On Taking a Stand
It can be easy for writers to forget that being a published author means that you have a personal brand. As an author, your books are your business, and you are the face of that business. Your commitment to your author brand and your brand values are incredibly important. That said, politics in the US are incredibly polarized and divisive… how does an author, particularly a US-based author in 2025, know what to do?
In “normal times,” I’d recommend everyone stay out of politics at all times unless they write about politics or explicitly related subjects, like memoirs of political figures or political fiction. There’s no reason to meddle in things that are only tangentially related to your brand and could potentially alienate large segments of your audience. But these are not normal times; these are the times when we must remember that all art is political. My advice: it’s time to take a stand.
This One’s for the Romance Writers
If you write smut (or romance of any kind), you should be quite loudly proclaiming against Oklahoma’s Senate Bill 593. While its goals seem well-intentioned (banning child sexual abuse material, e.g., pornography, and exposing a minor to pornography), it is written so vaguely, that romance novels of more or less any kind could become effectively banned throughout the entire state… a view that the Senator behind the bill doesn’t seem to mind. Imagine being unable to stock a book in the adult fiction section of an independent bookstore because if a child picks it up by mistake, the bookstore would be held liable and the owners could see fines and major prison time. It’s incredible government overreach, but the senate is actively considering it anyway.
Writers tackling LGBTQ Issues
Any author who writes about LGBTQ issues, whether through the lens of romance or identity or beyond, should be up in arms that the current administration has removed “the T” from the National Park Service’s web page about the Stonewall Uprising. This event in 1969, which was headed by two transgender activists, was key in giving queer people civil rights. The government appears to be attempting to remove the T from the acronym LGBTQ, as all instances of the acronym have been updated to LBG or LBGQ. This type of blatant erasure should leave anyone angry if they truly care about equality, historical accuracy, and honesty.
For Those who write about oppression and Discrimination
If you write about government-led oppression through the lens of historical fiction, then you should also be calling attention to Trump’s dangerous removal of the Associated Press from the White House for refusing to update their style guide to reflect the name change Trump instituted for the Gulf of Mexico. What at first sounds like an Orwellian dystopian novel is instead an all-too-real attack on our country’s freedom of the press and an independent journalist’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech… an attack that, in historical fiction, often precedes much more insidious moves.
If your writing touches on inequality, discrimination, or identity-based challenges… whether on this planet or one of your own imagination… then I would strongly suggest you read up on and speak out against the current administration’s attempts to scrub the federal government of all DEI initiatives, support groups, and even folks who care deeply about equality. I mean, what kind of government asks private citizens to “inform” on government employees and dox people for anything from (checks notes)… criticizing the president to hosting a professional development event? That’s right, our government is pulling a Stalin and trying to turn all of us against our neighbors. We can’t allow this.
Sci-Fi and Dystopia Writers
As for you Sci-Fi and dystopian writers, it’s not hard to imagine where you fit in, in all of this. Just consider for a moment the character of a villain: an unelected mega-rich business owner with familial ties to oppressive regimes, who has multiple investigations into him by the government for scummy business practices… all of a sudden cozying up to a new president and accessing millions of private citizens’ data, dismantling agencies critical of his business dealings, and outright ignoring court orders and laws banning him from doing what he’s doing. Sounds like a dynamite villain right? Yep, that’s Elon Musk for you.
And that’s not to mention the rampant privacy law violations being committed by members of Musk’s “DOGE” team, who are accidentally leaking classified data on the internet, violating the Constitution by accessing restricted federal data, and blatantly ignoring HIPAA laws. His team is rotten from the very bottom to the very top.
And yes, this is me, taking a stand. I encourage you to as well.
Not sure how to make a difference?
Mobilize your audience. Ask your followers and newsletter subscribers to write their representatives, state Attorney General, and other elected officials about problematic legislation and unlawful overreach by private citizens. Make your audience aware of issues that directly relate to the issues you write about in your books. The most effective campaigns will help readers relate the events of your books to the events happening in the US right now; invite them to participate the way your main character might, if they were in this situation.
Before you go asking your audience to do things on your behalf, though, do the thing yourself. Be a role model. You could share template letters you’ve sent to your own representatives about causes that you care about, or share what introverted readers might encounter when a staffer picks up their phone call for the first time.
Make commitments to long-term change. Perhaps you replace your diet of fast food with meals from a local restaurant that supports the same causes you care for, or maybe, you start a social media channel on a platform that isn’t controlled by Mark Zuckerberg in protect of his apparent moves to kowtow to Donald Trump’s demands.
I strongly suggest that, whatever you do, you align your actions with your author personality. For irreverent or funny folks, flooding nefarious Stalin-esque tip lines with bogus claims or submitting error reports about the Gulf of Mexico to Apple Maps may be the most suitable forms of rebellion. Children’s book authors may want to start a donation drive to support vaccine education at a local level, given that the new leader of the US Health and Human Services agency has often spouted misinformation about vaccines and doesn’t really know how the programs under his own command work.
Even more off-beat writers can participate in ways that make sense to their brand. Folks in the mindfulness and self-help space may counsel their audience on staying calm and centered despite the administration’s intention to overwhelm with its “flood the zone” strategy. Rest is resistance; it’s an incredibly powerful message, and one that reaches beyond our current situation and offers hope to people in all sorts of bad times.
Whatever you can do, now is the time to do it. History will not look kindly on those who stay silent. Show your readers that your integrity outweighs fear. Take a stand with me today.