What’s Happening on “Fourth Wave”

Welcome to new writers, thank you to returning ones, and a call for submissions

What follows is a summary of Fourth Wave’s Oct. 22 newsletter, On the Crest.

Welcome to New Writers

Fourth Wave is proud and happy to welcome the following writers.

Christiana White has a melodious voice that draws us deep into her stories. We love the way she spins a tale, and how she doesn’t feel the need to introduce it or wrap it up with a bow at the end. She trusts her readers to draw their own conclusions, as in this dialogue that revolves around alcohol:

Tara Lyn Mallick’s voice is raucous and hilarious, making us laugh even when the content is grim. This one would make a great Saturday Night Live skit. It’s about everything that could possibly go wrong when a group of white people try to show up for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Tara also contributed this gem about President Trump’s Covid strategy:

John Kruse first grabbed our attention when he suggested that instead of “packing” the Supreme Court, Democrats should “unpack” it by impeaching Thomas and Kavanaugh and removing them from the Court. That sounded so good that we sent a link to that story to the Biden/Harris campaign.

For Fourth Wave, John points out something we probably should have noticed before: that DJT has ADHD. October is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Awareness Month, so read all about it here:

Mikester brings up a problem that’s very visible in San Francisco: how criminalizing homeless people perpetuates a brutal system. We’re proud and honored to host Mikester’s story:

Matthew John is another writer we’ve been following on Medium for his great political analysis. For Fourth Wave, he made the timely case for abolishing Columbus Day with a raft of historical facts, not the least of which is that Columbus didn’t land in North America. Read his smart argument here:

Bella DePaulo is a significant authority on being single. We first became interested in her oeuvre when we stumbled on this story reporting on a study of single women in their 70s who never had children. How are they doing? Contrary to popular expectations, just fine! So we were glad to host another work on Fourth Wave which debunks many myths about singles:

And Thank You to Returning Writers!

Yong Yee Chong checked in from Malaysia to alert us to another great book and ask the question: “Am I conveniently being the woman everyone wants me to be?” in her latest contribution:

Donna Jenson came back with an uplifting piece on how revealing secrets can heal even the deepest wounds of sexual abuse in her personal story:

Stephen Emmanuel Ogboh returned after a long absence to our open arms with another great poem from Nigeria in his contribution:

Vicki Larson defended the honor of older women and refuted common tropes in her incisive

And Raychelle Heath graced our pages with contributions on the themes of feminism and equality in the prose piece

and the poem

As for me, the most consequential piece I published was

With Amy Coney Barrett about to be seated on the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade threatened, I figured the time was right to take this scene from a book I never published but still have hopes for some day. It’s true, and vulnerable, and potentially shaming, so when after one day only four people had read it, I thought about taking it down. I didn’t want to cast my pearls before swine!

Then I got a note from Medium saying they had decided to feature it. Since they recently changed several systems (again), I didn’t really know what that meant. I imagined it would be like the old curation, which sometimes gave a bump in readership, but other times didn’t. So I was well pleased when it turned out to be much more than that. Five days later, it’s been viewed 1.6k times and read 557 times with 93 “fans” (people who clapped). And I’m here to report that if you get a similar message, feel free to start partying right away! :)

The success of that story led me to take another scene from my unpublished autobiographical novel, this one about

I’ve been thinking about publishing scenes from my books on Medium for some time, and really it was reading work by people like Christiana White and Jen Maidenberg, which read like short stories, that inspired me to take the plunge. So I’m grateful to them for much more than their contributions to Fourth Wave. I’m also grateful for their examples, as well as the encouragement and example of James Finn who besides writing serious political analysis also serialized his fun and scary story The Bear and the Slaughterhouse Boy on the LGBTQ publication Prism and Pen.

Besides the two heavy pieces listed above, I tallied up

(hint: one of them is that my daughter is a scientist).

And I reviewed two entertainments: my

and a list of

on HBO, in which I forgot to mention the burrowing monsters in episode one!

I hope you find a few stories you want to read in this list. Remember to clap and/or comment to support your favorite writers, and remember that you can hold down the clap function to clap up to 50 times.

And if you’re a writer, don’t be shy. Submit to the Wave!

Patsy Fergusson • Editor • Fourth Wave

P.S. to followers of the Fourth Wave Editors account, which I set up in order to publish writers without Medium accounts: I don’t think you get the newsletter! Only followers of the publication get that. (Hint. Hint.) :p So I’m tagging you here — at least those I can figure out, since the “followers” links aren’t currently working — to keep you up to date on the latest additions to Fourth Wave. Happy Reading! Katie Andrews Cheryl Haynes Matthew John Samantha Blake Francesca Spezzano Shoma Abhyankar Ivette Cruz An Nguyen WeeziSbaby Erica Velander Pegah Malekpour Alamdari Karyn Quinlan Pam Isfeld Stephanie Mccabe Patrick Mpedzisi Halcyon Days Stephen Emmanuel Ogboh Obinnah Samuel Uche Blessing Michelle Monet