SFF World welcomes Regina Yau, the founder of The Pixel Project. With several on-going campaigns and fundraisers per year, the international, web-based non-profit organization has been working hard to raise global awareness towards stopping violence against girls and women.
The international science fiction and fantasy community has been a big part of this. The Pixel Project’s bi-annual Read for Pixels campaign invites leading authors to participate in online hangouts and show support for the cause. Read For Pixels alumni include Tamora Pierce, Joe Hill, Sarah J. Maas, Chuck Wendig, Kevin Hearne, Charlaine Harris, Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, and Tad Williams, among many others. Check out the full list of Read For Pixels author alumni here and the upcoming September 2016 author line-up here.
Regina, welcome to SFF World. Could you briefly tell us about The Pixel Project in your own words?
Thank you so much!
The Pixel Project is a 501(c)3 anti-violence against women non-profit that is completely virtual and volunteer-run. We combine the power of the internet, social media, and pop culture/the arts to raise awareness, funds, and volunteer power for the movement to end violence against women. Some of our programmes also connect people with information, ideas, and help via social media. For example, our Twitter Tag Team tweets out helplines from over 30 countries daily and our Facebook page often shares articles providing ideas about how to stop violence against women in families and communities.
We are also known as a “first step” organization because we offer the person on the virtual street who is interested in helping stop violence against women but doesn’t know where to begin easy ways to join the cause. Each of our campaigns is designed as an online platform for a specific community to speak out and support an end to violence against women in ways that suit them. For example, Read For Pixels was created as a way for popular SFF and mainstream authors to talk to their fans and readers about violence against women while also encouraging fans to donate to the cause and to take action to stop the violence in their communities.
As the founder of the non-profit organization, how did you come up with the concept?
I came up with the idea for The Pixel Project in the shower! Yes – really!
A friend of mine who worked for an anti-Violence Against Women non-profit came to me in November 2008 – the height of the global financial meltdown – when I had just completed a major breast cancer fundraiser. She told me about how donations had dried up and pledges and grants were frozen because of the economic climate.
I wanted to help, so I spent a couple of weeks thinking about it and the idea for the Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign came to me while I was washing my hair in the shower! I rushed out – sudsy hair and all – and started banging out the original proposal for the campaign.
We were officially born on 7 January 2009 and now, almost 8 years later, here we are – running multiple campaigns, programmes, and projects that were created in support of the Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign to spark conversations in communities worldwide about violence against women; highlight the importance of non-violent, non-sexist male role models; and raise $1 million dollars for the cause.
I happen to know that you’re a big fan of fantasy and science fiction. How did the idea to mix fiction and activism emerge?
The Pixel Project team is always searching for effective ways of reaching out to communities – meeting people where they are comfortable to engage them with the cause in ways that they are familiar with. And it just so happens that quite a few Pixel Project team members – including myself – are geeks and avid readers! Some of us also belong to writing communities.
We’d seen other charity campaigns featuring authors (or spearheaded by authors or publishers or fan communities) such as Worldbuilders, Waterstones UK’s charity events etc. and we noticed that no one had yet roped in authors to help reach out to their readers and fandoms to raise awareness about violence against women.
So we decided to give it a shot and designed a dual-component campaign – the live Google Hangouts for raising awareness and starting the conversation about the issue, and the crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to keep our work alive.
We did not know what sort of response we’d get from authors… and lo and behold – we discovered that violence against women (and related issues such as misogyny and sexism) is indeed an issue near and dear to the hearts of many authors. Some women writers shared with us that they had personally experienced rape, sexual assault, and harassment. Male authors have also talked to us about growing up in homes with domestic violence or knowing women who were abused.
And so we launched our first Read For Pixels campaign in September 2014 with the fabulous and generous Joe Hill as our first Google Hangout guest.
The rest, as they say, is history.
What’s it been like working with so many top authors? Have they – and their agents – been receptive of your work?
We always have an absolute ball working with authors – they are all so supportive and gracious and generous! Even with their ultra-busy schedules, they all make time and effort to attend Google Hangouts, record shout-out videos, and contribute well-thought-out perks to reward and encourage their fans for supporting our cause.
And post-campaign, many of them continue to help us raise awareness about the issue by sharing their Read For Pixels Google Hangout with their fans from time to time. Some offer more goodies for future campaigns. Others tell us to just drop them a line if we ever need their help in the future.
It has been and always will be an absolute honour working with authors, so many of whom have written works that have always been much loved by our geeky team members.
Agents are more of a mixed bunch – there are a very few who aren’t responsive but on the whole, it’s been a positive experience working with them. Some are very supportive and work closely with us and the authors they represent (a big shout-out to New Leaf Literary!); others happily connect us with their authors; still others suggest suitable authors who would fit the campaign.
We’d also like to give kudos to publishers because a number of them have taken an interest in and actively support our work. In particular – Ace/Roc/DAW at Penguin Random House, Berkley at Penguin Random House, and Kensington Books. Ace/Roc/Daw’s publicity team has been instrumental in connecting us with so many huge SFF names since Read For Pixels began. Both Berkley and Kensington Books have been super supportive by donating mystery book boxes to our fundraisers.
How do you typically go about choosing and contacting authors for your campaigns?
When we were preparing for our first Read For Pixels campaign in 2014, we pretty much invited just about every major SF/F author we could think of who might support the movement to end violence against women. It was the campaign’s inaugural run, so we hoped that by contacting a large number of authors, at least some of them might support us.
The aim of Read For Pixels is to reach out to as many people in the book-reading community as possible regarding stopping violence against women. So for the main annual campaign events (the International Women’s Day Edition and Fall Edition of the Google Hangout series and online fundraiser) we generally invite award-winning best-selling authors because they have established fandoms and reader communities.
However, Read For Pixels is a flexible and inclusive campaign through which we can also hold additional online events and activities with authors. For example: acclaimed Fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay wrote two exclusive drabbles for us that were offered throughout the month of May 2014 to raise funds for us. We also have the support of Indie authors via the two MOSAIC short story collections by women writers which were organized and edited by the fabulous Kim Wells and her team at DayDreams Dandelions Press.
Plus, as Read For Pixels goes from strength to strength, authors have started directly contacting us to offer support and help!
The Pixel Project runs regular Google Hangouts with authors during campaign months. What are the biggest challenges in organizing these? What are the best things about the Hangouts?
The biggest challenge in terms of organizing the Google Hangouts is definitely scheduling because during the campaign months, Read For Pixels Hangouts happen on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights so fans can attend them and we also need to make sure we work with the author’s availability during that month. It’s basically a juggling act until every author has a slot that they are able to attend.
The best thing about the Hangouts is that we get to meet so many awesome authors and discuss the issue of violence against women, sexism, and misogyny in books and the wider pop culture with them.
What makes it even better is when the author’s fans are watching live and type in their questions in real time into the comments box for the author to answer! A great Hangout happens when there’s a great three-way conversation happening between the author, their fans, and us. And these conversations do have an impact because we – and sometimes, the authors – get direct feedback from fans and fellow geeks that they had enjoyed the Google Hangouts and the perks they get from authors when they donate and that the conversations make them think about stopping violence against women in their communities.
Do you have any behind-the-scenes stories you can share with us?
We record and archive all our Google Hangouts on our YouTube channel so what you see is basically what you get – the authors are really that genuine and supportive and, in many cases, that hilarious!
Off-air, we and the authors are pretty relaxed. The conversations range from Scott Sigler telling us about his adventures from when he was a journalist to Yasmine Galenorn generously sharing tips on how to handle tricky characters for those of us who are writers-in-training.
The most moving behind-the-scenes stories we can share with you are actually about the fans and readers who donate to our Read For Pixels fundraisers and who continue to support the campaign as it grows. Here are a couple of examples:
- The Joe Hill fan who donated $1500 to get a handwritten short story by Joe told us that in the future, whenever anyone asks him about the story, he will tell them about it and the importance of stopping violence against women.
- We have received pictures of happy donors with their perks from authors and messages that donors appreciate the resource pack that we send to them.
These responses and feedback from the fandom and reading community are especially touching because it indicates that slowly but surely, Read For Pixels is getting the word out to fans and readers (and starting conversations with them) about the importance of preventing and stopping violence against women.
What’s new for The Pixel Project’s upcoming campaigns?
For Read For Pixels, we have the following authors taking part in our upcoming 3rd annual Fall Edition of Read For Pixels in September: Christopher Golden, Dan Wells, Gregg Hurwitz, Josephine Angelini, Martha Wells, Max Gladstone, Steven Erikson, Susan Dennard, Tami Hoag, Victoria (V.E.) Schwab and Veronica Rossi.
Aside from Read For Pixels, we’re in midst of improving our daily Twitter VAW Helpline Retweet Session; preparing for our annual People and Pets Say NO photo statement campaign for Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October; and are in the midst of our writing and editing cycle for our annual 16 For 16 year-end campaign featuring articles highlighting 16 people, actions, or ideas for stopping violence against women.
For 2017, we’re currently working possibilities for collaborating with the gaming community and also gearing up to give the Celebrity Male Role Model Pixel Reveal campaign one final massive push. Plus, invitations to authors for Read For Pixels 2017 (both the International Women’s Day Edition in March and the Fall Edition in September) will be going out very soon.
So it’s a busy, busy, busy time for us.
How can SF/F fans and authors help out?
Authors who are interested in supporting Read For Pixels and the cause to end violence against women should contact with us at info [at] thepixelproject [dot] net.
SF/F fans are warmly encouraged to attend our live Google Hangouts to show their support and to join in the conversation about violence against women, women and girls in pop culture, and see what their favourite authors have to say about it. Check out the schedule for September’s Google Hangout series here.
Fans are also absolutely welcome to join our Read For Pixels team as Google Hangout moderators, video editors, fundraisers, street team members etc.
And for those who are also gamers, why not come have a chat with us about our plans for collaborating with the gaming community in 2017? Who knows – it might be something you can get behind!
To check out available volunteer positions and apply to join our team, visit our volunteer listings page.
And of course, donate to our Read For Pixels fundraisers if you can – every dollar helps keep our work alive and all donors get exclusive perks and rewards, courtesy of participating authors. Our next fundraiser will be going live on 2 September 2016.
You’ve had so many great SF/F authors participate in your twice-yearly campaigns. If you could choose any five late and great writers of the past to join your campaign, who would they be?
Only five? That’s a tough call! *Laughs*
I would say that we’d absolutely have loved to have support from the late greats:
- Madeleine L’Engle – because A WRINKLE IN TIME proved to critics that female protagonists can carry an SF novel.
- Agatha Christie – because Miss Marple is one of the all-time great detectives.
- Diana Wynne Jones – because of her feminist characters like Sophie Hatton.
- Mary Shelley – the mother of Science Fiction!
- Anne McCaffrey – because she wrote some of the best female-led SF/F ever.
*****
Interview by Juliana Spink Mills © – SFFWorld.com 2016
Great Interview