Category: Contemporary Women Writers
Writing Empathy Series: Empathy for YOU
Empathy for YOU Jen Braaksma There’s a story about literary icon Margaret Atwood. I don’t know if it’s real—but stories don’t have to be real to be true, right? The story goes like this: Margaret Atwood was at a swanky party when she was introduced to a doctor, a renowned brain surgeon. “Oh, you’re a […]
The Writing of Making the Rounds: Defying Norms in Love and Medicine By Patricia Grayhall
The Writing of Making the Rounds: Defying Norms in Love and Medicine By Patricia Grayhall February 2019 I take out the letters and journals in the file labeled Boston with shaky hands from the locked file cabinet in my closet. For forty years the letters from Dani lay unread because I couldn’t bear to look […]
The Inspiration behind One Last Gift
The Inspiration behind One Last Gift Like my debut novel, Always, in December, ONE LAST GIFT is a story that starts and ends at Christmas, though it spans the whole year. It’s also a story about grief, and about finding yourself in the wake of that grief. I sometimes get asked why I choose to […]
Lucy Banks: On Writing
Writing for me was always a hiding place. I grew up in a strange house with a turbulent family life, and writing was the one thing I could reliably turn to when I wanted to escape from the world. From an early age, I was fascinated with turning those troubling experiences into words. Somehow, by […]
The Journey Not the Arrival Matters
The Journey Not the Arrival Matters I first encountered this quotation by TS Eliot as the title of Leonard Woolf’s autobiography. Naturally, I had to read Leonard Woolf. It was one way of connecting with his wife, whom I count as one of my favorite writers. It was only gradually that I came to understand […]
Joanne Kukanza Easley: On Writing
My third novel, I’ll Be Seeing You, was recently released on my imprint, Red Boots Press. I had been published with a small press for my first two award-winning novels, Sweet Jane and Just One Look. While I am grateful for my start in the world of books, I felt it was time to put […]
Why Do Some Friendships End and Others Last? By Carol Dines
Why Do Some Friendships End and Others Last? By Carol Dines I don’t remember how it began, our daily walk. Two o’clock before the kids got off their busses. Sun, rain, snow, wind, we met at the corner midway between our houses. The lake was three miles around and took forty-five minutes. Every day we […]
Writing to Heal by Rebecca and Sallyann Majoya
Writing to Heal by Rebecca and Sallyann Majoya In our memoir, Uncertain Fruit: A Memoir of Infertility, Loss, and Love, we take turns describing our dream of having a baby together and the tumultuous ride to make that dream come true. After trying everything from foster care to fertility trials, and after nearly ten years […]
My Writing Process: Jeannée Sacken
Early on in my career as a photojournalist, I ventured into the Honduran mountains to document the life and work of a young Mayan mother. After a fruitless couple of hours, I called a break. Turning from the mother, I caught sight of her ten-year-old daughter, Suyapa, in the shadowy corner of their two-room, mud-brick […]
My Not-So-Secret Other Life as a Dancer by Barbara Quick
The memory is imprecise, like something recollected from a dream: a jewelry box, at eye level to my toddler self. My own hands in the perfection of their childish form—long-fingered, unmarked by life—reaching toward the black lacquer lid painted with blossoms. Hinging it open to animate the tiny pink-clad ballerina who otherwise waits asleep inside. […]
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