ elizabeth smart 

‘seam,’ tarfia faizullah 

‘play it as it lays,’ joan didion

‘war of the foxes,’ richard siken

‘midwinter day,’ bernadette mayer

‘in the pines,’ alice notley

‘death is not an option,’ suzanne rivecca 

‘the dead and the living,’ sharon olds

‘the melancholy of anatomy,’ shelley jackson

‘edinburgh,’ alexander chee

‘the woman destroyed,’ simone de beauvoir 

‘monster: poems,’ robin morgan

‘how we became human,’ joy harjo

‘ayiti,’ roxane gay 

‘our andromeda,’ brenda shaughnessy

‘second childhood,’ fanny howe

‘the lady in the looking glass,’ virginia woolf

‘the journals of joyce carol oates’

‘mathilda,’ mary shelley

‘flame & shadow,’ sara teasdale

‘go tell it on the mountain,’ james baldwin

‘stag’s leap,’ sharon olds

‘hyperdream,’ hélène cixous

‘devotions,’ mary oliver

‘the center cannot hold,’ elyn r. saks

‘sexing the cherry,’ jeanette winterson

‘the bloody chamber,’ angela carter

‘on earth we’re briefly gorgeous,’ ocean vuong

‘flesh wounds,’ virginia l. blum

‘the journals of joyce carol oates’

‘selected poems of frank o’hara’

‘the dream of a common language,’ adrienne rich

‘on beauty,’ zadie smith

‘the four chambered heart,’ anaïs nin

‘gravity and grace,’ simone weil

‘selected poems of anna akhmatova’

‘collected poems of t.s. eliot’

‘decreation,’ anne carson

‘collected works of susan sontag’

‘collected works of virginia woolf’

‘the woman destroyed,’ simone de beauvoir 

‘garments against women,’ anne boyer

‘the love of a good woman,’ alice munro

‘her body and other parties,’ carmen maria machado

‘the hour of the star,’ clarice lispector

‘good bones,’ margaret atwood

‘collected poems of sylvia plath’

‘selected works of joan didion’

‘devotion,’ patti smith

‘veil and burn,’ laurie clements lambeth

‘grief lessons,’ anne carson

‘the collected poems of audre lorde’

‘erosion,’ jorie graham

‘the empathy exams,’ leslie jamison

‘the beauty myth,’ naomi wolf

‘selected works of sarah kane’

‘waiting,’ marya hornbacher

‘sane,’ marya hornbacher

‘stigmata,’ hélène cixous

‘a field guide to getting lost,’ rebecca solnit

‘keith haring journals’

‘written on the body,’ jeanette winterson

‘night sky with exit wounds,’ ocean vuong

‘crush,’ richard siken

‘haruko / love poems,’ june jordan

‘bluets,’ maggie nelson

‘the collected poems of lucille clifton’ 

‘complete poems of mariannne moore’

‘poems and prose,’ christina rossetti

‘the gentrification of the mind,’ sarah schulman 

‘power politics,’ margaret atwood

‘a girl is a half-formed thing,’ eimear mcbride

‘one secret thing,’ sharon olds

‘the silent woman,’ janet malcom

‘the white book,’ han kang

‘braiding sweetgrass,’ robin wall kimmerer

‘not vanishing,’ chrystos

‘sinners welcome,’ mary karr

‘cat’s eye,’ margaret atwood

‘zami / sister outsider / undersong,’ audre lorde

‘sula,’ toni morrison 

‘we sinful women,’ rukhsana ahmed

‘the house on mango street,’ sandra cisneros 

‘blood and guts in highschool,’ kathy acker

‘unbearable weight,’ susan bordo

‘rhapsody in plain yellow,’ marilyn chin

‘the hunger moon,’ marge piercy 

‘trash,’ dorothy allison 

‘the cocktail party,’ t.s. eliot

‘love lessons,’ alda merini

‘selected poems of marina tsvetaeva’

‘disorder,’ vanesha pravin

‘a strangers mirror,’ marilyn hacker

‘human acts,’ han kang

‘dearest creature,’ amy gerstler

‘when my brother was an aztec,’ natalie diaz

‘second childhood,’ fanny howe

‘when the ghosts come ashore,’ jacqui germain

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How To Be A Goth Girl: A Beginner's Guide

First steps

Read Capital: The First Sentence - John Holloway

An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Capital - Michael Heinrich

Capital, Volume I - Karl Marx

The Commodity (First Edition Version) - Karl Marx

Capital, Volume II - Karl Marx

Capital, Volume III - Karl Marx

Grundrisse - Karl Marx

Letter to Kugelmann - Karl Marx

Finishing touches

Between Marx, Marxism, and Marxisms - Ingo Elbe

Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat - Georg Lukacs

Introduction to ‘Theodor W. Adorno on Marx and the Basic Concepts of Sociological Theory. From a Seminar Transcript in the Summer Semester of 1962’ - Chris O'Kane

Marx on the Basic Concepts of Sociological Theory - Theodor Adorno

Time, Labor, and Social Domination - Moishe Postone

The Accumulation of Capital - Rosa Luxemburg

The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception - Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer

The Culture Industry Reconsidered - Theodor Adorno

Society of the Spectacle - Guy Debord

The Class Structure of Machinery - Hans-Dieter Bahr

Being goth in public

Change the World Without Taking Power - John Holloway

Political Aspects of Full Employment - Michal Kalecki

Co-operatives, Unions, Democracy - Rosa Luxemburg

Critique of the Gotha Programme - Karl Marx

The Civil War in France - Karl Marx

The General Theory of Law and Marxism - Evgeny Pashukanis

State Violence, State Control: Marxist State Theory and the Critique of Political Economy - Chris O'Kane

The Russian Revolution - Rosa Luxemburg

Autonomous Resistance - Zapatista Army of National Liberation

On the Abolition of the Antithesis Between Town and Country - Friedrich Engels

1882 Preface to the Russian Edition of the Communist Manifesto, discussing the revolutionary potential of pre-capitalist peasant societies - Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels

What Does The Spartacus League Want? - Rosa Luxemburg

Our Program and the Political Situation - Rosa Luxemburg

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i made a folder on googledrive for poetry&relevant literature that i find myself coming back to when i need to ground myself again. most are fairly well known so it’s also a good place to dive into literature if you haven’t already. all should be free to download but let me know & i’ll try to do something about it. hope some of you get just as much from these authors as i have. 

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To cut a long story very short I’ve extracted the information in the influenced by section for every philosopher on Wikipedia and used it to construct a network which I’ve then visualised using gephi

GRAPHING THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

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Do you have 'A Woman Killed with Kindness' by Thomas Heywood?

here! 💛

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Great inspiration by Nora Ephron writing and directing You’ve Got Mail. 

“If you write about women at all, it’s a very short list of people who want to make movies about women.“ 

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yo! do you have any pdfs of plays?? any kind of play would be good i wanna expand my horizons!!

hello ! i haven’t read a whole lot but here are some i really enjoyed :-) 

sarah kane’s plays (tw for suicide & abuse) 

the cocktail party, t.s. eliot

colour struck, zora neale hurston

a woman of no importance, oscar wilde

an ideal husband, oscar wilde

attempts on her life, martin crimp

no exit & other plays, jean-paul sartre

grief lessons: four plays by euripides, anne carson

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what are your all time favorite poems? I know this is an unfair question but shrug emoji

god… so many … will start w/ the ones i have memorised then go from there. big love emoji💛

good mirrors are not cheap by audre lorde

compensation by sara tesdale

touched by an angel by maya angelou

october by louise glück

holdfast by robin beth schaer

invitation by mary oliver

the ineffable by delmira agustini

for grace, after a party by frank o’hara

three women by sylvia plath

a nude by edward hopper by lisel mueller

silence by wong may

splittings by adrienne rich

the man who can only paint death by erica jong

heart’s limbo by carolyn kizer

moments by mary oliver

poem for haruko by june jordan

lady lazarus by sylvia plath

still do i keep my look, my identity … by gwendolyn brooks

the sentence by anna akhmatov 

the burning girl by mary karr

med-term break by seamus heaney

the second coming by w.b. yeats

sorrows by lucille clifton

portrait by louise glück

having a coke with you by frank o’hara

rhapsody in plain yellow by marilyn chin

the glass essay by anne carson

the waste land by t.s. eliot

i am not your princess by chrystos

i will wade out by e.e. cummings

duino elegies: the eighth elegy by rainer maria rilke

aphorisms by alda merini

the teacher by may sarton

michio ito’s fox & hawk by yusef komunyakaa

willow by anna akhmatova 

god by langston hughes

corpse song by margaret atwood

the condition by marvin bell

how to build a thing / west 4th by marya hornbacher

since there is no escape by sara teasdale

the fear of oneself by sharon olds

a process in the weather of the heart by dylan thomas

where does such tenderness come from? marina tsvetaeva

leda 1 / leda 2 / leda 3 by lucille clifton

a word on statistics by wisława szymborska

the world is not conclusion by emily dickinson

glory falls by maya angelou

in every life by alicia suskin ostriker

another spring by denise levertov

it is difficult to speak of the night by jack gilbert

the palace of the lowest moon by susan sherman

power by audre lorde

demeter’s prayer to hades by rita dove

the dead calf by wendell berry

wild geese by mary oliver

an empty bed at the asylum by helen s. chasin

the poem as a mask by muriel rukeyser

song by allen ginsberg 

the breathing, the endless news by rita dove

service for two by marvin bell

incontinence by susan hahn

a small thing by nancy schoenberger

i’m one by may swenson

my home by nandini sahu

in a northern country by linda pastan

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Some readings about colours and colour theory

Articles:

10 ways to look at the colour black

The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colours names, and it messed with our brains part I II

Seeing Cerise: Defining Colours in Webster’s Third

The Rich and Royal History of Purple

Colour or Fruit? On the Unlikely Etymology of “Orange”

How Beets Became Beet-red

How Colour Shapes Our Lives

In defense of the world's ugliest colour, "Opaque Couché"

A Brief History Of Ultramarine: The World's Costliest Colour

The Histories of 10 colours through multiple lenses

From Gemstones to Arsenic: How Development of Pigment Colored Art

A Collection of 3000 pigments made from cow urine, shells and insects and more

The Red of Painters

The Secret Literary History of Some Of Your Favourite Colours

Goethe on the Psychology of Color and Emotion

A series on history of some common colours

A series on history of uncommon colours

Some more columns on unusual colours

Further reading:

The Theory of Colour, Goethe

The Secret Language Of Colours, Joann & Arielle Ekstut

Interaction of Color, Josef Albers

The Secret Lives of Color, Kassia St. Clair

Werner's nomenclature of colours

Blue: The History of a Colour, Michel Pastoureau

The Primary Colours: Three Essays, Alexander Theroux

The Perfect Red, Amy Butler

The Brilliant History of Color In Art & Colour: Travel Through The Paintbox by Victoria Finlay

On Color, David Scott Kastan with Stephen Farthing

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Zadie Smith, On Shame, Rage and Writing

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THE RESURGENCE OF THE MONSTROUS FEMININE

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some short stories i’ve read/re-read over the past year that you might enjoy: 

‘100 Years of the Best American Short Stories,’ edited by Lorrie Moore

‘The Love of a Good Woman,’ Alice Munro

‘The New Woman’s Broken Heart,’ Andrea Dworkin 

‘Her Body And Other Parties,’ Carmen Maria Machado

‘The Hour of the Star,’ Clarice Lispector 

‘Two or Three Things I Know For Sure,’ Dorothy Allison

‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’ Edgar Allan Poe

‘A Good Man is Hard to Find,’ Flannery O’Connor

‘Complete Stories,’ Franz Kafka

‘Dubliners,’ James Joyce

‘Interpreter of Maladies,’ Jhumpa Lahiri 

‘Something Childish But Very Natural,’ Katherine Mansfield 

‘The Garden Party,’ Katherine Mansfield

‘People Like That Are the only People Here,’ Lorrie Moore

‘Good Bones,’ Margaret Atwood

‘Murder in the Dark,’ Margaret Atwood

‘Singing My Sister Down,’ Margo Lanagan

‘Difficult Women,’ Roxane Gay

‘The Lottery,’ Shirley Jackson

‘A Haunted House & Other Stories,’ Virginia Woolf