Snatch by Christine Wade
“Snatch” by Christine Wade A woman invented and named an art form while she was sleeping. It is called the Snatch. It is a short piece of writing, usually one page. It is many words strung together. A Snatch is not rarified like a poem. But sacred, none-the-less. Nor is it a fairy tale. Although it could be an old wife’s fable . . . it could be a birth story. A Snatch smells sweet and is under the word count....
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...
She’s Got Some Nerve by Janet Fitch
“She’s Got Some Nerve” by Janet Fitch It takes some nerve to be a woman writer. In the Mae West film Night After Night, a coat check girl exclaims, “Goodness! What beautiful diamonds!” West quips, “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.” The same is always true with writing. Putting our thoughts on the page, making people see the world from our point of view, has nothing to do with being good,...
Last Class by Shawn Lacy
“Last Class” by Shawn Lacy Close your eyes, she says; it won’t hurt you, at least not in this form–tactile prompt, giggles around the room, word association, trust, faith, reliance, friendship, back to trust. Not yet feeling that I have any tips to give to a soul about writing, I decide to go for the “close your eyes and hold out your hands for the object,” a sugar cube. One is often taxed with the reality of...
WAVES: AROHO Retreat 2015 by Kristi Crutchfield Cox
“WAVES: AROHO Retreat 2015” by Kristi Crutchfield Cox That summer, turning forty and evaluating my choices in life, roads taken through Oklahoma, the grey slickness, red crumbling, swelling clay churned in fields, sticking to me, claiming me. I was supposed to live in New York, sidetracked by farms and families, frustrations and illness. Paths changed. Maxine arrived in an email, I held her face in my hands,...
Pollination by Barbara Ann Yoder
“Pollination” by Barbara Ann Yoder Monday after the AROHO retreat I woke up early, came into my kitchen and looked at the sun—almost an eclipse behind bay fog—then tasted the sweet tang of Meyer lemon, the first fruit borne by my four-year-old tree. I watched a spider tiptoe up my bathroom wall, as if she too had just awakened, her legs as delicate as eyelashes, her eyes bulging to take in as much of the...
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August 8-9 | immersion | noon to noon EST
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. Creative sisters are invited to join us at any point and remain for any length of time during our full-circle offering.
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The Deepest Place Jul 26, 2025
