Writer Seeks Funding Support for Book
| published August 13, 2015 |

By Thursday Review editors

Kristy Webster believes that art can save lives. Webster says that a social worker once told her that she would never work a full-time job again, and that her only path to success would reside in some form of disability. Webster recounts that the same social worker suggested that she hook up with a rich man who could afford to take care of her. Hurt and bewildered at first, Webster converted that moment into a challenge to overcome her bipolar disorder and her struggles with alcohol by channeling new energies into art, literature and writing.

Since then, she earned her graduate degree in creative writing, and her work has been published in a dozen magazines and journals, including The Pacifica Literary Review, The Feminist Wire, The Molotov Cocktail, The Ginger Piglet, and lots of others (including frequent book, art and TV reviews for Thursday Review). Her novella Coco was published in 2013, and a collection of her poems was published in Haunt Box in 2013. Along the way she also raised two boys.

Webster recently received formal training to teach poetry to at-risk youth through a program called Pongo Teen Writing, a nonprofit group which mentors teens and young people who have spent a significant part of their life on the streets, or in jails, or have experienced neglect or abuse, or have lived in other forms of extreme difficulty—helping the teens to express and channel themselves through poetry and other forms of writing. Webster hopes to now use the sales of her newest book to help others find their voices, and to discover that their ideas indeed matter.

Her modest goal is to raise approximately $4000 in her online campaign, hosted through the crowdfunding website GoFundMe.com, to make her next book a reality. Titled “The Gift of an Imaginary Girl; Coco & Other Stories,” and published through A Word With You Press, Webster hopes that her book will help her personal dream of mentoring others, and spreading the word that art can save lives.

Related Thursday Review articles:

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian; Sherman Alexie; book review by Kristy Webster; Thursday Review; August 25, 2014.

The Enchanted; Rene Denfeld; book review by Kristy Webster; Thursday Review; March 9, 2015.