As you may have noticed, a tsunami of existential dread is sweeping creative writers and writing professors. The basic chorus of post-apocalyptic dread goes something like this: However, happily, the 2010 poet […]
If we stop seeing things as a race or a competition, and start seeing things as a place where everyone can have a seat at the table, we can help ourselves and help others in the process…”
A storm came through the other night. Things can move fast here. There’s one type of Florida storm that crops up in the afternoon, in the middle of a perfectly blue sky […]
Is Your Writer Self Lonely, Frustrated, and Overwhelmed? Does it feel as if the demands of daily life keep pulling you away from your writing? You have to be a perfect parent, […]
Madiha was my step-mother-in-law—my husband’s father’s wife. My husband’s mother passed when he was 16, his sisters, much younger, needed care. Needed a mother. Madiha became my father-in-law’s second wife. Madiha passed […]
“I shut my ears, averted my eyes, turning instead to what I thought at the time was pain’s antidote: silence. I was wrong… Silence feeds pain, allows it to fester and thrive. What starves pain, what forces it to release its grip, is speech, the voice upon which rides the story, this is what happened; this is what I have refused to let claim me.” –Tracy K. Smith
“I have always loved the feel of books, the way they give a literal weight to words and make of them a sacred object.” –Natasha Tretheway
“I had a lot of hatred, but I realized that kind of hate didn’t do much.
I had to start feuling myself with pride. We owe the ancestors that. So many of the souls who died ion bondage just want us to recognize their struggle.” –Marilyn Nelson and Tonya C. Hegamin
“A lot of people refuse to do things because they don’t want to go naked, don’t want to go without guarantee. But that’s what’s got to happen. You go naked until you die.” –Nikki Giovanni
“If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.”—Dolly Parton
The Gloria Sirens 