Gene McGee, the mayor of Ridgeland, a northern suburb of the capital city of Jackson, withheld $110,000 from the Madison County Library System. According to the Mississippi Free Press, the executive indicated he would not release the allocated dollars until the library agreed to purge any “homosexual materials”.

The release of this news had set one particular furry into activist mode. Soatok Dhole, a non-fiction furry writer who covers issues around the fandom, social media, and technology, started a thread on his Twitter account pushing for help from the furry fandom to help bridge the gap in the library’s funding. In it he linked to the library’s fundraiser whose goal was initially a modest $2,500, but has since extended multiple times due to reaching that threshold and beyond.

This October, we're raising the profile of anthropomorphic literature and bringing furry stories to a wider audience.

The Furry Writers' Guild has joined forces with some of our fandom's great authors and publishers to offer special deals during the month, from free shipping and discount codes to free books.

Library director Janet Nocek of Portland, Connecticut had her work cut out explaining furries to board members tonight after calling a meeting to review the library's behaviour policy, reportedly after fursuited visits to other local libraries raised fears of child enticement.

The piece in the Hartford Courant highlighted concerns about those visiting in disguise, and in particular non-religious use of hoods or masks (forbidden by the library's rules of conduct), which in this case might cause families to mistake fursuiters as official mascot characters.

Update (14 Sep): The issue was raised in a discussion thread started late last month by Henry Dutcher of Enfield. Initial replies were humorous, but the talk got more serious when he mentioned a child took a fursuiter's paw and was "led away by them" (within the library).

Update 2 (17 Sep): Television stations WFSB and NECN have also covered this story.

M.C.A. Hogarth is releasing short fiction to e-book formats via the Kindle Store and Smashwords.

Stories include the Ursa Major Award-winning space rescue "In the Line of Duty", furry work from her Pelted and Kherishdar universes and alien tales like the Jokka shorts published by Strange Horizons, plus other stories both unpublished and previously published in hard-to-find magazines.

Smashwords supports all e-book formats. Prices range from $0 to $3.99. See the links above for what's available and what order to read them in.