As part of The Pixel Project’s Read For Pixels campaign, we interview authors and poets from genres as diverse as Science Fiction and Fantasy to Romance to Horror about why they support the movement to end violence against women and girls.
For Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2025, we present an interview with Read For Pixels poet Colleen Anderson who contributed her original poem Glass House to our 1st charity poetry collection, UNDER HER EYE. An award-winning author, Colleen crafts curious collections: I Dreamed a World, The Lore of Inscrutable Dreams, Weird Worlds, with Vellum Leaves and Lettered Skins just released. Word curios can be found in Weird Tales, Cemetery Dance and others. She lives in Vancouver, BC, searching for justice and mermaids. Find out more about Colleen via www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com.
Inspired to support The Pixel Project’s anti-violence against women work? Make a donation to us today OR buy our 1st poetry collection, UNDER HER EYE, that is published in partnership with Black Spot Books. All donations and net proceeds from book sales go towards supporting our campaigns, programmes, and initiatives.
1. Why is ending violence against women important to you and why did you decide to support The Pixel Project by contributing your poem Glass House to UNDER HER EYE which is The Pixel Project’s first charity poetry collection published in partnership with Black Spot Books?
Any violence against any human being should be important to stop. Violence perpetrated against women is often at the hands of men who feel they have the right to take out their anger, misguided sense of power, or twisted fantasies on someone. I was abused sexually by my father and physically by my mother. That left a deep residing anger within and a strong sense of trying to make sure this doesn’t happen to others. Glass House was about domestic violence and its traumas.
Also, on a global scale there are women and girls raped or forced into sexual slavery, kept captive, beaten, murdered and their rights to a full, peaceful life erased. These acts leave a lifetime of trauma that many can never overcome and that takes years to resolve — if these people live through the experiences. No person deserves this.
2. What do you think poets can do to help with the cultural change needed to stop violence against women and girls?
We can dream of the best and the worst that humans do, and call attention to real and imagined worlds. By showing horrors and what needs to change, perhaps it will make people aware that we must create new paths to a better future for all. We can lead the way in what people read and have them think on our words. The pen is mightier than the sword — this phrase has proven so true that writers of all types have been persecuted or jailed for speaking up against regimes and crimes. Our pens will be sharp, our ink the blood of all those victims, giving voice to those who have been silenced. We can stand together, and ensure that we do not stay silent.
3. Any final thoughts about why everyone should support stopping violence against women?
In various cultures and religions excuses have often been made that it’s always been this way, it’s part of our religion, it must be done. Yet any time a woman is treated differently and lesser than a man, it is only to preserve the status quo. Languages change, times change. Cultures and religions evolve as well. The nations of the world need to stand together and do more than just speak against violence so that women aren’t wrapped up, silenced and hidden.
Any human being who thinks they are humanitarian and who believes in human rights must then see all people’s rights as being worth defending. No more turning a blind eye to the way women and girls are held to different standards and shelved as less than. Either you believe this or you’re not for women.
Listen to Colleen read Glass House here: