More about domestic violence survivor Brooke Axtell and her Grammys speech with Katy Perry

Last night's speech by Brooke Axtell during The Grammys ahead of Katy Perry's performance brought tears to my eyes and I'm sure brought hope to those who are dealing with domestic violence in their own lives. If you haven't read it, here's my Q&A with Brooke at Salon, and you can watch her here (this isn't the best quality recording but it's what I could find on YouTube):




Image via @THR (The Hollywood Reporter)

And again, I want to reiterate that if you believe in your work, whatever kind of work it is, it's your job to get it seen by the world. I can't tell you how to do that, but I can tell you that you are in a unique position to get it seen. For instance, last night, Salon posted my interview with Brooke Axtell, but didn't Tweet it. I did, with this image:



People that I would never have thought would retweet me, did. Today, I'm seeing that interview linked in lots of stories about the Grammys. Making your work easy to find means that it's widely accessible. That's important to me no matter the topic I'm writing about and ultimately I think it's part of my brand; I'm someone who not only can write a timely piece, but will be timely about promoting it. As I wrote last week, you're your own best advocate, and for me, since I consider myself in this for the long haul, in addition to being flexible, I know I want to make sure my work gets noticed, so that I can keep on getting more work.

And now, back to this week's deadlines. It's another busy one, especially with my LitReactor class starting Thursday.

My Grammys Q&A with Brooke Axtell, who'll join Katy Perry to talk about domestic violence

Whether or not you're watching or care about The Grammys, hopefully you care about preventing domestic violence, so please check out my Q&A at Salon with activist Brooke Axtell, who's about to join Katy Perry onstage to discuss her experience as a domestic violence survivor. If you like it, I'd love it if you'd share it; I've been using my brief stint at Salon to highlight issues around sexuality and activism.

"Teenage Dream" by Katy Perry and "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus, as sung to us by Rakesh Satyal

These videos are my gift to all of you who supported In The Flesh Reading Series for five years! The rest are on YouTube and I'll be posting them soon. Also working on an essay about why I ended the series, which I plan to post on The Nervous Breakdown, where I last wrote about bailing on the $1,000 Erica Jong essay (editors, take note: it's a new year, new and improved me and I would looooove to write for your anthology, regardless of pay). I am hoping to do an event in April or May with lots of hotness and humor so stay tuned and sign up for my mailing list at rachelkramerbussel.com for details. Do make sure to visit Rakesh's site and read his Lambda Literary Award-winning novel Blue Boy!

Also? What Rakesh said about me being a character? Meant so much to me. And is very in tune with my photocomix profile by Seth Kushner on CulturePOP...and, synchronicity, he was also a performer at the last In The Flesh!

If you were there, you also caught the awesome interplay among performers based on Samara O'Shea's letter to a certain anonymous novelist. THANK YOU to everyone who showed up and made me feel like everything was right with the world for one night. There is no roadmap when you start a reading series, at least, there wasn't for me. I was kindof flailing at first and somehow things clicked and I figured it out, or was lucky, or whatever, and I'm so glad that I met such amazing people, performers and audience. So truly, thank you for all those hosting highs I wound up with, and I hope to further all the things I learned about putting on fabulous events.


Rakesh Satyal sings "Teenage Dream" by Katy Perry


Rakesh Satyal sings "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus (I requested this! My cousins introduced me to it last summer on Martha's Vineyard in a ride that is inspiring the YA novel will be writing as soon I'm done with this one)

Katy Perry's sushi outfit

Via Katy Perry's blog, where she's also got a photo of her with sushi nails!