What It Takes by Karen McElmurray
“What It Takes” by Karen McElmurray Recently, I was part of a panel discussion on strong women called “Kiss My Grits: On the Badass in Appalachian Literature.” It was easy to think of any number of strong women who are badass in the books I love most from the mountains. Gertie Nevel in Harriet Arnow’s The Dollmaker came to mind first, followed closely by other strong women characters like Carrie Marie...
Terrible Girls by Jennifer Patterson
“Terrible Girls” by Jennifer Patterson Inspiration moves between their bodies and mine. We try to catch it, trace its lines on paper. Petra Rowan Rhines brought me to Helene Cixous and one time, from an airplane, she texted me a long passage from Cixous. I imagined her, Petra, peering out of her window trying to find me below the cloud cover in a valley between two mountains. (Always in between.) She is very...
Fragments of Anna Dickinson by Sarah Hahn Campbell
“Fragments of Anna Dickinson” by Sarah Hahn Campbell In response to your inquiry. . . . . .This is a photograph of Anna Dickinson in 1862. Anna stands behind the carved chair in which the great Susan B. Anthony poses with one hand in her lap, the other holding a quill over a sheaf of paper at a desk. Anna’s plain black Quaker dress buttons up her neck. . . .In this photograph, Anna stretches naked on a...
Retro Causation by Peggy Dobreer
“Retro Causation” by Peggy Dobreer If you are alienated in your own house how can your wings ever unfurl? –Maxine Hong Kingston She’s got some nerve. Some call her the maker of the Procrustean bed, hospital corners. Don’t be too smart, too strong, too epiphanied. Temporary infertility is to be expected in art. She had the bad itch. Was restless as water but looked cool as can be to the outside....
A Meditation on the Wave by Sarah Hahn Campbell
“A Meditation on the Wave” by Sarah Hahn Campbell I was 19 the first time I glimpsed the ocean, and I didn’t see it from the shore of my own country. An Iowa farm girl at an Iowa college, I’d applied to do my junior year abroad in Nottingham, England. My first view of the ocean, then, was from a United Airlines plane at 35,000 feet, in the middle of the night. I woke, peered out the window, and couldn’t...
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What treasures are secreted in the deepest places, the bathys, and how will we recover their promise?
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The Refracting Wave Jun 27, 2025
