Category: Women’s Issues + Awareness

That Night

MJ Garcia

Struggling to recollect a certain time of your life; that night, in particular, is somewhat like glancing through a photo collection. The photos appear to be taken by a child. Seeking to capture the entire world as they viewed it, shaking the pictures before they can develop, eager to view Read more

MJ Garcia

MJ Garcia (she/her) is an aspiring author focusing on Creative Non-Fiction. Through her writing, she shares her personal experiences and worldviews from a neurodivergent woman's perspective. MJ has a passion for connecting with others and sharing the human experience. She believes that the world can use more honesty and empathy and practices those traits daily in her personal life and writings. When MJ is not reading, writing, or working on her education, she spends time with her family (furry and four-legged and the human ones alike) and friends. She can be found enjoying game nights and working on her bucket list of must-see concerts.

midget

Jodie Beckstine Killian

My ready defense is self-deprecation. Before you can stare, I’ll tell a joke about my body. Put you at ease, it hurts me inside. The boundary between humor and reality is blurred. My dwarfism as a disability often comes into question. Though its portrayal as your entertainment does not. It Read more

Jodie Beckstine Killian

Jodie Beckstine Killian has always been a little different. Growing up in a small Wisconsin town she stood out from the rest as a person born with Hypochondroplasia. As a budding entertainer, this wasn’t a disability but a “super” ability that allowed her to get noticed, but not always in the way she hoped. Stares, discrimination and cruel comments are something she deals with daily and writes about often. She currently lives in Florida. (She doesn’t miss Wisconsin winters). She works in marketing, social media and is currently writing her first novel.

diary of a false assassin

Anne Leigh Parrish

it starts with love, or a lot of like he’s crazy cute, right? he’ll say anything to make you let him it takes you by surprise even though you know how it works hoping it wouldn’t ≠a plan to prevent it you don’t tell anyone then you tell everyone have Read more

Anne Leigh Parrish

Award-winning writer Anne Leigh Parrish’s next novel, an open door, will be published in October 2022 by Unsolicited Press. Recent titles from Unsolicited Press are the moon won’t be dared, a poetry collection, October 2021, and a winter night, a novel, released in March 2021. She is the author of seven other books. She has recently ventured into the art of photography and lives in the South Sound Region of Washington State. Find her online at her website, Twitter, Facebook, Medium, Instagram, Linked In, and Goodreads.

A Blur of Selfishness and Orgasms

Lorel Rea

This cannot be it. Don’t get her wrong, she likes some of it. The sound is awesome. Sounds, she thinks, deliriously lost in the world she crafts in her head as she hopes to get just a little wet. His breathing is short; he’s gasping into her ear, her neck, Read more

Lorel Rea

*Lorel Rea* is a fourth-year English student at Northern Kentucky University studying creative writing. She is obsessed with reading; anything that contains dragons, women with swords, or LGTBQIA+ characters is already on her TBR shelf. Though currently drowning in a sea of fantasy worlds, Lorel tries to keep the daydreaming to a minimum. She lives in Northern Kentucky, though her permeant address should be changed to the public library where you can most often find her with tea and an open laptop.

Thermage

Rebecca Lee

Lying on the thin white cotton pillow of the procedure room / the nurse hands me the stress ball / swaddled in a blue latex glove / a nod to the virus still rampaging through the unvaccinated / The ball is for me to mash in my clenched fist / Read more

Rebecca Lee

Rebecca Lee is a public interest lawyer by day and writer of poetry and prose by night. A queer writer of color, she is a graduate of Yale College and UC Berkeley School of Law, where she was Senior Articles Editor of the California Law Review and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice. Her poetry is forthcoming in Dispatches from Quarantine. She lives in San Francisco with her fiancé and their Goldendoodle, Justice.

Nothing Everything

Myrna CG Mibus

It is New Year’s Eve so we dressed up to go out dancing, my best friend Mary and I, and headed out to some bar out in the country we’d never been to before, but we—M&M was how we were known (“we’re not plain, we’re nuts” we’d tell most everyone Read more

Myrna CG Mibus

Myrna CG Mibus is a writer and bookseller who lives in Northfield, Minnesota. She writes articles on topics ranging from aviation to afternoon tea and essays on family, motherhood, and life. Her essays and articles have been published in a variety of publications including Feminine Collective, Grown & Flown, Minneapolis StarTribune and Wanderlust Journal. When she’s not writing, Myrna enjoys baking, bicycling, gardening, reading and being mom to her two young adult children.

Aging Red

C. Streetlights

These days, they melt like a Dali minutes dripp- ing into the hours but seconds pour, pour, pour- ing into the days. I wear age like I do my lipstick – bright, bold, and red. I am red years old. Age is a number that deceives like a Seurat, dots Read more

C. Streetlights

As a child, C. Streetlights listened to birds pecking at her rooftop, but instead of fearing them, was convinced they would set her free and she’d someday see the stars. Southern California sunshine never gave C. Streetlights the blonde hair or blue eyes she needed to fit in with her high school’s beach girls, her inability to smell like teen spirit kept her from the grunge movement, and she wasn’t peppy enough to cheer. She ebbed and flowed with the tide, not a misfit but not exactly fitting in, either. Streetlights grew up, as people do, earned a few degrees and became a teacher. She spent her days discussing topics like essay writing, Romeo and Juliet, the difference between a paragraph and a sentence, and for God’s sake, please stop eating the glue sticks. She has met many fools, but admires Don Quixote most because he taught her that it didn’t matter that the dragon turned out to be a windmill. What mattered was that he chose to fight the dragon in the first place. Streetlights now lives in the mountains with a husband, two miracle children, and a dog who eats Kleenex. She retired from teaching so she can raise her children to pick up their underwear from the bathroom floor, to write, and to slay windmills and dragons. She is happy to report that she can finally see the stars.

Happy Birthday

Jacquie Prebich

danced out of my mother’s womb naked cold cocooned in the afterbirth of art cord snip cut cries turned to screams soul activated why why why oh how, the harsh lights hurt this was the house I was assigned to difficult damn difficult the odd child with tangled hair pretty, Read more

Jacquie Prebich

Jacquie Prebich was raised in New York City and currently resides in Los Angeles. She started ballet at age five and danced until her first pregnancy. Jacquie loves writing, producing, and directing. She created Ballet Theatre in 2006, a new performance concept combining classical ballet with acting, singing, and live music. Jacquie began writing poetry after undergoing rehab for prescription pain pills— an addiction that developed as a result of dance injuries. Jacquie lives in a scenic canyon with her family and rescue animals. She is currently working on her first poetry book. Follow Jacquie on Twitter @JwPrebich