Pride or Bust

a mama walks against the wind protecting her baby and its head but the mama looks at me like I was the hurricane instead. i gave her the benefit of the doubt—knowing how much, like the tornado, I have blared and blown! all the while Nas and the Marleys be Read more

Kiki Dranias

KIKI DRANIAS is a multi award-winning Hellenic-Canadian poet, playwright, director & producer living in Montreal. Kiki’s debut play GOING UP, an immersive and site-specific theatrical presentation, was performed live for 14 shows in November 2019, on board Elevator #1 at LE 5800 St. Denis, in Montreal. Winning three of the categories, including Outstanding New Text, Outstanding Emerging Playwright & Producer, Outstanding Independent Production, this sold-out inaugural production received in total seven nominations at the 2020 Montreal English Theatre Awards. This playwright’s second theatrical work WHERE IS ANTON is a 40-minute piece that Kiki wrote, produced and also directed. The show was performed live at the 30th Montreal Fringe Festival in June 2021, for six sold-out shows at MainLine Theatre. With primary support from Canada Council for the Arts, Kiki wrote and produced her third play THE LOVE TRIAL, a 75-minute modern Greek tragedy. This hybrid type and immersive theatrical presentation was performed live in front of 500 audience members in December 2021, for seven shows at the Masonic Temple Hall in Montreal. As a poet, Kiki has also authored BLOOD IS BLUE, a well-received poetry collection. To showcase her work and the work of others, this woman artist works under the Purple Divine producing and publishing banner.

Why Write?

Because there’s not enough time. Because there’s too much time, sometimes, pressing against our heads. Shakespeare said, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” Each mortal wears a time crown. Sometimes we reject this crest. Squander it. Writers strive to be responsible with time. To freeze, revise, control it. Read more

Paula R. Hilton

Paula R. Hilton explores the immediacy of memory and how our most important relationships define us. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and has appeared in The Feminine Collective, The Sunlight Press, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Dear Damsels, The Tulane Review, and elsewhere. Her novel, Little Miss Chaos, was selected as a Best Indie Teen Read by Kirkus, and her first poetry collection, At Any Given Second, received a Kirkus star. She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans.

An Affair

My husband walks in on us and says, “You are going too far: Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and now today too?”   He doesn’t understand the pull of the muse when my mind goes blind seeing, hearing nothing.   Nothing but words begging to be caressed into being, literary waterfalls decimating Read more

Eloisa Perez-Lozano

Eloísa Pérez-Lozano writes poems and essays about Mexican-American identity, women’s issues, and motherhood. She graduated from Iowa State University with a B.S. in psychology and an M.S. in journalism and mass communications. A 2016 Sundress Publications Best of the Net nominee, her work has been featured in “The Texas Observer,” “Houston Chronicle,” and “Poets Reading the News,” among others. She lives with her family in Houston, Texas.

FROM THE LIFE OF IRIS ORIGO

(a cento, mostly) “The days go by waiting for better times.” I Day after day we sat in the library of our isolated country house, listening to the voices on the radio with an increasing sense of doom — Hitler and Dolfuss, Eden and Chamberlain, schoolchildren and soldiers singing Fascist Read more

Anne Whitehouse

Anne Whitehouse is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Meteor Shower (Dos Madres Press, 2016). She has also written a novel, Fall Love, which is now available in Spanish translation as Amigos y amantes by Compton Press. Recent honors include: 2018 Prize Americana for Prose, 2017 Adelaide Literary Award in Fiction, 2016 Songs of Eretz Poetry Prize, 2016 Common Good Books’ Poems of Gratitude Contest, 2016 RhymeOn! Poetry Prize, 2016 F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum Poetry Prize. She lives in New York City. www.annewhitehouse.com

write through this with me

when you write it down write it heart-loud write it first in burgundy like the blood that pulses through each of our veins, insecure it waits there in the quiver of the readying call-to-action that trauma throws into motion—it’s the healing   write through this with me   take a Read more

Rebecca Smolen

Rebecca is a Portland-based writer who works as a veterinary technician by day. She grew up on a dead-end road in NH exploring drainage pipes and pond-life. She leads generative writing workshops using the Gateless Method and views inspiration and writing as a form of healing. Rebecca has a strong feminist voice occasionally trapped within society’s confines, but vows to teach her son and daughter there are no confines. You can find her poetry in the Poeming Pigeon, The Inflectionist Review, Unchaste Anthology, Mutha Magazine, chapbook, Womanhood and Other Scars and forthcoming this year, Excoriation, a full-length manuscript from PoetryBox.

A – Muse

My muse. What a deceptive cunt. Too little at the laptop. Too much in the shower. Pen and paper at the ready? The ink is flowing, but no one’s figured out how to tap the imagination. A pint of your best brainstorm, please. And let’s not forget to have the Read more

Tanita Cree

Australian born and raised, it was only in the last few years that Tanita transitioned from the sunny shores of Tweed Heads in NSW to the seasonal beauty of Canada. A graduate of Griffith University, Tanita has a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and Literature. While earning her degree, she also worked as a Production Manager to help create the arts television series Put Some Colour In Your Life. When not working, writing or reading, she has a tendency to spend ludicrous amounts of money on Funko POP figurines, books and tattoos. Not necessarily in that order.

The Bliss of Solitude

I am in Santa Monica. It is a sunny April day. The temperature is 80 degrees. Perfect beach culture weather. Near the Pier and down Ocean Avenue, the beautiful Pacific view is overrun by the homeless. Mostly men, dressed in t-shirts, jeans, and slipshod sneakers. They hold half-crushed coffee cups Read more

Gessy Alvarez

Gessy Alvarez is a writer, editor, and publisher who loves literature, art, photography, and this dysfunctional world. She writes stories, poems, and essays about the middle of things. Her prose has appeared in Hobart, Asteri(x), Lunch Ticket, Volume One Brooklyn, and other publications. She shares her love of art and culture as well as some of her offbeat observations on her podcast, Digging Through with Gessy Alvarez. She earned her MFA from Columbia University. She is the Editor-in-chief of the literary and arts journal, Digging Through The Fat, and the publisher Digging Press Chapbook Series.

The Portrait of a Poet

White walls of an insomniac closing in on the cold malice of human emptiness. I sit alone and wonder- The only callous of a life lived is the constant ache, for even change isn’t constant. Many nights I have sat on my bed and emptied the wells of my being Read more

Paakhi Bhatnagar

Paakhi Bhatnagar is a student from India and an avid reader of historical fiction. She is a passionate feminist and blogs about current politics and feminist issues. She also possess the uncanny ability of turning everything into a debate.