Saturday evening I had an online back and forth chat with Erin. I told her I was looking for some blog post inspiration for the coming week and thought I’d go poke around in the Women And Words archives. I couldn’t. Sadly, they’re gone.
Jove Bell, Andi Marquette, and crew took a step back from the site and their podcast a couple years ago to take a breather and tend to writing, publishing, and other projects, but they left the site operational while they decided when and if they were going to move forward with it. Daily readership had dipped, despite all the work…and it was a lot of work.
Erin and I offered to take the site over and/or assist in operating it back when they first announced the hiatus if they came to a decision that involved letting it go. They weren’t ready to think about that then, and we didn’t push them. Now, I wish we would have pushed a little bit. Such a loss!
Other sites fill some of the gaps like multiple review sites and review bloggers/vloggers. One of the largest and best known is The Lesbian Review (Lots of reviews, some interviews, occasional panels and readings), now known as TLR There’s also iHeartSapphFic which has lots of ways for authors to reach readers through reader focused giveaways, sales, and reader focused content.
The things missing from those sites that could be found in the archives, now lost – possibly forever – from Women and Words are the daily blog posts by a rotating list of writers and occasional guests posters. Andi – AKA Captain Mayhem, posted nearly weekly. Sometimes more. Sometimes a little less. Her columns were always insightful and entertaining. The rest of the regular blogging crew was a made up of readers and authors who covered a wide variety of bookish topics including a lot of ‘favorites’ lists.
Change is always hard. It’s harder still when we lose things that are a part of our collective history as a sapphic community.
You were loved, Women and Words, and you are missed!
EDITED TO ADD: The original site is very much gone. The old URL goes to an error page. It’s been pointed out that an archive of sorts can be found here: https://lesbianauthors.wordpress.com/. The snippets of the posts are gone, but the archive with graphics and post titles seems to go back at least a couple of years covering 2020 and perhaps further back, until June 1st of 2021 when the hiatus officially began. It’s something, but still ultimately sad. ~ Anne
