A writer in midlife turned to other journalists this month for advice on how to connect with the Huffington Post. “I’m curious how to become part of the unpaid writers group,” said B. Howe on a University of Missouri alumni listserv. (I subscribe.)
Yes, of course it is, but aside from that what’s so bad about it? Howe’s appeal reminded me of a conversation I’d had six years ago with Carol Felsenthal. A successful freelance writer by every superficial measure, she’d brought out her most recent book, Clinton in Exile, a few months earlier, and her profile of Michelle Obama was a few days from running in Chicago magazine. Yet Felsenthal had just hooked up with HuffPo and now was writing a political blog for them on her own dime.
“I am an LGBT person writing about LBGT issues, seeking to answer peoples’ questions about the LGBT world. I consider my audience mainly younger people, and those that work with them, like parents, teachers, friends & family. Having just wrapped up teaching in a high school for a decade, I know the need is there. A critical, often life-saving need.”
The new HuffPo introduction paints a more vivid picture. Raina Bowe has become the “flamboyant alter-ego of a professional teacher and humorist,” a candidate for the title “of the world’s most colorful drag queen,” and possibly “the only drag queen, professional educator, humor writer and stand-up comedienne living in the Pacific Northwest.”
