Why 'Housebound'?

To be 'housebound' has two key connotations.

First, housebound can be read as a status update while traveling (i.e., moving in the direction of home). Its usage can be navigational.

The second and more common connotation is one of confinement due to a mobility restriction. As a chronically ill and disabled writer, being housebound/bedbound is just a part of my creative life. By naming this magazine with a term so often uttered in pity or contempt, I look to push back foundationally on the narrative of stasis ascribed to housebound individuals. To be housebound offers a deep and generative perspective shift - an intimacy with your environment and your existence that ableism's creed seeks to undermine or dismiss.

In creating Housebound, I thought, in particular, of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's framework of crip emotional intelligence, which includes this "understanding that beds are worlds. Houses are worlds. Cars are worlds." Said worlds are full of creativity and resistance. Worlds we inhabit exhausted, enamored, inventive, mad/hopeful, and grieving. Worlds from which we write.

~ Erin, Co-Founder & EIC