By 
Just days after I uploaded my final copy of The Defying Gentrification Playbook to IngramSpark, so that it can be in your hands by December 16, I received spectacular news and terrible news.
First, the spectacular news. I’m a DC Arts and Humanities Fellowship Grantee for the fiscal year of 2026 (October 1, 2025- September 2026). What that means is I have $7,000 to use for whatever I want (minus taxes). Right now, that money is being earmarked towards upgrading my Singer 9200 sewing machine I got at Scrap Bmore in 2022, that only really does straight stitches, to a Bernina 590! Whatever is left is going into a GoPro or similar action camera so that I can better capture myself doing vlogs and doing things on camera.
Also, on December 14, my 40th birthday, I’m inviting those who can get to Baltimore to celebrate the launch of The Defying Gentrification Playbook with a dessert brunch and flash workshop at Red Emmas from 11-1 in the Free School Classroom. I will send out another email with more details, but for now just save the date.
Also, I’m honoring the paperback price for hardcovers on any pre-orders through Monday December 1, through my Kristpattern store. Just order the paperback, and I’ll match the rest.
So, that’s a great place to pivot into the terrible news.
First, the least terrible of the terrible news is that I pushed the paperback release to February 3, so that I can reconfigure it to be more budget-friendly. The audiobook will also not be released until then, because of the bigger, terrible news that I’ll get to after I finish sharing the book-related bad news.
I’m still deciding on if I want to shrink the paperback so it can stay in full color or if I want to remove some of the color and keep it at 8×10, since this is an active workbook.
Finally, IngramSpark has been great for distribution, but terrible for being able to order my books. Plus, I had to pay them to find out that somehow my original layout files were in the wrong order. Then they weren’t taking any credit cards on my account.
Now, that is on its way to being resolved, and those who order by Monday will have your book on my first run, which I hope will still be by December 16, but I’ve learned in reading online forums that Ingram often doesn’t ship fast either, even to bookstores.
Sigh. All off this was enough to be disconcerting and discouraging.
In part of my head, I know that since we had the pandemic and everything else, as long as I tell you why, you’ll forgive my mistakes, or you’ll just move on, and that both outcomes are ok.
I read advice on creating newsletters all the time that tells me consistency and honesty are key.
But, folks, I have really struggled to tell you what I’m about to tell you next, the next part of the terrible news.
Despite all of our efforts to raise money to stay, including me applying for my arts grant, we settled with our landlords to leave our apartment on November 7. While this will prevent us from having an official eviction, as that is a more robust and forgiving process in DC, we were in court in the process of eviction and were advised by Legal Aid to take this step.
Plus, I have to be honest, I haven’t wanted to show up to my work for at least two years.
I thought partnering and working with a similar organization would work, but I realized we weren’t that similar. Plus, I had to come to terms with the fact that just because our now old neighborhood was hip and had some resources, it just didn’t feel like my kind of urbanism. Hence, the nucleus of the idea of Defying Gentrification. It felt like a tourist attraction, and walking out the door was all I could do against it some days. Honestly, too many days, especially after I got acute COVID in January 2024, I stayed inside. The National Guard occupation of this year took that feeling up to ten of not wanting to be in the streets.
Workwise, after the not-quite as aligned contract wound down in May 2024, in June 2024 I was able to get a lifeboat by pivoting to similar work in a different field, which, instead of being a contract that took up too much time, was a remote W-2 job with more structure and clear beginnings and ends.
However, I started I realize that I’d pigeonholed myself into workspaces as a proofreader and copy editor.
In order to make sure Les still had a role in urban planning, especialy ones that would judge her (unfairly) based on my radical views, I stopped being the brassher badass of planning many of you have come to know and love.
In shrinking myself, I cut off so much abundance. Trying to do it the “regulated way” because I myself still felt like I was a rebel to a working system, I ended up bankrupting myself. Les’s job went away anyway in October of 2024 because it wasn’t a good fit. And my job went away in March of this year because of a three-pronged combination of AI, cutbacks in federal funding, and careless mistakes because I was bored and not concerned with making sure everything was perfect in a job that required perfection.
Les has been back working since February of this year, but it was a paycut, despite having good fringe benefits. But me losing my job in March was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Of course, I would learn that I am in a club of 300,000 Black women who lost their (W-2, unemployment-eligible) jobs between February and April, and we now are in a club of double that number as of today, so-called Thanksgiving.
I did nothing but sleep, eat, wallow, and maybe crochet, and I let my sewing table pile up. I squeeed out my grant application for DC Arts and Humanities and have attempted to do more YouTube. However, one morning, listening to St. Paul and the Broken Bones, the music hit my bones just right, and I finished the draft of The Defying Gentrification Playbook I started at the prompting of Regina Anaejionu and her wonderful work around being a thought leader with purpose in spite of AI and social media sites that keep changing their algorithms, in the fall of 2023.
That my friends, is my spectacular and my terrible news.
Leave me an encouraging voice message
Order my book from a Black bookstore
So what happens now?
- I am working at Lush to keep W-2 cash flow going, at least through the holiday season.
- I was approved for fiscal sponsorship at Fractured Atlas. I can receive recurring and one time tax-deductible donations, and I can do larger crowdfunding campaigns.
- Les has taken the lead in finding us new housing in DC, so I can return for at least one more year and be a DC-based artist to fulfill my grant obligation.
- We are camped out at a friend’s in Baltimore, at least through the holiday season, to rest and reassess what’s next.
- If the grant doesn’t pay out. I am paying down credit cards so I can finance the camera and sewing machine I want.
- I’m dreaming of a storefront that I can sit in the window and sew in, and then sell my wares and host workshops on Defying Gentrification and Crafting Liberation.
And yes, since it’s time for urbanist wishes, that last bullet counts, along with Louie the Skoolie, the bus I want to buy and convert into a virtual studio for myself to bring workshops to communities underserved by textile art spaces.
If you made it to the end, thank you. I wrote so many drafts of this letter, but now I hope that if you want to be of service tto my vision, we can connect deeper, that if you’ve kept me afloat in any way, I love you so much and finally, if this is all too much of a mess for your inbox and your life, please just go. It will make more room for the peace and joy that will come with you gone and my friends and family holding me down.
