Bronzeville, The Bee, and Me
This is not something I wanted to give my opinion on. In fact, this is something in which no one has asked my opinion, but the longer it goes on the more guilty I feel and the more it has started to eat at me in a way that there may as well be large gouges where my arms and legs used to be.
Besides, even though I’m not involved, I am…. involved by virtue of having been part of it all.
In case you don’t know what is happening, here is the cliffnotes version:
Bronzeville Books published an anthology titled Twisted Love.
There was a long delay in payment.
At the time of this writing, they have yet to pay Kelli Owen for her contribution to Twisted Love. She has been campaigning for her pay on Twitter, and still, rather than pay her, Bronzeville has alleged they have changed policy in light of California’s freelance laws.
A whole bunch of other shit.
And during this whole thing I have been quiet for two reasons:
I am a coward. That’s it. I don’t like confrontation. I don’t like fighting. And also, I believe Kelli is in the right and should be paid. But I am the smallest of petite red potatoes when it comes to writing and publishing. I am afraid that shit I say on twitter and elsewhere will get me blacklisted as a writer. Even though the stance “pay your writers” shouldn’t be controversial, I am very afraid of shooting my writing career in the foot before its begun.
I have had a lot going on since I moved and have been largely have not had the headspace to deal with my old side-gig screwing things up.
Neither of these reasons are adequate excuses, in particular, there isn’t much of an excuse to being a coward when I could just retweet Kelli Owen and move on.
But it’s a weird thing to watch something you valued implode. And I didn’t think a tweet could give fair presence to that. Instead you’re going to get a history of me and Bronzeville in a poorly edited blog. (1)
Last year, a fellow writer at BookRiot, Margaret Kingsbury (she’s fantastic, check her out), recommended that I put in for a writing position at Bronzeville Bee (the publisher’s online magazine). I’d read a few of her works from there before and a couple of other writers and I liked it. Bronzeville Bee was a sympathetic publication with interesting stuff. I sent in some samples and got hired by Sandra Ruttan to contribute. I also submitted to the anthology Latinx Screams from Bronzeville books.
Over time my role expanded and I got to do more stuff. For a writer who has largely been making little to nothing so far, Bronzeville’s payrate was HUGE to me. Sandra also approached me to start doing book reviews (although I don’t consider myself a competent reviewer, it seemed neat), and also to contribute to Twisted Love, and my piece, “When You Close My Eyes” was accepted. All this happened within a few months.
On February 27th, I was notified that the Bee would be suddenly closing. I was paid for my final works, and I found out later that most of the staff was also terminated. I was paid for my works on Bronzeville Bee through paypal. But, while I was in the middle of a move, I didn’t note until later that I had not been paid for my piece in Twisted Love. Allison of Bronzeville e-mailed me and said that in order to get paid, we had to fill out a W-9 form and send it back to get our check. I did it and got my check in the mail.
As Kelli and others have pointed out, I shouldn’t have to do that. It was not in the contract terms, I don’t live in California, ect. Now I feel that I have been duped in revealing my personal information, so, you know, that’s fun. It also struck me as a stall tactic. A way to postpone late payments. Even so, I’m largely used to late payments in publishing.
What really curdled my cheese was how Bronzeville has tried to wiggle out of paying Kelli, leading to an unprofessional company statement where they slandered their past editors. Let me go ahead and say that Sandra Ruttan, while I worked with her, was one of the most supportive and accessible editors I have had. She was open and communicative. It struck me as unnecessarily cruel to slander her after she was gone. It has struck me as callous to not pay Kelli, especially since the amount we are paid is not particularly high enough to be reportable. Just pay her. Damn.
While I was at the Bee, I got to do some really cool work. I implore you to explore their backlog and look into some of the cool books they have published and are publishing that started before this mess. It just, it kind of sucks. It sucks that they are doing this and some of us feel caught in the middle. It sucks to feel this powerless and having your name attached to a thing like this.
Time to just keep writing, and to find a new hive.
(1) I was originally going to make a bunch of cutesy, bee-themed subtitles, but it seemed overly trite and I am over it.