Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash   “Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness.” ~Mary Oliver~   Dear Women, Who Write! The silence of snow has always impressed this former Iowan. The world seems to slow as flakes fall heavily to the ...

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Photo by  Fidel Fernando on Unsplash   “Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh ~ Dear Members and Friends of Women Who Write— I once scoffed at the cliché expression “attitude of gratitude,” considering it Pollyannish. And then came the pandemic.  Suddenly, the ordinary felt extraordinary— a walk in the park, a dog at my ...

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  Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash   “I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light . . .” The Peace of Wild Things ~Wendell Berry~ Dear Woman, Who Writes— Imagine finding this sole bench by a mountain-lake, with a journal in hand, as rust leaves fall softly ...

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Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash   “The power of one, if fearless and focused, is formidable,  but the power of many working together is better.” Gloria Macapagal Arroyo   Dear Woman, Who Writes— By the time you receive this monthly missive, you’ll have celebrated Labor Day with picnics, family gatherings around the barbecue grill, corn hole or football. All these activities are ...

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Image by Shelby Miller via Unsplash   “And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things — childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves — that go on slipping, like sand, through our fingers. ~Salman Rushdie~   Dear WWW Member— We can’t let August pass without ...

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  “Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it begins as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.” ~Mary Oliver~   Dear Women Who Write! Yesterday, I discovered an essay titled, “Thirteen Ways of Looking out a Window,” a pandemic composition borrowing from the Wallace Stevens poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” ...

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Photo by Brigitte Thom on Unsplash “Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened. But if a story touches you, it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.” ~Neil Gaiman~   Dear Women ...

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“Mother to child and child to mother, this is the story that follows me, the ghost that haunts me. My daughter, my mother, her mother, her mother’s mother. It is as if they have left footprints in the snow. Try as I might to deviate, my feet fall gently but firmly into their well-worn grooves. My daughter before me, my ...

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Image by Timon Klauser from Unsplash Let the waves be open! Let the light shine in! Let us embrace parts of us Where we have never been! ~From the poem, “Acceptance,” by Rachel Pretlow~ Dear Writing Woman, April is a month of special months in which we honor the Earth, poetry, and autism. The Earth and poetry get a fair ...

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  “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” ~Virginia Woolf~   March is Women’s History Month, which “honors and celebrates the struggles and achievements of American women throughout the history of the United States.” What began in 1909 as ...

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