Writing Published Between 2018 and 2020
I've been so busy making the most of my time on this planet that I have mostly forgone the opportunity to recount what I've already done. So today I am compiling a list of my published writing of which I have not mentioned anything here before. In the last couple of years I have published two research articles (in A/B Auto/Biograpy Studies and Journal of the Motherhood Initiative), a song lyric of mine has been published in Lyrics As Poetry and a an introductory article about my creative works related to cancer came out this year in Wildfire Magazine. Yet, somehow I forgot to mention any of these happy moments. It took me a while to realize that everything relates. And that by letting you know about my works and these lovely journals and magazines, I'll let you decide how you might want to relate to this stuff. Of course, in 2019 I published my Finnish language memoir Viimeinen kirjani: kirjoituksia elämästä. I'll write a separate post about that later.
1. "Dreaming is Dangerous" in Lyrics as Poetry
It was an honor to be asked to publish this song lyric in the second issue of Lyrics as Poetry in September 2018. "Dreaming is Dangerous" is a song that was born as a complete lyric before it found its music and its way into the album sessions of what became Astrid4. It didn't make the cut. Then it was recorded for From the Bed and Beyond – again the song fell out of the album, but was released as a single in 2017. I am forever thankful for the statement that this journal makes: lyrics are poetry. For me, the poems that do not find their match in music, usually are forgotten, sleeping their princess sleep on pages in my journals, notebooks and diaries. Sometimes I feel sad for them. As if the pages have turned into little forgotten graveyards.
2. "Skeleton Woman and Other Stories: How MBC Made Me Break My Own Silence" in Wildifire Magazine
About a year ago I discovered Wildfire Magazine. Immediately, I wanted to be a part of this unique magazine that focuses entirely on young women's experiences with breast cancer and metastatic breast cancer (MBC). For their February/March 2020 issue, Changemakers, I wrote a piece about how my songwriting and life writing became the ways in which I made meaning out of illness and approaching death.
3. "Cyber Labour: Birth Stories on Mommyblogs as Narrative Gateways into Maternal Thinking" in Journal of Motherhood Initiative
I have been writing my PhD dissertation for the last six years (I am going to be graduating in 2021), the same amount of time that I've been a cancer survivor with intermitted bouts of recurrence and treatments. The "Cyber Labour" -article in this journal was my first published research article. At this point, it looks and feels like a beginning, which it was. The article analyses birth stories on mommy blogs and presents mommy blogging as a discursive "tool" for maternal thinking.
4. "Becoming D/other: Life as a Transmuting Device" in a/b Auto/Biography Studies
This is my second published research article. I jokingly called it a UFO while writing it – it felt so strange and so right at the same time. I was the author, but the piece felt like it was writing me. I wrote it for this special issue Life Writing in the Anthropocene in mind. it took two and half years until published from when I started to work on it. Academic publishing is slow and many doors may open and close in the process. My article considers death of a mother, the extinction of planetary life forms, and the role of narratives, archives, digital memories and lives as devices that transform existence. Importantly, the article begins the development of a new concept D/other.
