Shakespeare’s Sister, Round 1!
Thank you to all who submitted to the inaugural Shakespeare’s Sister Fellowship for Women Playwrights! We received an amazing response, with almost 1,000 submissions. Semi-finalists will be notified on September 2nd and invited to submit to the second application round, due September 12th. Each semi-finalist will submit the full play from which her initial 30 page application was excerpted and her response to the following...
Vertical Answers
At the 2013 Retreat closing ceremony, Bhanu Kapil, writer of paradigm-shattering poetry and prose (and 2013 Retreat Small Group Facilitator; Mind Stretch and Desert Delight Contributor) shared her immense talent for creative alchemy by compiling, over the course of the week, words from the approximately 100 women in attendance. What resulted was “Vertical Answers,” a poem whose generative and synergistic energy clearly...
“Bus Ride to the City,” by Marsha Mathews
Afghanistan, 2013 Father’s beard twitches whenever my older sister, Mezhgan, comes into the room. His eyes glaze the way they do when they fall on a flower in the snow. I have tried and tried to elicit that same response. I have trimmed my dark brows like Mezhgan’s, I walk slow and purposefully like Mezghan. I have a bright purple banqa like Mezghan. Last summer, I learned to make minced lamb like Mezhgan, and pistachio dessert, too,...
“Eye See You,” by Toni Martin
That girl broke down. Back humped up like a kitten, breaths jerky, crouched in the leatherette chair. “You okay?” I say. Loud, to carry over her inward grieving. Head flips up. Scared her. Black hair curtain parts. Looks all around, for someone else. I been here so long, never speak. A big brown statue. Other chairs in the waiting room empty. “You okay?” Yeah, me, I tell her eyes. Black as the hair. She don’t talk. Maybe don’t...
“Under Water,” by Holly Sneeringer
The morning after the lady next door dies in the middle of the night, I go inside my house to tell my mother. “Ronnie is dead,” I say to an empty foyer. I return to the front sidewalk where I had been standing, already warm on my summer bare feet. There is a stillness that I have never, ever felt before as I watch the silent blinking lights of the ambulance parked along the curb. Ronnie’s front door is pushed open by a firefighter...
Art is my taste for freedom. I drown day and day until I pick up my paintbrush once again. So, somehow, I can tell myself that you’re not stuck in this room and that the canvas is the key.
Nina Salvadoré
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Seabed or ocean floor? What is the difference?
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WAVES ALIVE is an immersive experience held tenderly by the ebb and flow of ritual, sisterhood, creative expansion, then surfacing to share what we have uncovered about ourselves and our art.
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Immersion Aug 29, 2025
