Jo Walton is a Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy award winning author Jo Walton. They write science fiction and fantasy novels, and also poetry. They’ve been posting poetry for free on their liveblog since 2002. They believe that speculative poetry is having a Golden Age right now, with so many people producing such wonderful stuff and showing it to each other. Many of these speculative poets have Patreons, because there isn’t a whole lot of money to be made out of poetry, and they’ve decided to join them. They don’t intend to do anything different, they’re just setting this up so people who enjoy their poetry can directly contribute and let them know. They’re pretty sure there has never been a month without at least one poem, and sometimes they get on a tear, so you might want to do a monthly amount, or set a limit, in case they do something like the Godzilla Sonnets and just keep going. Their original intention for this Patreon was to use it to support the other artists they already support on Patreon, because they love Patreon, they love the democratization of patronage. It’s such a nifty thing, supporting creation. This goal was met almost instantly. This Patreon is making more than enough to support all the people they were already supporting, and a bunch more that they’ve added. This is awesome. The rest of it, for now, is going into their theatre, books, and museums budget, with some of it being saved towards the long term goal, see below. For quite a while when their husband was looking for work, this Patreon pretty much was their entertainment budget, paying for their books, theatre, and travel. This Patreon made it possible for their family to live on their income, and for them to still have fun. It made a huge difference to their life and their ability to write. They also have a long term goal of producing a really solid “Collected Poems” volume. They’ve started saving for this again, and it looks like it could be a real possibility in 2020. All patrons will get a free electronic copy.
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