#leighstein

Oh look! It's our awesome BinderCon co-founder, Leigh Stein, talking with Danielle Susi about sexism in the literary world and, but of course, BinderCon!

Check out BinderCon co-founder Leigh Stein on female spaces and their violation in this essay at Real Pants.

BinderCon co-chairs Lux Alptraum (left) and Leigh Stein talked Aziz Ansari's feminism on HuffPostLive today! As you can see from the photo, they were pretty excited. Let's hear it for binders on the airwaves!

I have been lost before, but not with this many broken bones, and I had a brighter torch. If you were lying in wait in a cave like I am, right now, in the darkness, and you didn’t know when the next sandstorm would be, and you didn’t know if the next morning the war would start, and you didn’t know how long your torch would last, would you still write letters with your only hand that wasn’t useless? Yes. And let’s say that at this point you still believe that the person who has promised to come back for you is coming. Let’s say you haven’t started to wonder about your flare gun yet and what it’s good for inside the cave. Can anyone ever foresee that they will end up like this, in love with a faceless, amnesiac cartographer? I have learned from the Sahara the necessity of white dresses and small airplanes. They didn’t think I belonged, but I waited my whole life to see the ancient drawings of the ancient people swimming in the ancient place. I was not in Italy, swinging from a chapel ceiling. I was not in Cairo, bathing in a claw footed tub, because that hadn’t happened yet. I was just in love with the one person I wasn’t allowed: you, who I write letters to while I hemorrhage to death in a place that no one knows exists. It is not on any map. The map has not been made. I am starting to think that the only way I’ll ever be found is if you, the cartographer, trade your topographical secrets, your photographs, your name, to the Nazis in exchange for a jeep. Please. The light is fading. If you can’t tell, the picture I drew in the corner is of a scorpion in an amulet on a chain I wear under my dress near my heart. This place was once water, but now it is sand. There is so much I want to tell you, but I have not eaten in three days and the fire you built is just cinders. You once asked me how I could be married to him, but look who died and look who lived; look who I’m drawing pictures of scorpions for. I can’t feel my legs. I don’t think you’ll be back in time. Listen: after you read this, you will be burned in a terrible accident. You will forget my name and the shape of the land you spent your life’s work learning, but you will never forget that you left me to die. My light is gone. I am writing to you now in the darkness. Leigh Stein