Jennifer Armintrout

The attitude of, 'I will never self-publish,' coming from any author, indicates that they have never been in a position where it is their only option.

It's far easier to brush off death if the death in question seems impossible or improbable as a personal threat.

If we truly seek diversity in fiction, we have to let the needs of others come before our need to define ourselves as social justice allies.

Every child deserves to see themselves in stories they can enjoy, but it isn't the place of white people to decide how and why those stories are created and marketed.

As white authors, bloggers, and readers, we must stop promoting diversity as a business opportunity or a chance to buy ally points with our disposable income.

Our cultural discussion of fat bodies and how we clothe them has nothing to do with health concerns, the obesity epidemic, or the comfort of fat people. It has everything to do with what we expect from women, what we've been told by the fashion industry, and the value we place on 'perfect' bodies.

If I venture into the water in a bikini, the sight of my melanin-deficient Michigan belly might attract beluga whales. Sure, I could secretly live among them and learn their ancient ways, but I couldn't keep that kind of ruse up forever.

Move over, Helen of Troy; Jenny Trout is going to wage a war on good health and fit bodies!

Occasionally, the horrors of life in North Korea do show up in our American satire.

Not one person would admit that they didn't want me to wear a bikini because of their aesthetic preference - a preference that is shaped by our cultural perceptions of what is and isn't beautiful.

Writers generally get into writing because they want to write, not because they want to be independent publishers, and you can't really fault someone for saying, 'What I'm doing right now works, so there's no reason to change it.'

Movies like 'The Interview' and 'Team America: World Police' don't often show the realities of life in North Korea and the human rights violations perpetrated by the government there.

Because Melissa McCarthy actually is a fat woman, she isn't allowed to make brash statements about body acceptance. She has to apologize for her body.

Hugh Howey and Amanda Hocking come to mind immediately as authors who managed to build a successful following without the initial support of a large publisher.

I bristle at the implication that only with the help of a Big Six editor does a novel lose its self-indulgent aspects. Before the advent of self-publishing, there were plenty of self-indulgent novels on the shelves.

The message of body acceptance built on Jennifer Lawrence's soundbites only empowers those who are willing to ignore the fact that her statements reinforce our current cultural views rather than subverting them.

Misconceptions about Young Adult fiction aren't new to fans of the genre. From being dismissed as mindless fluff for 'Twilight'-obsessed tweens, to constant warnings that the genre is dying, kerfuffles between the media and readers occur with alarming regularity.

The belief that a person can and should only feel grief over one sad event at a time is a truly disturbing estimate of our emotional capacity.

Social media reactions to celebrity death have taken on a predictable pattern: an outpouring of shock with expressions of grief, followed by a ghoulish need to know all the details, to see the scene of the death and the family in mourning. Then a post-mortem dissection of all the perceived flaws the celebrity had.

The reason Jennifer Lawrence is allowed to be a body-positive role model to young girls and 'chubby' women is because she is representative of conventional beauty.