Tag: childhood sex abuse

KITCHEN JUSTICE

Katherine West

Mom was in the kitchen. Dad had just driven up. “Girls set the table,” she called up to us. “C’mon,” I said, tugging at my older sister’s sleeve. “It doesn’t take two,” she answered, not looking up from her book. She was reading Dune, again. “C’mon, please, you know what Read more

Katherine West

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective and Southwest Word Fiesta. New Verse News nominated her poem And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.

Cowboy in Red is Cheating

Jerri Jerreat

1: The Heroine A funeral is lace, carnations, pinks, and old flesh. For Emma, dressing hurriedly for a grandmother’s send-off, it was going to be a showdown. Emma frowned as she did up pearl buttons on her white blouse. The yellow shirt had been too happy; the pink, too gentle. Read more

Jerri Jerreat

Jerri Jerreat’s fiction has appeared in The Yale Review Online, The New Quarterly, The Penmen Review, The Ottawa Arts Review, The Antigonish Review, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, The Dalhousie Review, Room, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Everyday Fiction and in four anthologies: Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers (World Weaver Press): Solarpunk Winters; in Nevertheless: Tesseracts 21 (Edge Publishing); and in a collection of international eco fiction, Solarpunk: Dalla Disperazione Alla Strategia, (Future Fiction). Her play was a finalist in the Newmarket National Ten Minute Play Festival, 2019.

Getting To NO

Janette Shipston Chan

I stared up at the drifting clouds remembering that sticky-hot cloudless day, steaming asphalt, the girl in the on her bike, screaming, cheering, my two-dollar bill waving outside the car window, skip-hop running, a marathon every day …never quitting, never stopping…only being stopped by the scariest word in the dictionary. I needed a word like that.

Janette Shipston Chan

Janette Shipston Chan grew up in Thunder Bay. She now lives in Toronto where she writes and occasionally blogs (brainsoup.blogblog.wordpress.com). Janette is currently writing a middle-grade fantasy inspired by a paragraph in ‘Travels in the Land of Kubilai Khan’ by Marco Polo who was most definitely a fabulist but told a great story.

Why Childhood Sexual Abuse Perpetrators Walk Free

Melanie Blow

When we hear someone admitting to sexually abusing a little girl, we expect to hear details of their arrest and conviction. We don’t expect to hear that they’re still on the streets, taunting their victims, free to abuse other children. That is exactly what happened with Marc Gafni, new age Read more

Melanie Blow

Melanie Blow is the COO of the Stop Abuse Campaign. A survivor of incest, psychological abuse and a host of other childhood trauma, Melanie now uses her talents to prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences. After getting a Bachelors of Science in Biochemistry from SUNY Geneseo, Melanie worked for the American Red Cross Biomedical Services for 15 years. Melanie has experience organizing survivors and empowering them to discuss their abuse and advocate for social change. She has been involved with the New York Coalition to Protect Children, the Fighting for Children Political Action Committee, the Rochester Regional Coalition Against Human Trafficking, the Rochester chapter of Love146, the legislative advocacy committee of the American Professional Society of the Abuse of Children, the Trauma Informed Community Initiative of Western NY, and served on the Board of Directors for Prevent Child Abuse NY. Melanie has over a decade of legislative advocacy regarding children’s issues, and she has been published in newspapers, magazines, and blogs all across the country.