AROHO Office on August Hiatus for 2015 Retreat
AROHO’s small staff will be focused on the 2015 AROHO Retreat over the coming weeks; therefore, the AROHO office will be closed through the end of August. AROHO staff will be unavailable to answer email inquiries during this time, but will respond as soon as possible starting September 1. Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to being in touch soon! A Room of Her Own
On Website Downtime
Hello everyone! You may have noticed our site was temporarily unavailable over the course of the past few days. Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere – we just had a small hacking event take place, which caused our host to suspend our site while we resolved the issue. The good news is we have identified the rogue files and removed them from our server, so we’re good to go. “Oh man, a hacking event…...
AROHO Presents the 5th Gift of Freedom Finalists
Bridget Birdsall is a healer, writer, poet, teacher and a visual artist. She has a degree in Marketing Management from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College in Montpelier, Vermont. She currently teaches classes in Creative Writing, Poetry, World Literature, and Marketing at Edgewood College and Madison Area Technical School. This summer Bridget will be...
Fund Your Creative Projects
About five years ago I was visiting Portland, Oregon, when my cell phone rang. I was getting ready to attend my son’s college graduation, and almost didn’t answer. I’m glad I did. On the other end of the line was Mary Johnson, calling to tell me I’d been selected to receive the 4th Gift of Freedom, a $50,000 award from A Room of Her Own Foundation. Imagine my surprise! I’d spent a lot of care and effort on the application, but I knew...
“Those Ugly Voices:” An AROHO Feature with Eliot Sloan, Gift of Freedom Finalist
I teach creative writing at a girls’ high school. Needless to say, I was nervous when I got the job: how does one really TEACH creative writing? What if I failed, what if they didn’t produce anything? I was consumed by my own fears. Here I was three years ago, my first day, trying to talk to these amazing girls–these girls who were all going to college in a few months, who had won national science awards and...
“Take Up your Bed and Walk:” An AROHO Feature with Bridget Birdsall, Gift of Freedom Finalist
Dear Gift of Freedom Applicant: After years of plugging away at my writing, attending countless workshops and earning an MFA, I had filled hundreds of pages, with hundreds of words, that never managed to journey any farther than the filing cabinet in my closet. So, when a friend told me about the Gift of Freedom Award, which of course sounded too good to be true, I decided to take a chance and put my words out into the world. This was...
On Rejection, Mira Bartók
Fear of Rejection from: “How I Became the Grant Queen and How You Can Too” by Mira Bartók The fear of being rejected prevents a lot of women from applying for opportunities out there. This phobia reminds me about that old song we sang in the schoolyard when we were kids. I loved it because it was so gross and everyone who knows me knows that trapped inside this 48-year-old woman’s body is a twelve-year-old boy dying to put a...
Straight Talk about Grants
At AROHO, we want to help you become your best writer, and we believe the Gift of Freedom Application can help uncover some of the obstacles on the path to personal breakthrough and creative “success.” Here are our tips for helping you make the most of the application and for helping improve the chances of your submissions in general. Hygiene (For highly creative women, this is often the area where mistakes are made) The...
“Pull the Lever!” An AROHO Anthem by Lauren Baldwin
Lauren Baldwin completed her MFA in Fiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2010 and her JD at the University of New Mexico School of Law in 1992. She is a Judicial Hearing Officer in the Family Court division of the Second Judicial District Court in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lauren has attended every AROHO retreat since its inception and is the retreat’s hospitality coordinator (the woman with wine and duct tape). She is a...
“Self-Doubt, Sacred Drift, and Submissions,” Melita Schaum
Melita Schaum won the fall 2010 A Room of Her Own Foundation’s prestigious Orlando Prize in Creative Nonfiction, an honor that—in addition to providing $1000 and publication in The Los Angeles Review–earned her a Pushcart Prize nomination. What is she doing right? A Room of Her Own got the inside scoop, as well as an audio clip from her recent ventures into the world of mixed media and sound arts. Melita Schaum is an English...
Fall 2011 eMessage Winners
AIMEE ANDERSON Printed with permission by Aimee Anderson, copyrighted by Aimee Anderson @ 2011 This, our writing, is not for our to-do-lists. We wake up and write and sleep and write. If we are writers, we do not forget. STEFFI DREWES Printed with permission by Steffi Drewes, copyrighted by Steffi Drewes @ 2011 Lovelorn honeybee repeat after me: blushing builds no bravery to strut is not the same as dirty sea legs nor...
Fall 2011 Orlando Poetry Prize Finalist Excerpts
LAURA DAVENPORT, “IN A NASHVILLE LIQUOR STORE, I REALIZE I DON’T LOVE YOU” Three days after New Year’s, we are buying champagne. I watch you pull from a pocket the cash you made tonight. Enough for a bottle and a six pack, enough to drink ourselves to sleep. We have come from a party where the room unspooled, a girl collapsed on the sofa gripping a fifth of whiskey. Legs flung wide, her skirt rode up around her thighs, exposing...
“The Dream” by ire’ne Lara Silva
The Dream is this: a balanced life—a happy, loving partner/family; a long, healthy life; abundant economic resources; a lengthy career filled with accomplishments and awards; acknowledged ‘mastery’ of your chosen art; and a harmoniously serene mind and heart to enjoy it all. In reality, we are more likely fragmented and struggling—always spread too thin, always juggling more priorities than we can handle, always trying to carve out...
“Virginia Woolf and a River,” by Florencia Ramirez
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write,” wrote Virginia Woolf. She described this as the “great problem.” Thirteen years ago, two women, within a canyon of red stone and brush, each with copies of Virginia Woolf’s book, “A Room of Her Own,” conspired to bring together a community of women writers (a room) and a vision to finance creative expression with literary awards (money). Two years ago, I entered the...
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Entering the Clearing Feb 28, 2025
