Day: January 27, 2015

Highly successful creative-writing blog celebrating LGBT History Month returns to offer free online digital publication opportunities this February.

CREATIVE WRITERS of all ages, backgrounds and cultures who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) are being offered an invaluable free opportunity to have a sample of their work published on Febulous February, an innovative blog celebrating LGBT History Month 2015.

For the second consecutive year, Kent-based FioxiRose, a writer, performance poet and lesbian, is inviting fiction, prose or poetry for digital publication. Inspired by this year’s theme – Who or what makes your heart sing? – pieces may have LGBT content or come from that perspective.

The blog is now open for submissions until Sunday, February 8 2015, with digital publication continuing all month.

FioxiRose says: “Febulous February aims to help us highlight and share our valuable memories, our here-and-nows and our dreams. Our writing will culminate in a digital anthology celebrating all our strands of beautiful queerness, as well as embedding a landmark in our LGBT history.

“From those secret scribes among you who are new to sharing your work to much more experienced writers, all are welcome to highlight the fantastic creative potential of LGBT History Month by submitting previously unpublished fiction, prose or poetry.”

Last year’s contributors and commentators included Meg Merrilees, now aged 60 and living in mid-Wales.

Meg said: “Ah, that took me back. I’m looking forward to the rest of February now!”.

FioxiRose adds: “Our first Febulous February created an amazing international buzz, attracting more than 3,300 visits from 23 countries – and we hope to reach even more this year. At least one new piece of writing will be posted daily throughout February on the specially-created blog: www.fioxirose.com.”

Writers are invited to email one piece of their own work up to 500 words long to fioxirose@gmail.com by Sunday, February 8, 2015.

To make a comment on the Febulous February 2015 blog, click here:

To view the Febulous February blog, click here:

A submission by Meg Merrilees in 2014

When my dad was a little girl

My father, having three daughters at the time and no sons, used to start all the stories relating to his childhood with the words: “When I was a little girl”. This was met by giggles and denial that such a thing could be true, but in my heart of hearts I believed him. After all, I knew deep down that I wasn’t really a little girl either, and if my Dad could grow up to be a man, then so could I.

I have a vivid memory of walking to Sunday school, aged about six or seven, in the most awful, lacy and itchiest dress ever to be created in hell and thinking: “When I’m a boy I’ll never have to wear a dress like this”.

You may think my father was thoughtless, but the truth is, in retrospect, I can see that his words gave me a reason for not being like the other little girls. Being mostly a happy little soul, I got on with my life without too much angst and my family just let me be who I was. I pretended I was William Tell and made myself a bow while my sisters clomped around in my mother’s old shoes.

As I got older still, I forgot about growing up to be a boy. I still enjoyed doing ‘boy’ stuff – helping my Dad to build his house, bricklaying, carpentry, electrics – and I was content.

Then came the horrendous years, those teenage years when the whole world suddenly remembered I was a girl. Now I was odd, weird, bad, wrong and unnatural. All I had been spared so far suddenly rained down and I learned shame. I learned to pretend, wear make-up – and by far the worst thing, have boyfriends.

At seventeen, I kissed a girl and learned the words ‘lesbian’ and ‘butch’. It proved to be the next best thing to being a boy, but I still ask myself the question: “If I’d had the chance, would I have preferred to grow up to be a man?”

Megan Williams, 60, Mid-Wales