Hi, friends,
Some folks have let us know that someone who claims to be a second-year student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, “E—,” has sent messages to many or all of our IG followers to smear WRR.
We wanted to clear things up for those who aren’t on Twitter and haven’t seen what’s actually happened there.
On Sunday, I (Katie) saw that WRR had been tagged in a threatening tweet from someone I didn’t know (E—) because our account followed a different poet who had celebrated the overturn of Roe. E— said they’d “drag us through the mud” if we didn’t unfollow that poet, and they said something about hoping that someone would spit acid in our faces. (Their original tweet was apparently removed for violating Twitter’s guidelines, but other people’s tweets responding directly to them hoping for acid in our faces are still visible.)
I saw later that E— had also sent a confusing email to the WRR account. They said a longer version of their tweet, adding the ultimatum that we needed to make a statement within a week. They said we were a dream journal (but they don’t seem to have submitted before), and they said that we’d published the poet they were upset that we were following (we haven’t). They seemed to be upset mostly because they thought this meant we agreed with that poet’s celebratory tweet (we don’t, and we hadn’t even seen the tweet… I’m not on the Twitter account all the time and certainly don’t see every tweet from everyone we follow).
I replied that we were unfollowing the poet in question (in fact, I’d already unfollowed her a while ago from my personal account and didn’t realize WRR was following her) and that we’d also be unfollowing E— because threatening us was absolutely not an acceptable way to inform us of anything.
I tweeted about this on the WRR account without sharing any of E—’s info. I wanted to let others know that threatening us is not okay and also set the record straight about where we stand in case they’d seen E—’s tweet or any other tweets that might be misleading about the WRR staff: our following writers does not equal an endorsement of every future tweet. (I thought this was obvious, but apparently not.)
Someone suggested that I should share this person’s name and Twitter handle since they were very willing to threaten us publicly and everyone should know who they are.
I declined to reveal the info of the person who had been threatening us, saying that I assumed this was a young woman who was understandably distressed right now, and I didn’t want to send a Twitter mob after her.
Why did I assume this was a young woman? Because I searched online and read bio notes from a few publications to see who was tweeting and emailing us, and all of those bio notes included she/her pronouns. One of them also included the writer’s age.
The next day, someone sent me a message on IG to say that they were E—’s friend and that I’d misgendered them, that this was violent of me, that I should never assume pronouns, and that I should take the tweets down. I replied that I had actually found their pronouns in publication bios online rather than assuming but that they’d both assumed a lot about me. This friend replied that I didn’t need to defend what I’d done, that people can use different pronouns on different days, and that I should always ask the person. I replied that I thought her expectations were unreasonable in this case since it’s a bit challenging to ask someone who threatened me and then blocked me on Twitter to send me their pronouns before I tweet about them (anonymously) to caution others not to threaten us, but I added that I was posting a correction about their pronouns, and I thanked the friend for letting me know. I received a similar email soon after from E— as well, this time including a threat that they would be contacting the ACLU about WRR because we misgendered them in a tweet. I simply copied and pasted the explanation I’d already given to their friend, let them know that I was composing a correction for the Twitter thread, expressed my confusion about why they’d decided to threaten us and burn bridges instead of notifying us or asking questions, and let them know that I’d be blocking them. I have indeed blocked their email address and blocked them on social media, and WRR will be blocking anyone else who harasses us on their behalf.
[Note: I’m still having trouble getting my head around the fact that I declined to name someone who was threatening us and wishing us bodily harm on Twitter because I didn’t want to send a Twitter mob after them, then took the time to Google their identity and use the pronouns from the bios they’d provided to the journals that have published them, then immediately corrected their pronouns when informed that they use different ones… and they responded to all of this by messaging lots of WRR’s IG followers about how we’ve been terrible to them (and ultimately widely revealing their own identity anyway). I can’t understand why they’ve done any of this. I don’t know what they’re hoping to achieve.]
I guess they’ve moved on from the original lie about us supporting the celebratory tweet and have instead chosen to lie that we’re repeatedly misgendering and threatening them. In reality, I’ve done everything I could possibly do to treat E— with compassion and respect even though they’ve been threatening us in a variety of ways across platforms, they’ve now had a small handful of friends send us messages or tweet at us as well, and they’ve been sending IG DMs to lots of our followers.
On behalf of the WRR staff, and despite all of this, we don’t wish E— harm. If you’re one of those who received the message about WRR from them, please don’t engage; being hateful in return won’t achieve anything good, and we don’t want it. We hope that they have the support they need, that they will abstain from lying about and threatening journals/editors, and that they will channel all of this extra time and energy into some actual activism, which we definitely need.
Katie Manning
Editor-in-Chief