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.”
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 worthy celebrations if the national holiday. What is more important than family and friends? Nevertheless, a celebration for labor seems missing.
As we navigate yet another wave of the Pandemic, our labor force is short or stressed. Consider nurses, teachers, childcare workers, restaurant servers, social workers, meat processing workers, grocery clerks. Not to mention mothers, who have stayed home while working full time (or leaving jobs) to teach their children. So many female workers are Rosie the Riveters in this battle. Let’s be proud of what we women do for our country, our children, and each other!
Author Kathy Stearman
A Special Guest Author will join us on Tuesday, September 28—
Here is one Rosie the Riveter who labored for 26 years as an FBI agent, in the United States, China, and India. She is pictured here with one of the tools of her trade, though the title of her memoir suggests a gun has very little to do with the job she performed. Author Kathy Stearman, a member of Women Who Write, will join us in the WWW Zoom room on Tuesday, September 28, for a reading and conversation about her memoir, It’s Not About the Gun: Lessons from My Global Career as a Female FBI Agent (Pegasus Books, 2021)—available at Carmichaels as well as all the usual book-buying venues, online otherwise.
Note: This meeting will replace our usual second Tuesday gathering.
Photo by Glen Carrie
We look forward to seeing your face (and hearing your voice) on Tuesday, September 28, beginning 6:30 pm
Members, please invite a guest to attend!
The meeting information was sent in the September Newsletter. Feel free to email us at if you need the meeting link.
Our writing prompt for September is provided by our speaker, whose writing mantra is, “Write what won’t leave you alone,”
Is there a reoccurring scene that pops into your head now again? Are there stories you share orally but have not written? Is there a memory or fictional character that nudges you? Have you told yourself, “I’ve got to tell that story!”
Prepare a flash story, or a poem. Prose—750 words or less. No story is too small, too trivial, too ordinary. We invite you to read aloud your story/poem and tell us a bit about your invention process. Or keep your story to yourself but share your writing process. The storytelling session will replace peer commentary for this month.
Women Who Write will hold our annual fall retreat at Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve in Oldham County on Saturday, October 9 from 9 AM to 5 PM—
Cost—$20 for members
Retreat is a verb and a noun—respectively,
“To withdraw,” or “a place of privacy and safety.”
~Merriam Webster Dictionary~
We’ll come together to write and share our writing, provide small group peer commentary, and read aloud from works-in-progress. We will meet at The Fieldhouse, a building on the nature preserve property. WWW will limit attendance to 15 persons to ensure adequate social distancing. There is ample space outside for nature strolls, picnic table talks, private writing and conversations.
The Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve follows COVID regulations and so do we! We’ll begin to take registrations via our website on September 15. COVID guidelines will be included with registration information.
We want to support your writing life.
Here are a few submission opportunities.
- Submit to the Women Who Write blog— We accept short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry (less than 1,300 words of prose) from current members. Please pitch a blog idea or paste your writing in an e-mail to Help us provide content and encouragement to writers.
- Consider submitting to Image Journal, which publishes fiction, poetry, and personal essays re: “sustained engagement with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. That engagement can include unease, grappling, or ambivalence as well as orthodoxy.”
- Submit to this new literary journal, Dead Skunk Magazine.
- Here is an intriguing anthology submission request by Fawn Press (UK). The topic: “Elements: The Natural & Supernatural.”
- If you write poetry and have connections to Ohio, consider submitting to this anthology— I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices —poetry anthology submission period is August 1 to November 15, 2021.
- Literary Mama publishes creative nonfiction by mothers, about motherhood. They accept submissions on a rolling basis.
- Landslide Lit (erary) is a Medium.com publication by WWW members Kimberly Crum and Bonnie Omer Johnson. The platform publishes poetry, fiction, and short memoir. See a recent submission here. Learn more about submissions here.
- Brevitymag.com accepts flash nonfiction submissions year-round. Well respected for short creative nonfiction (750 words or less). Hard to get in, but why not try?
- For Women Who Roar: This platform is looking for poetry and stories of healing, writing and recovery.
Here are ways you can support our writing community!
Become a member (or re-member)—As a community, WWW strives to nurture your writing life. We hope you choose to join or renew as a member and participate in our monthly meetings, author talks, retreats, and workshops. Please share your ideas for future programming! You can attend two meetings as a non-member, before joining for $50. Students 18 and older enrolled in school can become members for $25.
Visit our Facebook Page, and stay awhile—@womenwhowriteky. Help us exceed 1000 followers. Check out our most recent writing prompt for six-word memoirs and add one of your own! Here is the very short YouTube video. Like and follow our Facebook page (and linger awhile to take advantage of the posted content).
WWW needs new letters to move our organization into the future—Melony Dixon, treasurer, will end her term (s) in January. Pam LaFollette, Vice-president, will end her term in January as well. Alisa and I are yearning to know who will be next on our leadership team! We also need a social network coordinator! If you have questions specific to these positions, and the time required, please email Kim via
Be safe. Be strong. Be peace.
Love your writing life!
The leadership team— Kimberly (the scribe), Pam, Melony & Alisa
