Authors read their creative work

Carolyn Pajor

White Trash: Manifesting the Bisexual (Autobiographical Essay) 

Published in Volume 31, No. 3

Carolyn Pajor is a high school English teacher at a suburban high school outside of Chicago. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her dissertation focuses on teacher autobiography and the creative explication of how one’s life experiences shape teacher practice and assumptions. This is her first published piece of writing.

Frances Webb

Four Stories: Search; A Question; A Discovery; Hope (Fiction)

Published in Volume 21, No. 3

Fiction writer Frances Webb has contributed a powerful rendering of the physical and psychic aftermath of breast cancer and mastectomy. "Loss and regeneration, anger, grief, and hope" are words that lace their way through Webb's "Four Stories" as her protagonist struggles to face her body in its new shape.

Gail White

Poetry

Published in Volume 27, No. 1

Joan Cusack Handler

Before the Bath

Published in Volume 20, No. 1

Joan Cusack Handler

Between Parents

Published in Volume 20, No. 1

In "Between Parents," Joan Cusack Handler's irreverent rereading of Genesis, the narrator speaks to God as one parent to another, accusing God of whimsical and harsh treatment of his children for a minor infraction. "Why would eating the apple,/ a child saying 'No, Dad, I must do it my way,' cause such an uproar?"

Marilyn Buck

Prisoner; Three Women; Air Nike Slam Dunk; Yvette, Prison Poet Goes Home; Night Showers; Dear Liz; Not a Life Sentence(Poetry)
Order this article (pdf)

Published in Volume 30, No. 2

Marilyn Buck is a U.S. anti-imperialist political prisoner, imprisoned for actions in solidarity with the New Afrikan Independence movement and in opposition to U.S. political and military aggression around the world. Her political activism began with her consciousness of women’s
oppression and racism. She continues to advocate for liberation and justice through her poetry and writing. Buck has been imprisoned since 1985; she is serving an eighty-year sentence.

Opal Palmer Adisa

Bathroom Graffiti Series (Poetry)

Published in Volume 20, No. 3

Opal Palmer Adisa's "bathroom Graffiti Series" offer a contemporary illustration of the inevitable tensions amoung women. The poem mocks the mother who cannot understand her daughter's defiance of the culture of beauty. but the daughter's criticism of the mother's lack of self-esteem may also be read as itself a product of psychological manipulation that results in "feminist misogyny."

Opal Palmer Adisa and Kathy Sloane

Pleated Skirts
(Poetry and Photography)

Published in Volume 21, No. 1

In Jamaican author Opal Palmer Adisa's poem, "Pleated Skirts," the mirror that reflects a young woman's face is that of her schoolgirl friend, their closeness echoed by the uniform pleats and lace stockings in Kathy Sloan's photograph.

Susanna Rich

Grandmother Sausages (Poetry)

Published in Volume 28, No. 2

Susanna Rich's "Grandmother Sausages" excavates women's ties to the past, in an erotic mode.