Category: Featured

Shame On You

Judith Staff

“Drunk. Hot. Easy. A cocktease….“ No. Fuck that. Fuck them. Do not bathe in the steam rising off sordid pools they lured you into, those filled with twisted recollections of reality. Coveting your butterfly touch and those sexy, soft eyes as coat hooks on which to hang their cloaks of Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.

The Queen of Solar Punk

Amy Charlotte Kean

He took a picture with a camera, of all things. That was your first clue the man was an artiste. Said he wanted a machine not with memory but the temporary imprint of film, a fleeting preoccupation. He called you a concept worth developing. You in your solstice scarf, dog collar Read more

Amy Charlotte Kean

Amy Charlotte Kean is an advertising strategist, writer and lecturer from Essex. Her stories, poems, rants and reviews can be found within the pages of the Guardian, Huffington Post, Disclaimer and Glamour Magazine amongst many others. She is an Ink Sweat & Tears poet of the month, Reflex Fiction shortlister and her first book, "The Little Girl Who Gave Zero Fucks" came out last year and is an Amazon number 1 bestseller.

Tuning the Guitar

Victoria Addesso

Music enters my dream. It is distant, indistinct. Then, I am awake. I can still hear it. A guitar, one note over and over but changing. It is the middle of the night. I keep my eyes closed, trying to hold on to that flimsy layer of sleep out of Read more

Victoria Addesso

Vicki Addesso has worked in various fields over the years, full-time and part-time. In between family life and bill-paying endeavors, she works at writing. Co-author of the collaborative memoir Still Here Thinking of You~A Second Chance With Our Mothers (Big Table Publishing, 2013), she has had work published in Gravel Magazine, Barren Magazine, The Writer, Sleet Magazine, Damselfly Press, Feminine Collective, and Tweetspeak Poetry. A personal essay is included in the anthology My Body My Words, edited by Loren Kleinman and Amye Archer. You can follow Vicki on Twitter @VickiAddesso.

Being Her Shadow

Amber R. Dulaney

Always I am with her every step I tag along attempt to let her know she’s not alone but a smile does not greet me when I appear around her only a sadness I can’t reverse for her as I put on display the shapeshift of her body; limited are Read more

Amber R. Dulaney

Amber R. Dulaney is a stay at home Mom residing in Ohio with her husband. She aims for her writing to be relatable, aid in people knowing they are not alone, and in some way, helps them heal. In November of 2008, she received a diploma from The Institute of Children's Literature.

Prairie Sky

Doug Hoekstra

In the morning She yawns and stretches With dancing eyes Repossesses Sunlight spilling Through a battered blind Diamond set And still in time Her legs unfold Intertwine The horizon lying Distant in the past As far as the soul can see She turns And burns And covers me Like a Read more

Doug Hoekstra

Doug Hoekstra is a Chicago-bred, Nashville-based writer and musician, educated at DePaul University in the Windy City (B.A.) and Belmont University in the Music City (M.Ed.), whose prose, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in numerous print and online literary journals. His first set of stories, Bothering the Coffee Drinkers, was published in April 2006 and earned an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) for Best Short Fiction (Bronze Medal). Ten Seconds In-Between, his latest collection of short stories, was published in June, 2021 on Better than Starbuckspress. Hoekstra has also worked extensively as a singer-songwriter with eight albums of original material on labels released on both sides of the pond, propelling touring throughout the U.S. and Europe, at bookstores, coffeehouses, clubs, libraries, pubs, festivals, radio stations, and castles; solo and with combos in tow. Musical highlights have included Nashville Music Award and Independent Music Award nominations, as well as many groovy happenings. 2021 also brings a new album of music, The Day Deserved. ("A lot of people write songs, Hoekstra writes five minute worlds" - Wired Magazine).

Ménage à trois

TAK Erzinger

My features, they betray me with their inside joke, my identity comprised of an awkward three-some. But when I’m drunk, so I’ve heard, the southern drawl spills out like molasses. I’ve lived my life as a chameleon, camouflaging into the background, hidden in someone else’s wild. I shake my hips Read more

TAK Erzinger

TAK Erzinger is an American/Swiss poet and artist with a Latino background. Her poems have been published by The Mojave He[art] Review, The Beautiful Space Journal, The Cirrus Poetry Review, The Curlew, The Rising Phoenix Press and more. Her debut collection “Found: Between the Trees,” (Grey Borders Books) was released in April 2019 www.greyborders.com You can hear a podcast interview with her at www.swisspat.com

Dark Carnival

Elisabeth Horan

Don’t make me go not down there where tacks rule the floor donkey carcasses everywhere Not now. Not yet. haven’t finished my last punishment yet. Still plucking each hair off my body. For carnal sin, for decadence Please no. So dark. So lonely. I imagine scuttling crabs all around me. Read more

Elisabeth Horan

Elisabeth Horan is a poet mother student lover of kind people and animals, homesteading in Vermont with her tolerant partner and two young sons. She writes to survive and survives to write - We are all battling something. Let's support each other. Elisabeth enjoys riding horses and caring for her cats, chickens, goats and children (not necessarily in that order). She teaches at River Valley Community College in New Hampshire.

A Letter To My Child Not Yet Born

Julia Nusbaum

Dear Baby, I don’t know if you will ever be real, but here are some things I want to say to you. I’ve never really wanted a child. Well, that’s not true. You are wanted. But the idea of having a child—the need to have a child—has never been part Read more

Julia Nusbaum

Julia Nusbaum is the founder of HerStry, a literary magazine and writing community for women. Her writing has been published in Windrose Magazine, The New Interstice, and on the My Bible App where she wrote a devotional series about the intersection of faith, bodies and sex. She is a 2014 graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee where she studied social justice and gender and sexuality. Julia currently lives and works in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but hails from the flat parries of Illinois. You can become part of the HerStry community at herstryblg.com or follow Julia on instagram @jules.nusbaum or @herstryblg.