by Shana Thornton Sometimes friendships just happen when we meet someone. An instant spark ignites a lifetime of favors, compassion, words, activities, and challenges. Often circumstances make us friends. Other times, we choose and actively pursue friendships. During grad school, I heard the story of Zora Neale Hurston’s rescue by a friend she had never [...]
by Nicolette Westfall In Ravens of Avalon, a fictionalized account of historical first century Celtic Queen Boudica, rape is displayed and handled in several different ways. First, there is the marriage bed. Boudica, is raped by her warrior husband, Prasutagos, after he sniffs out the scent of another man (Pollio). Boudica’s confidant, priestess Lhiannon, glosses [...]
by Martha M. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, February 24 to March 1 is Eating Disorders Awareness Week. My own story comes to mind. Rather than go into personal detail, I would like to share what I learned in the process of recovery after 13 years of bulimarexia. There will always be enough [...]
by Karen Harrington If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many pictures would it take to represent almost 80,000 words? The answer: Only an artist could say for sure. But in my experience, it takes a powerful 2.54 minutes of heart-pounding video to display a pictoral representation of my novel. In other words, [...]
Please help me in welcoming Christine Hamm as our new Books Editor. Christine is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Drew University. She worked as a social worker for 12 years, concentrating on the mentally ill and addicted before teaching courses in both composition and poetry writing at Rutgers University and York College. Christine [...]
I first decided to write up a piece about my frustration with the competitive and catty nature of many women in North American society, who try to tear each other down—all in the bid for hollow male approval, instead of banding together to rip apart the male-centric system. I thought about applying the example of [...]
by Karen Harrington My publication due date is fast approaching. I’m in the final trimester, as it were, with only about six weeks before the ideas and characters that were in my head are printed en masse and clothed inside a hardcover. It’s almost unreal. So the other day, a friend asked me what Jane, [...]
by Carolyn Lee Boyd Recently, Isadora Duncan has been featured in a 92nd Street Y series, “Isadora Duncan and the Revelation of Beauty” and an art exhibit, “Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis: The Dawn of Modern Dance” at the National Museum of Dance running through May 20, 2008. What does this free-spirited, outspoken originator [...]
by Suzanne Kamata This year marks the millennium of The Tale of Genji, a literary work written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu and considered to the world’s first novel. Murasaki, a widowed courtier in Heian Era Japan, wrote about the lives and loves of women through the story of the “shining prince,” Hikaru Genji. Genji, the [...]
by Shana Thornton On Valentine’s Day, people are often wrapped up in gifts, dedications, and sentiments regarding romantic love; however, the ties of love aren’t only attached to romantic relationships. Many women now honor Valentine’s Day and Susan B. Anthony’s February 15th Birthday with a V-Day performance of the Vagina Monologues. These performances are symbolic [...]
Lauren Sardi interviews Patricia Leavy, feminist sociology professor and author. Leavy has become known for advocating innovative and artful approaches to conducting social research as a means of getting at the complexity of lived experience and linking the “inner worlds” of women to the social contexts in which they live.
Heidi W. Durrow discusses her novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky—winner of the 2008 Bellwether Prize for Fiction.
It is hard not to believe we’re in a time of empowerment of those less powerful, and to be swept up in the fervor escalating the world over. In 2011, we witnessed the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street protests and most recently, one of the largest protests of women in Egypt’s long history against the [...]
Caroline Palmer looks at the motivations of Minneapolis-based choreographer Ananya Chatterjea and the work of Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT).
Natsuo Kirino’s novels are not for the faint-hearted, nor are they for westerners loath to abandon the cultural stereotype of the Japanese woman as a delicate and beautiful “oriental flower”. Wendy Nakanishi explores the role of women in Japanese culture and society through Kirino’s popular works of crime and suspense.
