For those interested, here is Dawn and Sonya’s very first email exchange about the kidney story, in chronological order
1/ June 30, 2016: Dawn reaches out to Sonya, tries to ask about the kidney story as casually as possible
2/ July 2: Sonya confides to her friend and fellow Chunky Monkey Whitney Scharer that Dawn Dorland has found out about the kidney story
"Haven’t written back yet. 😁" says Sonya. "I must say that I feel my guilt wearing off, though"
3/ July 11: Sonya finally replies to Dawn
"Ah, it’s good to hear from you"
4/ same day, July 11: Dawn replies
"I admit, I was a little surprised to hear you’d been working on something like that since we’re friends and you hadn’t mentioned it"
5/ July 12: Sonya responds
"my memory is that I did indeed join the FB group; either way, I want to emphasize that my story is not about you"
6/ same day, July 12: Dawn responds
"Putting yourself in my shoes… […] …would that feel great to you? Upstanding? Exploitative?"
7/ July 15: Sonya scrambles to bury to part of her short story that includes verbatim plagiarism of Dawn letter
8/ same day, July 15: Sonya to Dawn
"But if you have indeed been wondering about my support, I can totally see how my 'silence' could make you feel that something is 'off.' That is certainly not my intent."
9/ same day, July 15: Dawn to Sonya
"Though you have consistently reverted to art as a defense, I have stressed that this interaction has upset me *as a friend*."
10/ July 19: Dawn giving a heads-up to Sonya about something that went down on Facebook
It appears that some of Sonya’s friends came after Dawn for expressing her frustrations publicly. "Sari" is likely Sari Boren, who a few months earlier trashed Dawn in DMs w/ Sonya
11/ July 20: Dawn follows up
"I’m ready to let this go, but I need to hear from you in order to mend this - it’s another small courtesy that I seek."
12/ July 21: Sonya responds
"I have told you that I support you repeatedly, and that I think so highly of you, and yet you say you’re still not feeling it."
13/ same day, July 21: Dawn to Sonya
"I am so relieved to get this message! I really hope that we can remain friends. Your email gives me confidence that we can."
14/ August 16: Sonya finally replies to Dawn
"Ah--I’m glad to say I feel such relief as well."
/END
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Hi! If you're here after listening to "Who Is the Bad Art Friend?" in The Daily today, here's context that might change your opinion of the central dispute
1/ Here is Dawn Dorland's explanation for why she contacted Sonya Larson about the Facebook group
i emailed you because the vast majority of images in your Substack posts were taken directly from my account—images that had taken me time & effort to find, format & arrange into easily digestible threads
all i asked for was credit
@summerbrennan in response, you lied about not taking the images, which baffled me
you write about how "the court documents started to make their way onto Twitter in the form of out-of-context screenshots"—implying that it was you doing the work of putting all in context
@summerbrennan but in several respects, you merely paraphrased research i had already done
curious about this too. the email from de leon is vague enough that it doesn't say whether she was part of the selection committee *that year*, though it certainly sounds like it
if there's any corroboration (or refutation) out there, lmk
This is such a cool, detailed thread about all the unexpected (suddenly, there's a pandemic!) sometimes hilarious (peeing in a... what? And WHERE?) ins and outs of going through a non-directed kidney donation
A year later, I see this tweet by Glenn Greenwald, showing that Matthew's donation inspired his Vox colleague German Lopez to give his own kidney to a stranger
In short:
- Larson gets lawyer involved in June 2018
- Lawyer tries to pressure Dorland into handing over the emails she sent to the BBF
- Dorland refuses to negotiate with Larson's lawyer without representation. She hires her own legal counsel. AS ONE SHOULD in such a situation.
Here is the link to Larson's original complaint, where she/her counsel ACKNOWLEDGES SHE GOT LAWYERS INVOLVED FIRST
What's most incredible, the author of the LitHub article LINKS TO THIS DOCUMENT