Thoughts on how writers can inspire action for the environment, wild spaces and rivers, and for communities

I'm preparing to speak at the Become the River Literary Festival in Coloma this afternoon. One of the questions we'll be addressing is: How can writers use their connection to wild spaces and rivers to utilize the power of the pen to activate and inspire action? 

Here are my notes to organize my thoughts: 

 Protest & Witness

“Poems are visible right now, which is terribly ironic, because you rather wish it weren’t so necessary,” she said. “When poetry is a backwater it means times are O.K. When times are dire, that’s exactly when poetry is needed.” – Jane Hirshfield

 

“Poems, for me, are written because there is some fracture thatneeds addressing,” Hirshfield says. “You write because something is off-kilter, bewildering, devastating. If you’re built the way poets are, one way to remit the fabric of the world is to find language that will let in the grief and the beauty of these things.”- Jane Hirshfield

 

On January 24, President Trump’s fifth day in office his first time, media outlets reported that the White House had banned Environmental Protection Agency scientists from posting about their research on social media, instructing them to relay their research to the public only after obtaining prior approval. By the end of that day, Hirshfield had channeled her outrage into a poem called “On the Fifth Day.” She sent it to a few scientist friends. They sent it to a few more, and soon the poem went viral.

 

When organizers announced the March for Science a few days later, Hirshfield contacted the volunteer committee and offered a few ideas.

 

The recent resurgence of protest poems reflects a new strain of contemporary American poetry, one that is deeply engaged with public policy and the latest executive orders coming from the White House.

 

On the fifth day by Jane Hirshfield

 

the scientists who studied the rivers

were forbidden to speak

or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air

were told not to speak of the air,

and the ones who worked for the farmers

were silenced,

and the ones who worked for the bees.

Someone, from deep in the Badlands,

began posting facts.

The facts were told not to speak

and were taken away.

The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.

Now it was only the rivers

that spoke of the rivers,

and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees

continued to move toward their fruit.

The silence spoke loudly of silence,

and the rivers kept speaking,

of rivers, of boulders and air.

Bound to gravity, earless and tongueless,

the untested rivers kept speaking.

Bus drivers, shelf stockers,

code writers, machinists, accountants,

lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

They spoke, the fifth day,

of silence.

2.     Education and Healing

Hirshfield had begun Poets for Science to grapple with her own emotions over the state of politics and science policy. Partnering with Poets for Science founder, poet and environmental spokesperson Jane Hirshfield, the Wick Poetry Center joined the marchers at the Teach-In on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Today, Poets for Science is both an exhibit and a movement exploring the connections between poetry and science.

 

“Poetry and science are allies, not opposites. Both are instruments of discovery, and together they make the two feet of one walking. We can only weigh the full meaning of facts by how we feel about them. Feelings are meaningful and useful to us because they emerge from the truths of this shifting, astonishing world. Observation and imagination, the microscope and the metaphor, the sense of amazement—you need all of them to take the measure of a moment, of a life. Poetry and science each seek to ground our lives in both what exists and the sense of the large, of mystery and awe. Every scientist I know is grounded in curiosity, wonder, the spirit of exploration, the spirit of service. As is every poet.” - Jane Hirshfield, 2017

 

The Hope River project in Davis, California, shows just how powerful expression through poetry can be for young people. In 2021, Julia B. Levine, a retired clinical psychologist and now the Poet Laureate of Davis, began developing a pilot program introducing middle schoolers to poetry to cope with climate-related fears.

 

She developed a 5-week course for middle schoolers at a public charter school, Da Vinci Junior High, in which students would read poetry about the environment and then write their own poems. At the end of the 5 weeks, the teens would walk down a path behind the school while listening to recordings of their poems on a smartphone app, the flow of cyclists and pedestrians on Davis’ bike trails reminiscent of the flow of a river.

 

Sixteen Rivers Press, a poetry collective based in Northern California, is publishing a selection of 22 of the Hope River poems, along with all of Levine’s instructional materials from the class. The book is called Dear Earth: Hope River Poems from Young Teens.

“One thing poetry helps you do is speak to your higher self,” Levine says. Writing makes young poets “feel as if they matter, as if their voice counts,” she adds. “It’s an antidote to what’s happening all around them.”

3.     Equity for people and environment

Listen to Camille Dungy in her article "Is All Writing Environmental Writing?":

 

"We are in the midst of the planet’s sixth great extinction, in a time where we are seeing the direct effects of radical global climate change via more frequent and ferocious storms, hotter drier years accompanied by more devastating wildfires, snow where there didn’t used to be snow, and less snow where permafrost used to be a given. Yet some people prefer to maintain categories for what counts as environmental writing and what is historical writing or social criticism or biography and so on. I can’t compartmentalize my attentions. If an author chooses not to engage with what we often call the natural world, that very disengagement makes a statement about the author’s relationship with her environment; even indifference to the environment directly affects the world about which a writer might purport to be indifferent. We live in a time when making decisions about how we construct the products and actions of our daily lives—whether or not to buy plastic water bottles and drinking straws, or cosmetics with microbeads that make our skin glow—means making decisions about being complicit in compromising the Earth’s ecosystems. 

 

"What we decide matters in literature is connected to what we decide will matter for our history, for our pedagogy, for our culture. What we do and do not value in our art reveals what we do and do not value in our times. What we leave off the page often speaks as loudly as what we include. 

 Writers exploring ecopoetics ask themselves questions such as these: How does climate change affect our poetics? How do we write about resource extraction, agribusiness, endangered bird species, the removals of indigenous peoples, suburban sprawl, the lynching of blacks, or the precarious condition of gray wolves and the ecosystems dependent upon them? Our contemporary understanding of ecopoetics takes into account the ways human-centered thinking reflects on, and is reflected in, what we write. And, contemporary ecopoetics questions the efficacy of valuing one physical presentation of animated matter over another, because narratives about place and about life contribute to our orientation in, and our interpretation of, that place and that life. 

 

"All of our positions on the planet are precarious at this moment in history, and attentive writers work to articulate why this is the case—including many writers of color who were already engaging in this mode of writing long before the ecopoetics movement took off. (Works by Alice Dunbar Nelson, Lucille Clifton, Claude McKay, Anne Spencer, Sterling Brown, June Jordan, Evie Shockley, Sean Hill, and Ed Roberson spring immediately to mind.) But only as the ecopoetics movement gained traction has such de-pristined writing finally been identified as environmental writing and, therefore, begun to be seen in a new light.

 

"The history of human divisions is often constituted of stories about one set of people being hostile toward the presence of others. An ideology that would demand the exclusion or subjugation of whole populations of human beings is an ideology quick to assume positions of superiority over all that is perceived to be different. If you can construct a narrative that turns a human into a beast in order to justify the degradation of that human, how much easier must it be to dismiss the needs of a black bear, a crayfish, a banyan? The values we place on lives that are not our own are reflected in the stories we tell ourselves—and in which aspects of these stories resonate with us. To separate the concerns of the human world (politics, history, commerce) from those of the many life forms with which humans share this planet strikes me as disastrous hubris and folly. We live in community with all the other lives on Earth, whether we acknowledge this or not. When we write about our lives, we ought to do so with an awareness of the other lives we encounter as we move through the world. I choose to honor these lives with attention and compassion." - Camille Dungy

 

______
*From What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006).

 

 

Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/books/review/american-poets-refusing-to-go-gentle-rage-against-the-right.html

 

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2319793120

 

https://poetsforscience.org/about/

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/04/14/on-the-fifth-day/

 

https://www.thegeorgiareview.com/posts/is-all-writing-environmental-writing/

 

Submission Strategies for Publication Workshop Series: Where, how and when to submit October 24, Nov 7 & Nov 20

 

This series is a practical workshop where I will present the newest and latest calls for submissions, give insights and strategies for organizing, planning, and tracking your submissions, and help with manuscript preparations. We will work on our research, selection, plans, and prepping the second half of the time together as we gather and submit our work. One take away will be a long term plan for organizing your submissions over the next 6 -12 months, taking a look at project goals and timing them with future open reading periods.

Submission Strategies for Publication Workshop Series: Where, how and when to submit

October 24, Nov 7 & Nov 20

@ Lunchtime, Noon – 1:30 pm

$35/session

In person and Online

Fall is the season for sending your work out for publication: poetry, short story, personal essay, journalism, book chapters, artist collaborations, mixed-media and hybrid genres. Get the details you need to plan where, how and when to submit. Handouts, tea, and chocolate too.

Work in a supportive community of writers to research the field, prepare your manuscripts, and submit them to a carefully selected field of publications:

·       Contests

·       Literary journals and Magazines

·       Anthologies

·       Calls for submissions

·       Collaborative arts

Discover new opportunities for your writing:

·       reviews

·       translation

·       prose and verse chapbooks (short story and essay)

·       first chapter submissions

·       artist residencies

·       conferences

My personal goal is to get caught up in my own submissions - join me in making this process happen for your writing too. Submitting work is a part of the business side of being a writer that can at times fall to the wayside as we write and read and imagine. For this reason, I think during the submission season in particular it's super productive to work in an accountability community of writers.

Check in with me with questions and thoughts : )

Happy writing,

Kat

Reflections in preparation for the Poet Laureate Panel conversation at the Tahoe Literary Festival Saturday 10/11

Our newly appointed 25th poet laureate of the United States, Arthur Sze, has stated, “Poetry speaks to our deepest selves and connects us all, and it also speaks to the exigencies our time.”With this in mind, do you feel poetry can be a way to bridge differences, bring people together,offer hope and expression even in the most challenging environment? How do you see yourself as an advocate for poetry in your own community?

I’ve begun saying that I’m learning how to be a Poet Laureate as I go along. I’m asking myself how can I best be an advocate for my community, with poetry as my sustenance to offer? First, the question of poetry being sustenance to some, but can I make the selfish assumption that everyone can feed on poetry, find something satiating within it? And it’s not just that poetry is what I have to give – I could be quite creative in how I give, and poetry is only one of the offerings in my hands.

In answer to the question “Does poetry play a role in social change?” Adrienne Rich once answered:

Yes, where poetry is liberative language, connecting the fragments within us, connecting us to others like and unlike ourselves, replenishing our desire. . . . In poetry words can say more than they mean and mean more than they say. In a time of frontal assaults both on language and on human solidarity, poetry can remind us of all we are in danger of losing—disturb us, embolden us out of resignation.

Poet Laureate Chen Chen in Redmond, Washington has literally figured out in Read Local Eat Local program how to transform poetry into recipes on postcards that can be handed out to people on the street at festivals. Just released in Santa Cruz is an anthology of youth voices in poetry. “Waking Up: Teen Poems of Resistance and Resilience” was edited by three teens from the Santa Cruz County Youth Poet Laureate Program’s inaugural cohort of youth poetry leaders: Simon Ellefson, Sylvi Kayser and former Youth Poet Laureate Dina Lusztig Noyes. Ellefson, a 19-year-old Cabrillo College student, said the idea came about from Farnaz Fatemi — former Santa Cruz County poet laureate and director of the youth poet laureate program. Farnaz is also a friend of mine through the Community of Writers Poetry Workshops.

I’m asking myself how can poetry be made into a thing that helps everyone/anyone find a moment to “slow down, hear clearly, see deeply, and envision what matters most in our lives,” as Arthur Sze says poetry does for us in a recent interview. These are the questions I’m asking as I design a project for Nevada County.

These questions do ask how can poetry bridge the differences between individuals, between you and me? Some of the answer is in relationships building over time between readers and writers, teachers and students, poets and poets. I’ve begun meeting with several high school students, slowly building some mentoring relationships. At a workshop, I asked each to choose one book from my bookshelves to read and write from, and the collected essays of Adrienne Rich was chosen. So, I began reading her essays, and in one called Someone is Writing a Poem, she writes:

We go to poetry because we believe it has something to do with us. We also go to poetry to receive the experience of the not me, enter a field of vision we could not otherwise apprehend.

Someone writing a poem believes in a reader, in readers, of that poem. The “who” of that reader quivers like a jellyfish. Self-reference is always possible: that my “I” is a universal “we,” that the reader is my clone. That sending letters to myself is enough for attention to be paid. That my chip of mirror contains the world.

But most often someone writing a poem believes in, depends on, a delicate, vibrating range of difference, that an “I” can become a “we” without extinguishing others, that a partly common language exists to which strangers can bring their own heartbeat, memories, images. A language that itself has learned from the heartbeat, memories, images of strangers. – Adrienne Rich

I think as writers, the use of “we” can become a generalization that can erase the experiences of others. I often think of this if I unconsciously write “we” in my poem. Who am I bringing into my tribe of “we”, and who can I not bring in because truly I do not know them well enough to speak for them?

However, on the reader’s side of the experience of the poem, how fulfilled I would feel if my “I” on the page could be gathered into the arms of the reader to become a “we” even if also “we” contain differences as strangers?

So yes, I do believe that writing a poem that then is read by others can become a bridge between differences. And also reading a poem calls for paying attention, slowing down, listening in, seeing clearly, and asking what is it that is most important in our lives?

 

"Keep your practice. Be your full, complete, authentic self" - Danielle Brazell, Ex. Dir. California Arts Council

September was filled with a surprising harvest of Fall gatherings and Tangled Roots Writing offerings.

September 5th I led a workshop at the Truckee Library that is Free once a month, writing stories of our lives with guidance and prompts. Our next workshop meets 11/14 from 10:30-noon and all ages are welcome to join us.

On September 7th I attended the Sierra Arts Literary Community meeting which happens every second Sunday of the month at the Sierra Arts Gallery on S Virginia St in Reno. This is a chance to network and learn and find encouragement from other local writers and authors. 

On Sept. 8th the Fall Monday night creative writing workshop series began, running 6 weeks through Oct. 13. The next 6 week series begins on Oct. 20 and enrollment is now open. This is my longest running generative writing workshop for all genres and levels of experience.

September 12 kicked off the artists' reception at The Holland Project for the Nevada Humanities Reno Literary Pub Crawl. So fun - I'm inspired by so many of these writers and having the opportunity to gather was a blast.

Later that evening, I attended the Dark Skies Photo Award Ceremony at the Truckee Hospital. I read and presented a framed copy of "Cento: Tahoe Stars" poem to the mayors of Nevada City and Truckee. 

Saturday morning, Sept 13, Alexis Cota, our new Truckee Cultural District Intern and I drove down to Mountain Bounty Farm in Nevada City. I led a reading and writing workshop in a circle of hay bales beneath a centuries old Oak tree with Ingrid Keriotis and Rooja Mohassessy.  We listened and wrote poems while gazing out at the sun glinting off ready-for-picking red peppers, corn, purple kale, and lush green rows of many vegetables and bright flowers.

That afternoon I somehow made it down to Reno to perform in the Literary Crawl at 1864 on California Ave to read along with Jillian Makhouts and Tony Berendson for an appreciative crowd of poetry-lovers. I love all the work of Nevada Humanities - performing and sharing my poems in that event felt welcoming, like I was in my tribe with others who value the deep thinking and feeling that writing and reading involve. 

 Truckee threw it's first Block Party on Thursday evening, Sept 18 by the train depot. Almost 50 booths, food trucks, stage performances of dance and music by local kids and bands, and a poem reading with myself and Alexis. Alexis translated one of my poems into Spanish and you can watch the video of our performance here. 

Sierra Valley north of Truckee holds wide golden vistas, old cemeteries within pine knolls, cows and raptors, and farms, artists, and barns angling against blue sky. On Sept 20 Kurt and I traveled the Ag and Art Trail through the countryside visiting Gary Romano's farmers market and several other farms. Hosted in a local barn that evening was a paella and bluegrass gathering - a magical performance. Our communities are rich.

The Business of Art Symposium on Sept 25, hosted on the Sierra College Grass Valley campus, was a full day of workshops, talks, and panels. I moderated a panel on Literary arts as a sustainable career path. The  wide-ranging conversation between Dean Rader, Mary Volmer, and Leta Seletzky pondered how to face challenges today of cuts to funding, political animosity, and loss of perceived value in the Humanities. 

The keynote speaker at the Symposium summed up this month's events for me with her clarity of purpose. Danielle Brazell is the Executive Director of the California Arts Council. She asked the audience three questions:

1. What are you working towards?
2. What are your barriers?
3. What are potential opportunities or hidden silver linings? 

Her closing advice was: "Keep your practice. Be your full, complete, authentic self. Artists have the Imagination"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fall Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop Series enrollment now open: Sept 8 - Oct 13

 

New Fall 2025 Monday Night Creative Writing Workshop Series

6 sessions in this series: Sept. 8 - Oct. 13

6:30-8 pm Monday nights

$200

A fun, generative workshop developed over many years for writers of any form, whether poetry, fiction, short story, novel, or drama/screen writing. Do you wish you wrote more? Want to feel a sense of community when you write? Want to start a book or finish a book? This workshop series is for you - any level of experience. I especially encourage to attend people with interdisciplinary training and/or deep life experiences, and artists from any medium.

If you don't know me yet, read a recent article in The Union about my new role as Poet Laureate of Nevada County, and details on some upcoming literary events I'm hosting in Grass Valley and Truckee. 

The Monday Night series is hybrid, offered in-person in my comfortable living room with tea and chocolate, and on Zoom at the same time. Do you have some travel planned this Fall? No problem, you can still participate. And if you miss a session, the detailed notes I hand out each week will keep you updated on what you missed. I will also work  with you to catch you up on the notes.

This creative series is the most popular and longest-running workshop I offer.  Craft, technique, and prompts for writing of all forms. A kick in the butt for your writing life! Waiting for inspiration is also called procrastination.  So don't wait - connect with a community and improve your writing practice. 

Mondays from 6:30 to 8 pm. This series will fill up fast as I keep the size of the group intimate. 

Sign up by email to tangledrootswriting@gmail.com or call 530-386-3901.

My first four months: An update on my work in the role of Poet Laureate of Nevada County

 

Dear Nevada County,

Beginning March 4th, with the Passing of the Laurels with Kirsten Casey at Alibi Brewery in Truckee, I've been overjoyed to represent this creative role, a role of service really, in the name of art and citizenry. Writers, readers, artists, youth, families and friends filled Alibi standing room only, maybe 120 people at least, for our poetry reading and open mic. For 2 hours, folks came up to the mic to read and share. Lots of tears in the room, and applause all around.

March 4th through July 3rd, I performed or hosted over 40 readings, workshops or literary events across the county. I'm closely supported by Nevada County Arts Council and Eliza Tudor, and Truckee Cultural District and Kellie Cutler. The literary scene is growing in our county, and its all about the diverse arts community we welcome and nurture. 

I've promoted the Poet Laureate role, the Tahoe Literary Festival and Crawl (founded and organized by Priya Hutner and Katherine Hill), the amazing Sierra Poetry Festival, and other events on radio, podcasts and local TV, including PBS, KVMR, CapRadio, Nevada County Now, and a few others. 

Some events that stand out to me are the school classroom visits I began this spring and hope to build on this next school year. I work to support and supplement a teacher's curriculum when they reach out to me - so I encourage you to reach out if you want to collaborate with a poet in your classroom!

Last May and June I worked with Tahoe Expeditionary Academy and SELS, a sophomore class, 6th graders, and first graders, with writing poems on subjects of science, environment, and climate change.

I've coordinated a series of readings and workshops with Director Annette Muller and Poet Ingrid Keriotis to combine literary arts with land conservation and community building at Bear Yuba Land Trust. Our next event in this outdoor preserve is Sept. 13. One beautiful evening at Food Love Farm's fundraiser event I was able to perform my poems to live music with Sands Hall. At the Truckee Library I've been offering a free writing workshop for all ages (so far 8 years old to 90 years old) once a month Friday mornings - our next workshop is August 22. 

I've also supported the Dark Skies initiative in Truckee by writing a community poem called a Cento that included the voices of writers at the Truckee Literary Crawl April 5. That crawl brought together all our downtown businesses and galleries with regional writers and artists. 

My personal mission is to build literary community and to empower students and writers to know and write their authentic voice. Traveling to Sacramento, Reno, Grass Valley, Nevada City, Tahoe City, Applehill, and Susanville to read and represent the Poet Laureate role, I'm grateful for these opportunities to reach out to others and draw us together in a creative and inclusive community. 

How I wrote the poem Cento: Tahoe Stars in tribute to the growing arts community and Truckee's night sky

As we approach the second annual Tahoe Literary Festival happening October 10 & 11 in Tahoe City, CA,  I'm excited to share the poem I've written in tribute to the community of writers in Tahoe and Truckee.

Last winter I took a workshop at the Sierra Writers Conference presented by a friend of mine, Farnaz Fatema, Poet Laureate Emeritus for Santa Cruz, on writing community poems. One form in particular, the Cento, stood out to me as a fun opportunity for the Truckee Literary Crawl that happened April 5, 2025. This is a traditional form of poem that I've always loved and played with over the years in my own poems and workshops. 

The word cento comes from the Latin word for patchwork garment. A cento is a literary work collaged entirely from other writers' verses or passages. In their earliest forms, centos were often composed as tribute. Traditionally, a cento is lines from poetry, and in shaping this one, I worked with lines from verse and prose. The creative process is a little bit like putting together a puzzle.

I reached out to every writer who performed at the Truckee Crawl and asked them if they were open to contributing to a community poem in the form of a Cento. 

I asked each of them to submit two lines from work  they read at the Truckee Literary Crawl April 5. If one of the lines feels like it aligns with a theme of Dark Skies, even better. A line from a poem is just that - not a stanza or a sentence - and includes the punctuation as well. If the writer read prose, they sent me a first sentence, and also another sentence of their choice.

Once I gathered all the submissions, I chose the lines to include and ordered them in the poem. Traditionally the form is called Cento because it included 100 lines, each taken from a poem by a different poet, that are ordered by the poet writing the Cento.   An acknowledgement of each writer quoted in the poem is included as part of the Cento.

 

I loved creating a community poem that speaks to Truckee's night skies and our place on the land here in the Sierra. The poem is a tribute to the growing arts community and the Truckee Lit Crawl that offers a platform for these voices.  

 

 

 

 

Authors Guild recommendations for AI best use practices for using AI ethically

What do I want to say about using AI as a writer and creator? Whatever I say now will need to adapt quickly as AI and its applications to our lives and work evolves exponentially. 

For example, nearly three years ago, in June, 2022, Blake Lemoine was fired for breaking Google data security policies by stating publicly that AI had become sentient. 

As of May, 2025, approximately a dozen lawsuits have been brought in California and New York courts against various AI companies for copyright infringement based on the companies’ unauthorized copying of authors’ works to train their generative AI models. All of the cases brought by individual authors so far are class action lawsuits, meaning that they do not just cover the plaintiffs named in each lawsuit but all people who fall within the “class,” as defined in the lawsuit.

The photo is of me reading at the Sacramento Poetry Center last month, from my book Bite and Blood. I'm a human being, writing poems and other works, publishing a book, and all of these acts are original to me, the blood and brain and air of my lungs and language my body has in-corporated to manifest creativity in this world for others to experience.

Below I’ve copied the recommended policies and ethical uses for AI from the Authors Guild website, an organization that has been supporting working writers and protecting writers writes since 1912.

What questions do these policies shine light on for writers and creators?

·       What is the difference between creating work, generating new writing, and making art to using AI to brainstorm questions, write outlines, and research?

·       What is the value of a piece of writing or art that is 100% created AI-free, by a human? These are questions I'll be considering, and I hope you are also as you think about your creation of writing, art, and work.

·       When we look to an artist or a creative to view, read, or hear their own unique response to a question or to the world, what is it we are looking for? What is it we want in the experience of their response?

·       How original are your own ideas as a writer and artist?

·       What can a human writer and editor add to your writing project beyond AI?

·       What am I missing out on for critical thinking applied to this list of questions by not entering the prompt into ChatGPT to add to this list of questions?

According to the Authors Guild:

Generative AI is a technology writers are using in various ways as a tool or an aid in the writing process. For instance, some writers use generative AI technology to research, outline, brainstorm, and even as a writer partner and to generate characters or text to include in their manuscripts.

If writers choose to use generative AI, they should be aware of and observe some ethical ground rules to protect both their own personal and professional interests and the future of their profession, given that unauthorized, unrestricted, and uncompensated use of authors’ works to train generative AI has created tools that are used to displace professional writers and create a serious risk of flooding markets and diluting the value of human-written work.

For starters, please be aware that, for now, all of the major large language models (LLMs)— generative AI for text—are based on hundreds of thousands or more books and countless articles stolen from pirate websites. This is the largest mass copyright infringement of authors’ works ever, and it was done by some of the richest companies in the world. It is theft—a transfer of wealth from middle-class creators to the coffers of billionaires—and we are fighting against it.

AI companies [need to] do the right thing and license the books and journalism they use to train their AI. Licensing is how copyright works: It enables creators to charge money for the use of their work and insist on certain limits and restrictions (such as preventing competing outputs). It is in all of our professional interests to insist on licensing, compensation, and control and to maintain standards that promote a fair marketplace.

We believe that licensing—not theft—will increasingly become the norm as new companies enter the field or existing ones start licensing; and the new “fairly trained certification”—which the Authors Guild is a supporter of—will allow you to know which LLMs are not infringing. Until then, please consider the harm to the total ecosystem when using generative AI.

Using Generative AI Ethically

Below are our recommended best practices and explanations for using generative AI ethically:

1. Do not use AI to write for you. Use it only as a tool— a paintbrush for writing. It is your writing, thinking, and voice that make you the writer you are. AI-generated text is not your authorship and not your voice. Even if trained on your own work, AI-generated text is simply a regurgitation of what it is trained on and adds nothing new or original to the world. By definition, it is neither original nor art. When you use AI to generate text that you include in a work, you are not writing—you are prompting. Choosing to be a professional prompter is not the same as being a writer, and the output is not authorship or creative. Use AI to support, not replace, the creative process.
2. If you do use AI to develop story lines or character or to generate text, be sure to rewrite it in your own voice before adopting it. If you are claiming authorship, then you should be the author of your work.
3. If you incorporate AI-generated text, characters, or plot in your manuscript, you must disclose it to your publisher as publishing contracts require the authors to represent and warrant that the manuscript is original to the author. AI-generated material is not considered “original” to you and it is not copyrightable. Inclusion of more than a very minimal amount of AI-generated text in the final manuscript will violate your warranty to the publisher. Similarly, an entirely AI-generated plotline or wholesale adoption of AI-generated characters may violate this term of the contract. It is important to know that any expressive elements generated by AI that you incorporate in your work are not protected by copyright and need to be disclaimed in the application for registration. Such material must also be disclaimed in the application for copyright registration, and your publisher needs that information to register the copyright correctly. If you contemplate using AI-generated material in your work (other than minor editorial changes as a result of grammar or spell-checking), you should discuss it with your publisher and see if they will waive the warranty.
4. You should also disclose to the reader whether you incorporated any AI-generated content in the book. They have a right to know as many will feel duped if they are not advised. It is not necessary though to disclose use of generative AI tools like grammar check or when it is employed merely as a tool for brainstorming, idea generation, researching, or for copyediting.
5. Be aware and mindful of publisher and platform-specific policies regarding AI use. Many publishers are developing specific rules around authors’ use of AI, so you should ask your editor if your publisher has any special guidance and carefully review any rules. If you publish a book using KDP, you need to disclose AI use to Amazon. Under current Amazon terms, you need to disclose “AI-generated content (text, images, or translations) when you publish a new book or make edits to and republish an existing book through KDP.” Amazon defines AI-generated content as “text, images, or translations created by an AI-based tool,” and requires disclosure even if the content was substantially edited. Amazon does not require disclosure [for “AI-assisted”] works – when the AI is used as a tool to “edit, refine, error-check, or otherwise improve” content that you created. Amazon is not making these disclosures of AI-generated content public as of the last edit of these guidelines, but we hope they will change this policy in the future.
6. Use the Authors Guild’s Human Authored Certification mark for books that contain no AI-generated text as a way to let readers know it was entirely human written. Readers will appreciate knowing.
7. Respect the rights of other writers when using generative AI technologies, including copyrights, trademarks, and other rights, and do not use generative AI to copy or mimic the unique styles, voices, or other distinctive attributes of other writers’ works in ways that harm the works. (Note: doing so could also be subject to claims of unfair competition or infringement).
8. Thoroughly review and fact-check all content generated by AI systems. As of now, you cannot trust the accuracy of any factual information provided by generative AI. Be aware and check for potential biases in the AI output, be they gender, racial, socioeconomic, or other biases that could perpetuate harmful stereotypes or misinformation.
9. “Fine-tuning” an AI model on your own work to generate new material (e.g. a new book in a series, a new book in their own style) arguably raises fewer ethical concerns since the expression being generated is based on authors’ own work rather than the work of others. (Fine-tuning is the process by which a smaller AI model is created on specific datasets with specific functionalities to work with a foundational LLM.) That being said, the “fine-tuning” is done on top of a foundational large language model that in all likelihood was trained and developed on mass copyright infringement. Further, as an ethical matter, we believe that disclosure of AI use is still warranted when you input your own work to fine-tune AI in order to create something in your own style.
10. Show solidarity with and support professional creators in other fields, including voice actors and narrators, translators, illustrators, etc., as they also need to protect their professions from generative AI uses. If you choose to use AI to generate cover art, illustrations, be mindful of the impact of generative AI on their peers in the creative industries. Many image models are built using unlicensed pictures and artwork, though there are exceptions, such as Adobe Firefly, which use licensed images for training data. Similarly, while many voice models are built on unlicensed recordings, Amazon, Audible and other audiobook platforms are using licensed digital “voice replicas” of actors, ensuring that the narrators get paid. If you are going to use an AI to create cover art or generate an audiobook, it is better to use an AI program or service that uses licensed content, as opposed to one that is built on copyright infringement.
11. Assert your rights in your contract negotiations with publishers and platforms. We have drafted a model clause that authors and agents can use in their negotiations that prohibit the use of an author’s work for training AI technologies without the author’s express permission. Many publishers are agreeing to this restriction, and we hope this will become the industry standard. Keep in mind, however, that this clause is only intended to apply to the use of an author’s work to train AI, not to prohibit publishers from using AI to perform common tasks such as proofing, editing, or generating marketing copy. As expected, publishers are starting to explore using AI as a tool in the usual course of their operations, including editorial and marketing uses, so they may not agree to contractual language disclaiming AI use generally. Those types of internal, operational uses are very different from using the work to train AI that can create similar works or to license the work to an AI company to develop new AI models. The internal, operational uses of AI don’t raise the same concerns of authors’ works being used to create technologies capable of generating competing works.