By Susan Lilley Last evening as I was leaving the local supermarket with a million things on my mind, I managed to miss my own car and walked a few cars down […]
Report from the Land of White Privilege
Shame to Love: Learning to Live Again After Rape
Jen Pastiloff first posted this essay, titled “Shame to Love:  Learning to Live Again After Rape” on TheManifestStation.net, leaving the writer’s name out.  She’s posting it again after receiving this note: ”Dear […]
December–You Can’t Take This From Me
by Suzannah Gilman, Susan Lilley, and Lisa Lanser Rose One night at the “Other Words” conference a few weeks ago, we three sipped nightcaps together in the hotel bar. We talked long […]
Transformations
By Darlyn Finch Kuhn “A woman’s body is the most beautiful thing in the world,” the artist says, and staring at the canvas he’s painted, I have to agree. The standing nude […]
Run Towards Each Other by Katherine Riegel
Originally posted on The Brevity Blog:
Another winning entry in Brevity‘s Holiday Smile contest: It is Thanksgiving, again. My smile is a weapon cutting off access to my grief-treasure. Or perhaps my smile…
Blue Canaries
My fiancĂ© arrives home from a twelve hour shift. He left in the pre-dawn darkness, and has arrived after winter’s dusk.
“Who died?” I ask when I greet him at the door, motioning to the black band across his badge. A thin blue line on the band serves as a marker for his profession.
“The deputy in Leon Country,” he says, leaving his boots by the door. “You didn’t hear?”
“No,” I say. “What happened?”
He tells me about the fire and the ambushed deputies, and I’m reminded of the nickname firefighters have given cops–blue canaries.
Pura Vida, or Reflections on “The Good Life”
by Vanessa Blakeslee Since 2008, the year I originally wrote this essay as part of my application for the Gift of Freedom Award, the conversation about the challenges women writers face in […]
Are You Shielding an Abuser? Victims Deserve to be Believed
 by Suzannah Gilman No, I can’t pass judgment on what happened in that situation, but I can be glad for the revival of the noise. Sadly, the allegations of sexual abuse at […]
It Can Happen Anywhere. It DOES Happen Anywhere.
What it’s like when a shooter comes to your campus: Florida State University, November 20, 2014 By Catherine Frederick I had the lights out and I was reading on my iPad when […]
“When I Heard About the Gunman”
In light of last night’s shooting at my daughter’s school, this poem reminds me that despite the undertow of fear, peace reigns for us, and for that, I’m grateful. Be safe.“When I […]
The Gloria Sirens 