Welcome to all interested in the project to publish Ms. Aligned, a series of writing by women about men. The genesis for this project was a presentation at the 2014 annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. The event attracted about a hundred people and was successful in generating both interest in the subject and thoughtful discussion.
The first edition of Ms. Aligned was in development for about two years. A call for submissions went out in late April of 2014 and was publicized on listservs and on the Facebook page of the group Binders Full of Women Writers. The book was published by Aligned Press and distributed by Lulu.com. The second edition was published by El León Literary Arts and distributed by Small Press Distribution.
As far as we know, this is one of the few series devoted to writing by women about men. The contributors represent a diversity of cultures and ethnicities, and the stories they tell in their fiction, poetry, and nonfiction are complex—sometimes being about family, sometimes about society, and sometimes about country.
A fable describes the physical and psychological transformation of a man, challenging our understanding of what it is to be human. A story set in the Hawaiian Islands satirizes the expectations that people bring to romantic engagements and how these are shaped by our stereotypes of men and women. A poem describes the brutalization of a father and the ways in which this affects his family. Another poem recounts the life of a man who was torn between living in the West, where he was free, and returning to his homeland, where a civil war raged. A personal essay describes a girl’s loss of her father and how she sought, through her relationship with her grandfather, to recover some of that loss.
The work of visual artists has also been included in the series, extending the storytelling in the form of photography, painting, and drawing.
These multiple points of view, voices, portraits, and histories contribute to the breadth and depth of Ms. Aligned.
Ms. Aligned explores creative expression that goes beyond a rigid binary and the expectation that women and female-identified writers will write in a feminine voice
Ms. Aligned Creative Board
Lillian Howan
Pat Matsueda
Donna Miele
Connie Pan
Rebecca Thomas
Ms. Aligned 