What Do You Mean There is no Such Thing as Half Jewish?

What do you mean there is no such thing as half Jewish? This was my question when I saw Alyssa Pinsker’s article in The Forward on February 8th. My first thought, as I started reading it, was but I’m half Jewish! I can relate to so many things that Pinsker Read more

Michelle Dinnick

I am a contributing author in the most recent Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of Canada, and a quarter finalist in the ScreenCraft Short Screenplay contest. My writing has won several awards, and appeared in The Globe and Mail and a number of local magazines and newspapers in Alliston, including The Briar Crier, Total Sports, Voice of the Farmer, and Focus 50 Plus. Last summer, my short story “Lightning Strikers” was made into a series in the Focus 50 + Newspaper because fans asked for more! You can find me online at www.commuterlit.com; www.fiftywordstories.com and www.michelledinnick.com.

Send in Your DNA Today!

You might find family members you don’t know exist: half-brothers, half–sisters living not too far away to visit. Might I find a better welcome than I had? I ask other family to be tested, but they shrug. They know who they are, don’t care about the dead, don’t want to Read more

Joan Mazza

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Whitefish Review, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Slipstream, American Journal of Nursing, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.

Italiano

An Italian heart is an artichoke,prickly-petaled, not inviting to eat. Every leaf ends in a little nail, a claw that forces you to navigate your way to tenderness, discover a taste that lingers, on your tongue and fingertips, embedded in the mushrooms, rice, chicken simmered with it. A platter of Read more

Joan Mazza

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and has been a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), and her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Whitefish Review, Off the Coast, Kestrel, Slipstream, American Journal of Nursing, The MacGuffin, Mezzo Cammin, and The Nation. She ran away from the hurricanes of South Florida to be surprised by the earthquakes and tornadoes of rural central Virginia, where she writes poetry and does fabric and paper art.

Genetically Speaking, Who Am I?

My obsession to trace my family’s genealogical roots began when I was a little kid. I sat wide-eyed and all ears on the floor next to my Grandad Willard’s (my father’s father) chair, eagerly lapping up every story he told about his youth. Born in 1908, he had quite a few Read more

Julie Anderson

Julie Anderson is the Creator and Publisher of Feminine Collective. Julie was inspired to create this safe place for women to share their secrets, desires, triumphs and pain as the antithesis of what mainstream media offers women today. In her column Pursuit of Perfection, she explores the importance of rectifying the balance of inner and outer beauty through essays, poems and articles on self-esteem, shame, family, and self- acceptance.