Kevin Sampsell

Hi Friends,

I had a new essay appear over the weekend at The Good Men Project website. It’s about the rape of a close friend. I sent it to the editor there on Friday and she responded with one of the nicest emails I’ve ever gotten from an editor.

“Really powerful. I hope you don’t mind, but I wouldn’t edit a word. And I so rarely say that. It just hooked me and took me all the way through. I couldn’t even read it as an editor, I could only read it as a reader. That says something.”

Those are the emails that make a writer’s day. And to add to the excitement, she posted the essay the very next morning.

It has received a lot of attention, tweets, Facebook posts, and comments. I don’t take comments that seriously most of the time, but I do think it’s funny when people leave negative remarks and misspell your name as if to prove they have little respect for you (like the guy who calls me “Mr. Sampshell”–haha, love it!).

Another weird comment comes from a guy who wanted a “trigger warning” (I find that term annoying) because of a part of the story where I say that my friend likes to buy her friends drinks when she sees them (Confused? Yeah, so was I. I guess the commenter has a fear of being roofied by women or something like that).

Odd comments aside though, publishing pieces like this is really rewarding and I appreciate everyone who has shared this work with others and have discussed the devastating subject of rape among their friends and family.