Celebrate Pride with us! with Susan Rukeyser author of BAD WORDS: Feminist, Queer & otherwise Radical (World Split Open Press, 2025) a collection of short work, which inspired the Desert Split Open Mic to encourage and amplify literary work that is feminist, queer, or “otherwise” radical…AND …
The Worst Kind of Girl (Red Light Lit Press, 2025) Rukeyser’s literary/LGBTQ+ novel set in the California desert and Connecticut. It takes its questions from her own experience, coming out as LGBTQ+ at midlife, and the internal reckoning that followed.
Susan Rukeyser lives in Joshua Tree, California, but for a while, a long time ago, she had a used bookstore in Kingston, New York. Her new novel is The Worst Kind of Girl (Red Light Lit Press, 2025). She created the Desert Split Open literary event series to amplify work that is feminist, queer, or “otherwise” radical. Susan’s own work on these themes is collected in Bad Words, published by World Split Open Press, her imprint for select, bold titles, including Feckless Cunt: A Feminist Anthology, which features several contributors from the Hudson Valley
Susan will be in conversation with featured Hudson Valley Writers and contributors to Rukeyser’s anthology Feckless Cunt— Tina Barry, Jana Martin, and Nina Shengold.
Nina Shengold [left] is the author of Reservoir Year (Syracuse University Press), River of Words: Portraits of Hudson Valley Writers (SUNY Press), and Clearcut, a novel (Anchor Books). She lives in The Vly, teaches creative writing at Vassar College, and is a proud contributor to Susan Rukeyser's Feckless Cunt: A Feminist Anthology.
Tina Barry [center] holds an MFA in creative writing. She’s been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and Best Microfiction. Tina teaches poetry and short fiction at the Poetry Barn and Writers.com and her writing has appeared in newspapers, magazines, literary journals and anthologies including Rattle, Verse Daily, The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story), Nasty Women Poets, Feckless Cunt and elsewhere.
Jana Martin [right] is the author of Russian Lover and Other Stories, coming out in a new edition with Verse Chorus Press, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and other books, and recent fiction, nonfiction and prose poetry appears in La Piccioletta Barca, Vassar Review, Postroad, the book Women Who Rock: Bessie to Beyoncé, and, of course, Feckless Cunt, Susan Rukeyser’s very timely, fierce feminist anthology.