For Women’s History Month, observed annually during the month of March, we asked our members—independent presses, literary journals, and others—to share with us some of the books and magazines they recommend reading in celebration.
Fiction
Magic for Unlucky Girls by A. A. Balaskovits
Santa Fe Writers Project | 2017
ISBN: 9781939650665
According to William Jablonsky, in these fourteen stories Balaskovits “has created characters and worlds we think we know, and then destroys our expectations—unflinchingly, with no gory or sordid detail spared.”
Dzanc Books | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-938603-31-0
This short fiction anthology edited by Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley is a “celebration of queer chaos from an all-queer author lineup featuring Myriam Gurba, Emily Austin, Alissa Nutting, and Francesca Ekwuyasi.”
Talking to the Wolf by Rebecca Chace
Red Hen Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781636284620
Set “during a surprise snowstorm in New York City,” Chace’s novel is “a lyrical exploration of female friendship, friend breakups, and reconciliations across decades.”
One Small Saga by Bobbie Louise Hawkins
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2020
ISBN: 978-1-946433-64-0
The revival edition of this 1984 novel includes a new introduction by Laird Hunt and Eleni Sikelianos, and an interview with the author conducted by Barbara Henning.
Clouded Waters by Dianna Hunter
Holy Cow! Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1737405160
In this novel set near Iron, Minnesota, newspaper publisher Susan B. Ellingson “follows a trail of evidence from a tiny, off-grid community into a global tangle of lies, corruption, whistleblowing, and danger.”
She Who Remains by Rene Karabash
Translated from the Bulgarian by Izidora Angel
Sandorf Passage | 2026
ISBN: 9789533515748
This novel is set in a “rural Albanian village where, to this day, the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini—a collection of archaic laws—looms over the lives of villagers with the same haunting presence of the surrounding mountains.”
A Trip to Salto | Un Viaje a Salto by Circe Maia
Translated from the Spanish by Stephanie Stewart
Swan Isle Press | 2004
ISBN: 9780967880877
This bilingual edition “provides an intimate glimpse into Uruguayan history while it explores the deeper truths about an individual’s capacity to resist, adapt, and hope.”
Child of These Tears by Molly McNett
Slant Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781639822034
In this historical novel, “the settlers living in the hamlet of Hartfield Falls in ‘English America’ face the looming threat posed by historical and political forces beyond their control.”
The Simple Art of Killing a Woman by Patrícia Melo
Translated from the Portuguese by Sophie Lewis
Restless Books | 2023
ISBN: 9781632063465
Melo’s novel “conjures the epidemic of femicide in Brazil, the power women can hold in the face of overwhelming male violence, the resilience of community despite state-sponsored degradation, and the potential of the jungle to save us all.”
Belen Books | 2026
ISBN: 9781959715405
The fourth book of Michaels’s Siren Series asks, “Will Selena and her family survive to tell the horrific tale or is this the end of the Marquez clan?”
Life After Kafka by Magdaléna Platzová
Translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker
Bellevue Literary Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781954276291
This novel follows Franz Kafka’s one-time fiancée, Felice, and “illuminates the bravery required to move forward through the shattered remains of one world to rebuild life in a new one.”
You Make Yourself Another by Lucy Hannah Ryan
Half Mystic | 2023
ISBN: 978-1948552158
The seven short stories in Ryan’s collection form “a visceral, tender, and elusive meditation on transformation in its many guises.”
Veliz Books | 2022
ISBN: 978-9695161470
This novel is “the story of Laila and Yasmeen, a mother and daughter, struggling to meet across the generations, cultures, and secrets that separate them.”
The Witch of Prague by J. M. Sidorova
Homeward Books | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-9994249-0-7
According to Daryl Gregory, this book set during the 1968 Prague Spring is “a coming-of-age novel, a political thriller, and a sophisticated fantasy in which the magic is twisty and treacherous.”
Magdalena Is Brighter Than You Think by Grace Spulak
Autumn House Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781637681169
Spulak’s debut collection “explores the complexities of gender, queerness, trauma, and resilience through characters who live in the margins and imagine new ways to survive there.”
I Watched You from the Ocean Floor by Erin Cecilia Thomas
Modern Artist Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964403-02-1
This book is an “evocative debut story collection that explores the depths of grief, loss, and resilience.”
If The Train Arrives by Heather Fellin Tierney
Vine Leaves Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-3-98832-165-7
This novel follows encounters between a “neurodivergent ticketmaster struggling with his ended marriage, a willful teenager searching for truth about her past, and a teacher harboring a painful regret.”
Comics, Drama, Nonfiction & Multi-Genre Works
How to Be Unmothered by Camille U. Adams
Restless Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781632063953
Adams’s debut memoir “weaves the Caribbean island’s history of colonial violence with her own family’s legacy of abandonment.”
No Heroic Measures by Jessica Danger
Santa Fe Writers Project | 2026
ISBN: 9781951631598
Danger’s memoir about caring for her dying father “delves into the dark heart of addiction, the tangled web of family myths, and the agonizing journey to forgiveness.”
The Goddess Fortunes: To Proper is to Die by R. L. Edmondson Vance
Tofu Ink Arts Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1958661031
In this collection of poetry and visual art, Edmondson Vance uses “found words and images; digesting, reconstructing, honoring form and phrase, creating a sacred place for each, and then gluing every one down in its rightful place.”
Emergent Dharma: Asian American Buddhist Feminists on Practice, Identity, and Resistance
North Atlantic Books | 2025
ISBN: 9798889842330
The essays in this anthology edited by Sharon A. Suh “reclaim a vibrant feminist Dharma against whitewashing, patriarchy, and model-minority stereotypes.”
IHRAM Press | 2024
ISBN: 979-8328978828
This bilingual anthology celebrating “the profound cultural and linguistic heritage of the island” features Elizabeth Grech, Veronika Mercieca, Claudia Gauci, Clare Azzopardi, Brenda Prato, Leanne Ellul, and more poets and translators writing in Maltese and English.
Rose Metal Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-941628-37-9
In this book, Gaudry “embarks on a search for belonging amid loss, framing her memoir around a fictional narrative featuring the tea house woman.”
Lights in Cold Rooms: A Psychologist Reflects on Family, Aging, Love & Loss by Joan Cusack Handler
CavanKerry Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960327-15-4
This book chronicles Handler’s “confrontation with 80 years of complex family dynamics and often difficult love, and explores the path she took to work through depression and ultimately return to wellness.”
Hanging Loose Press | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9913377-0-0
According to Maggie Dubris, in this collection of poetic prose Henning “captures the delicate web of female friendships: intense, sometimes fragile, frequently sculpted by time and circumstance.”
Growing Papaya Trees: Nurturing Indigenous Roots During Climate Displacement by Jessica Hernandez
North Atlantic Books | 2025
ISBN: 979-8889840978
Hernandez’s book “offers readers an Indigenous, Global-South lens on the climate crisis, delivering a compelling and urgent exploration of its causes—and its costs.”
Graphic Rage: Comics on Gender, Justice, and Life As a Woman in America by Aubrey Hirsch
Split/Lip Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-952897-46-7
“From the impossible standards of beauty to the very real dangers of living in a legislated body,” this collection of graphic essays “channels frustration into fearless humor and incisive critique.”
Uncommon Measure: A Journey Through Music, Performance, and the Science of Time by Natalie Hodges
Bellevue Literary Press | 2022
ISBN: 9781942658979
In this memoir, concert solo violinist Hodges “traces her own passage through difficult family dynamics, prejudice, and enormous personal expectations to come to terms with the meaning of a life reimagined.”
IHRAM Press | 2023
ISBN: 979-8395138170
This anthology of poetry, prose, and visual art “presents brilliant women authors, artists, and humanitarians expressing their fervent hopes for justice and freedom.”
Book*hug Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-77166-950-4
Jong’s memoir “documents the slow unravelling of her connection to her faith and the tragic history of her fractured family, shining a light into the dark corners of memory that have haunted her well into adulthood.”
Translated from the French by Amanda DeMarco
Dorothy, a publishing project | 2020
ISBN: 978-1-948980-03-6
In this book—the first in a triptych including Suite for Barbara Loden and The White Dress—Léger “sets the story of a female artist against the background of her own life and research—an archivist’s journey into the self, into the lives that history hides from us.”
The Ritz of the Bayou by Nancy Lemann
Hub City Press | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-88574-070-8
The fortieth-anniversary edition of Lemann’s 1985 reporting on the corruption trials of Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards features a new introduction by James Wolcott and an afterword by the author.
Split/Lip Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-952897-45-0
“Contaminated by literature and compelled by the impossibility of translating one another, two young lovers fall in love against their better judgment” in this book-length essay.
Locker Room Talk: Women in Private Spaces
Spout Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-0-965944-34-2
Edited by Margret Aldrich and Michelle Filkins, this anthology featuring Maureen Aitken, Lydia May Anderson, Gargi C. Bakshi, and more reveals “the myriad ways women care for themselves, each other, their communities, and our world.”
4 by Malpede plus an Intervention by Karen Malpede
Laertes | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-942281-45-0
According to Marvin Carlson, these four plays “seek to bring us to our senses, intellectually, morally, and socially.”
Book*hug Press | 2024
ISBN: 9781771669146
This hybrid work of lyrical essays, prose poetry, photographs, and more “captures the wrenching feeling of loss of control in the face of an overwhelming medical diagnosis and the small, endless moments in life that underscore it.”
Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss and a Home in Time by Samina Najmi
Trio House Press | 2025
ISBN: 9781949487480
In this essay collection, Najmi “navigates the process of forging her identity as a professor and mother” while “her extended family inspires, haunts, and stirs her to action.”
Give Me a Holler by Chelsie Blair Nunn
Tofu Ink Arts Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-958661-22-2
This chapbook is a “poetic memoir set in the backroads of East Tennessee where wild packs of dogs, waterfalls, and the sweetest snakes await at every turn.”
Keeping Quiet: Sixteen Essays on Silence by Adriana Paramo
Red Hen Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-63628-184-1
These essays cover “a wide range of angles and experiences, from an exploration of IBM’s anechoic chamber—the world’s quietest place—to stories of incest, marriage, sexual harassment, social justice, and first-person accounts of life in the emirate of Qatar.”
Wanna Peek Into My Notebook? Notes on Pinay Liminality by Barbara Jane Reyes
Paloma Press | 2022
ISBN: 9781734496581
According to Jason Magabo Perez, these essays model “what it means to commit to the unglorified ‘work of arriving,’ to care rigorously about craft, and to craft religiously a genuine care for community.”
River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation
trace press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1-775-2567-4-8
This anthology—edited by Nuzhat Abbas and featuring Khairani Barokka, Yasmin Haj, and more—invites readers “to consider translation as a form of ethical and political love—one that requires attentive regard of an other—and a making and unmaking of self.”
The 3rd Thing | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7379258-8-0
The works in this hybrid project—containing four Yellow Songs books and the album Tender Revolutions—“reckon with the intimate consequences of the colonial project, reconfiguring them into complex and lucid, literal and figurative songs of selfhood.”
Barefoot Heart by Elva Treviño Hart
Bilingual Press / Editorial Bilingüe | 2005
ISBN: 978-0927534819
This book “brings to life the day-to-day existence of people facing the obstacles of working in the fields and raising a family in an environment that is frequently hostile to those who have little education and speak another language.”
Marcelina: A meditation on the murder of Cecilia “Celing” Navarro by Jean Vengua
Paloma Press | 2020
ISBN: 9781734496505
According to Celine Parreñas Shimizu, this book-length poem “braids history, geography, gender, ethnicity and race to illumine why we must now dig up those discarded in the levees of our past.”
Women Make Arkansas: Conversations with 50 Creatives
Et Alia Press | 2019
ISBN: 978-1944528805
In this collection of fifty interviews, Wood “shares conversations with women of diverse and dynamic pursuits who refuse to be bound by category, including the Arkansas Poet Laureate, a kombucha brewer, a fire performer,” and more.
Diane Arbus Goes Shopping by Eve Wood
Doppelhouse Press | 2026
ISBN: 9780954600690
In this four-part collection gathering poetry, fiction, and visual art from Wood’s thirty-year archive, she “imagines the hidden lives (and deaths) of contemporary artists and the women who married Henry VIII.”
Poetry
The White Islands | Las Islas Blancas by Marjorie Agosín
Translated from the Spanish by Jacqueline Nanfito
Swan Isle Press | 2004
ISBN: 9780983322092
This collection is “a poetic journey through the islands of the Mediterranean that served as homes and refuge for the Sephardic Jews after the Alhambra Decree.”
Naming a Hurricane by Madeline Artenberg
Pink Trees Press | 2023
ISBN: 9781666400250
According to Thaddeus Rutkowski, Artenberg “engages in an honest, thoughtful, and, most important, artful exploration of herself and the people around her” in this poetry collection.
At the Edge: Selected Political Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva
Translated from the Russian by Margaree Little
Green Linden Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961834-08-8
According to Julia Nemirovskaya, the poems in this collection “don’t just reflect history; they confront it, denounce its brutality, and expose the militarism, cowardice, betrayal, and moral failure of democracies.”
Perihelion by Roberta Batorsky
Prolific Pulse Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1962374606
These poems use imagery and humor to “delve deep into the realms of love, loss, childhood, memory, aging, relationships, partnership and friendship.”
Diálogos | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-956921-39-7
Bush’s book-length poem “explores the ways movies are woven into the fabric of a life, as cultural products, as objects of intimacy, as social touchstones, as an ideal, as shorthand for certain kinds of experience.”
Might Could by Anna Lena Phillips Bell
Waywiser Books | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-999063-80-9
In these poems, Bell “considers how to make a life in hurricane country, amid a verdant landscape touched by industrial pollution and the climate crisis.”
Year of the Murder Hornet by Tina Cane
Veliz Books | 2022
ISBN: 978-1949776126
In this collection, Cane “interrogates and wrestles with notions of personal narrative, theory, and truth, as well as our collective cultural realities.”
Perugia Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-0-9978076-9-1
This debut poetry collection “explores Mormon girlhood, the American West, matriarchal lineage, indoctrination, estrangement, and the lingering ramifications of being raised within a repressive and patriarchal American religious ideology.”
What’s After Making Love by Sharon Charde
Fernwood Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-59498-183-8
According to Alison Powell, in this poetry collection Charde “mines the depths of private grief to show how such experiences lend a kind of clarity to daily living.”
La Syrena: Visions of a Syrian Mermaid From Space by Banah el Ghadbanah
Dzanc Books | 2022
ISBN: 9781950539444
This collection “weaves in stories و mantras و revolutionary messages و the movement of Arabic letters و the memory of Sumerian cuneiform.”
I Don’t Want To Be Understood by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
Alice James Books | 2024
ISBN: 9781949944631
According to Rhiannon Thorne, Espinoza’s collection “is interested in one’s own value to voice their experience, not a need to make a body knowable; in connections, not academics; survival, not compliance.”
Dysfunction: A Play On Words in the Familiar by Pauline Findlay
Pink Trees Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1-513695-64-8
According to Katherine Rowland, Findlay’s poems “travel to the cosmos, to hells both historical and of our own design, and to the edges of promise.”
No Ocean Spit Me Out by Gabby Gilliam
Old Scratch Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1957224329
This collection explores “navigating the complexities of familial bonds, grappling with organized religion, and ultimately, embracing the essence of self-acceptance.”
The Song of North Mountain by Morgan Golladay
Old Scratch Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1957224329
The Song of North Mountain is “a transformative collection of poetry and art celebrating the famous and mystical North Mountain of Appalachia.”
Diary of a Proletarian Seamstress by Victoria Guerrero-Peirano
Translated from the Spanish by Anastatia Spicer and Honora Spicer
Cardboard House Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-945720-36-9
In this bilingual “book of threads,” Guerrero-Peirano “pierces intergenerational silences with erupting screams.”
Starshine Road by L. I. Henley
Perugia Press | 2017
ISBN: 978-0-997807-61-5
In this collection set in Joshua Tree, California, readers “are witness to the underside of a rural life near the world’s largest Marine Corps base juxtaposed with hundreds of miles of national park.”
Closed Season by Monika Herceg
Translated from the Croatian by Marina Veverec
Sandorf Passage | 2025
ISBN: 9789533515311
In this poetry collection, Herceg uses hunting symbolism to “explore new ways to express the horrors women the world over have been, and are continually, forced to deal with in a painfully patriarchal world.”
burning, breaking, building by Ashley Howell Bunn
South Broadway Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781735035550
According to Elizabeth Robinson, in these poems Howell Bunn “picks up ‘small pieces of survival,’ demonstrating that rebirth is possible even when we are sure collapse is irreparable.”
Sundress Publications | January 20, 2026
ISBN: 978-1-951979-87-4
“In poems that capture the complexity of life as a transitioning Xicanx in a tumultuous Texas climate,” this collection “balances the intrinsically human need for connection with the struggle to love oneself.”
Unsung Canaan Ballads by Chyrel J. Jackson
Prolific Pulse Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781962374682
Jackson’s collection is “a love letter to Black people living in an imperfect and whitewashed world.”
Nocturne in Joy by Tatiana Johnson-Boria
Sundress Publications | 2023
ISBN: 978-1951979492
According to Kemi Alabi, these poems “collapse the distance between private and collective despair, familial and world-historical violence, mundane and metaphysical relief.”
These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones
Poetose | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64672-365-2
Jones’s debut poetry collection “captures the experience of living as a mixed-race, queer, Asian American from the rural South.”
Noemi Press | 2020
ISBN: 978-1-934819-91-3
These poems explore “personal and historical trauma, bonds between mothers and sisters, and our estrangement from the natural world and from ourselves.”
Portable City by Karen Kovacik
Hanging Loose Press | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9913377-4-8
Kovacik’s collection is “primarily a travelogue composed of introspections on movement through both the physical world and nonlinear timelines.”
Alice James Books | 2024
ISBN: 9781949944648
According to Michele Sharpe, Larkin’s “elegant turns to the lyric mode disregard time but preserve memory, as if their intent is to stop the inevitable, fatal conclusion of human narrative in its tracks.”
More Flowers by Susan L. Leary
Trio House Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781949487527
According to Allison Adair, these poems pull readers “close enough to inspect paradox, awareness, and the limiting roles women must play, all the while asking, ‘What, of any of this, is holy?’”
The Beautiful Immunity by Karen An-hwei Lee
Tupelo Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-961209-07-7
The Beautiful Immunity is “a quartet of motifs about faith and witness in an age of crisis, divided into four sections.”
Black Lawrence Press | 2021
ISBN: 978-1-62557-026-0
This collection explores “the intersection of motherhood and immigration and its effects on a speaker’s relationship to place, others and self.”
Noemi Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-955992-04-6
Girl Work “centers hybrid-form and prose poems exploring haunting, labor, sexual trauma, and the assertion of a gender-nonconforming self in our current political moment.”
Red Seed: Poems for Luno by Cruz Alejandra Lucas Juárez
Translated from the Tutunakú and Spanish by Wendy Call and Whitney DeVos
Cardboard House Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-945720-41-3
According to Maricela Guerrero, this trilingual chapbook “expands the powerful presence of Tutunakú roots to open up territories and to interweave desirous bodies, dream relationships, and the memories of women ancestors.”
Last Return to Eden by Sonia Manzano
Translated from the Spanish by Alexis Levitin
Diálogos | 2026
ISBN: 9781956921656
In these poems, Manzano “weaves together materials from Genesis, The Odyssey, and modern cinema, though her major inspiration clearly springs from two admired predecessors: Walt Whitman and Sappho.”
Long Eye by Kwoya Fagin Maples
Hub City Press | 2026
ISBN: 979-8-88574-071-5
The poems in Maples’s collection “emerge from a neurodivergent mind navigating writing, parenthood, and the Atlantic waters of the South Carolina Lowcountry.”
American Graphic by JoAnne McFarland
Green Linden Press | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-961834-03-3
According to Tyehimba Jess, this collection “serves us a mesmerizing potion of personal history peppered with documentation of national cruelty and lifted with homage to Black ingenuity and resilience.”
Invited to the Feast by Bonnie Naradzay
Slant Books | 2025
ISBN: 9781639822058
The poems in this collection “immerse the reader in the experience of interactive poetry classes, laments for mentors and family members who have gone, and far-flung travels.”
Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse
Lost Horse Press | 2017
ISBN: 9780998196336
Edited by Grace Bauer and Julie Kane, this anthology “speaks not just to the current political climate and the man who is responsible for its title, but to the stereotypes and expectations women have faced dating back to Eve.”
Naming a Dying Thing by Vic Nogay
Yellow Arrow Publishing | 2025
ISBN: 979-8988317685
These poems “reckon with the roles of women and mothers in a society that demands they be somehow everything and nothing all at once.”
Tupelo Press | 2026
ISBN: 9781961209589
Edited by Jennifer Jean, this anthology features “contemporary poetry by forty women poets from eleven Arab nations,” including Muna Alaasi, Laila Alahdab, Marwa Abo Daif, and more.
missing e.: Cut-up Poems from Tumblr by Simone Parker
Fernwood Press | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-59498-177-7
According to Christian Wheeler, this poetry book is “a page-turning tribute to the golden age of Tumblr—infused with fresh depth and emotional clarity.”
Blue Between Owls by Daye Phillippo
Codhill Press | 2026
ISBN: 978-1-949933-32-1
These poems “draw their images and inquiries from the landscape of the rural Midwest, its green seas of corn and soybeans, its great expanse of sky above, and the Teays River.”
Julia Hungry by Hannah Louise Poston
Waywiser Books | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-911379-13-3
This collection is “a communion and reckoning with form—a female poet’s apprenticeship to the male-dominated canon of twentieth century verse, part love-affair and part fencing match with its forebears.”
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2023
In this collection, powell “mucks up orthography to investigate disorienting practices of refusal and wade through the fundamental feltness and unintelligibility of thingness.”
It Wasn’t a Dream by Tanya Sangpun Thamkruphat
Fahmidan Publishing & Co. | 2022
It Wasn’t a Dream is “a surrealist prose poetry chapbook about everyday experiences with unexpected characters, like a Siamese fighting fish, a free-spirited wolf, a giant talking bat, ancestor spirits, and more.”
Blue on a Blue Palette by Lynne Thompson
Boa Editions | 2024
ISBN: 978-1-960145-14-7
Thompson’s collection “reflects on the condition of women—their joys despite their histories, and their insistence on survival as issues of race, culture, pandemic, and climate threaten their livelihoods.”
Translating Blue by Sherre Vernon
Poetose | 2025
ISBN: 978-1-64672-363-8
This poetry collection explores “language, identity, and love, and considers how even in a lifetime of challenge and heartbreak one can find something beautiful in this life.”
Translated from the Ukrainian by Nina Murray
Lost Horse Press | 2025
ISBN: 979-8-9890965-2-7
This collection “presents a lyrical portrait of the generation of Ukrainians who grew up and were shaped by shared and individual painful internal and external experiences.”
Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman by Ann Weil
Yellow Arrow Publishing | 2023
ISBN: 979-8985070460
Weil’s collection “compels us to consider our own moments, our own secrets, our own beauty, reminding us that ‘We aren’t meant to sleep through a tread-water life.’”
Songs, Blood Deep by Gwen Nell Westerman
Holy Cow! Press | 2023
ISBN: 978-1737405146
According to Linda LeGarde Grover, this collection “weaves English and Dakota language and spirit with personal memories and tribal histories in a collection that is lyrical and profound.”
In Between Places by Lauren Wheeler
Nomadic Press and Black Lawrence Press | 2022
ISBN: 978-1-955239-30-1
According to Kemi Alabi, in this collection, “objects like a Craigslist bed and trashed concert flyers become memorabilia of the almost, records of fracture and displacement.”
Literary Magazines
Words Without Borders | 2023
This 2023 series is “an attempt to create a space for the voices of Iranians who are using their words and their art to document these days as well as protest and fight the system.”
“Our Lady of Resplendent Misfortune” by Senaa Ahmad
One Story | 2025
Senaa Ahmad’s short story is featured in Issue 331 of One Story.
“Last of the Cigarette Gremlins” by Sylvie Althoff
manywor(l)ds | 2025
This work begins, “The skinny old punk was up to something. She blended in with the usual crowd at Wart’s: saggy gauged earlobes, sunbleached neck tattoos, ratty Bundeswehr jacket…”
“Sisterlands: On Borders, Belonging and the Fragile Geometry of Home” by Devika Bahadur
The Upper New Review | 2025
This essay begins, “What if a bangle could carry a border? If you turned it slowly in your palm, could you find in its circular seam the quiet breath of two sisterlands…”
ANMLY | 2025
The poem “when liberation comes” begins, “it will creep through the back door / slam the front one shut / it will feel gaseous / and putrid / thick with what nows / and what ofs…”
“A Guilt Trip Abroad” by Meredith Burns
Unbordered Magazine | 2026
This essay begins, “‘Meredith, I don’t want this to affect your life. You have so many good things happening and I want you to go and do them. Understand?’”
“Zombie Apocalypse Now: Revival” by Cathy Linh Che
New England Review | 2025
This poem begins, “I wait to be reanimated. / Love is like that— / resurrecting you from the dead. / I step off the conveyor belt / in the people factory.”
Arrowsmith Journal | 2026
Edited by Nidia Hernandez, this tribute features readings of Fanny Howe’s poems as well as writings by Sue Schardt, Nidia Hernandez, and more.
Two Poems by Noa Micaela Fields
ANMLY | 2025
The poem “Ear-splitting” begins, “On earth I must be LOUD / pleasuredome jaws cavernous incantatory / sagas fervently breaking escape velocity loquacious self-expansion.”
“Where it Lands” by Kathleen Furin
The Upper New Review | 2025
This essay begins, “We leave early, the greydark sky still holding its calm hand over the sun’s burgeoning light, gentle touch of a mother, palm pressed to her child’s forehead.”
“Near Forest’s Edge” by Caprice Garvin
Southern Humanities Review | 2025
This poem begins, “Make of me a worm or a drop of water or a seed— / I do not care which, just let me go whole into the earth.”
The Cincinnati Review | 2025
This essay begins, “I try to picture them all as babies. Whenever my stomach lurches around a man, I remind myself he once toddled around in diapers, loved a mother…”
“Spin Cycle” by Camille Louise Goering
Arrowsmith Journal | 2026
This essay begins, “In 1969, as the summer of love spiraled into the screaming peak of hurricane season, a Cat 5 called Camille detonated the Gulf Coast…”
“Lessons of the Masters” by Lyndall Gordon
The Hudson Review | 2025
This essay begins, “‘If you’re eccentric, you’re all right.’ This is how Humphrey Carpenter, biographer of W. H. Auden, Ezra Pound and Benjamin Britten, explained the British character to me…”
“If the Concrete” by Bronwen Griffiths
Epistemic Literary | 2025
This poem begins, “Is hard and cold under her feet, and the night is longer than Ariadne’s thread. / If she could lie down on softness like the downy feathers of a duck.”
Oyster River Pages | 2025
This story begins, “In the beginning, She took off Her clothes. She laid down into the cold and quiet of empty space, into the vacuum that burned Her skin and stole Her heat.”
Quill of the Goddess | 2025
This inaugural issue of Quill of the Goddess—a magazine publishing writers “whose works evoke all aspects of the sacred feminine”—features poetry, prose, and visual art by Stacey Austin, Arlene Bailey, Sue Bara and more.
“Alma Mater” by Marah Robyn Hoffman
Strange Hymnal | 2025
This poem begins, “You are sitting in the University of Tennessee’s aquatic center parking lot, / waiting for Jane to finish swim practice. She is twelve…”
“Anti-Anti-Rape: On the #MeToo Backlash” by Jamie Hood
The Drift | 2025
This essay begins, “After sexual assault allegations against author Neil Gaiman resurfaced in January, ‘Red Scare’ host Anna Khachiyan wrote: ‘Are we really still doing this? #MeToo was rejected at the ballot box!’”
Oyster River Pages | 2024
This story begins, “Amma and Baba never knew about those dinners. Sometimes it felt like the truth might come hurtling out of my mouth like vomit…”
“Period” by Veronica Zora Kirin
Unbordered Magazine | 2026
This essay begins, “ ‘Do you have anything to induce a period?’ I asked the pharmacist behind the clear plastic screen.”
Epiphany | 2025
This poem begins, “The problem that afternoon / Was that when the woman / Seven months pregnant, / In the throes of fentanyl addiction…”
“My Mother Told Me She Saw Spirits All Around Her” by Angel Leal
Epistemic Literary | 2025
This poem begins, “& she was so afraid for my life when I brought up transitioning. I had a trans friend once / she said; the medicine she took to become a woman ate her bones.”
“Memories Caught in Wet Cement” by Andra Luță
manywor(l)ds | 2025
This work begins, “Halloween is right around the corner. It’s two years later and my friends are exactly how I left them.”
Sinister Wisdom | 2026
Edited by Cavar, this issue featuring Ruby Cromer, Kwame Sound Daniels, Elana Dykewomon, and more “enters an important tradition of thinking about mental health, wellbeing, Madness, and rage.”
“Parvati’s Bathtub” by Amrapali Maitra
Panacea Review | 2025
This story begins, “The salesman radiated an uncomfortable eagerness. Still, Parvati was glad that he looked at her, not past her, as Shiva did most days.”
“American Girl: Fort Hood, 2023” by Thea Matthews
Philly Poetry Chapbook Review | 2025
This poem begins, “There’s no take it easy. / You toss all night until / you rise. Step foot on grass / cut too short to blow a whistle.”
“Evidence” by Khaddafina Mbabazi
Adi Magazine | 2026
This story begins, “That Friday morning, by the time the call for fajr rang out from the mosque in Old Kampala, Abraham was already speaking.”
“saguaro, at sunset” by Tiffany Morris
ALOCASIA | 2025
This poem begins, “half-buried in orange sand / the wind-carved wood / remembers its cactus skin…”
West Trestle Review | 2025
This poem begins, “on the west coast, / our mauritian tour guide / speaks of the dodo birds / driven to extinction / by the promise of more land…”
“The Prize of Québec” by Jennifer Nelson
Philly Poetry Chapbook Review | 2025
This poem begins, “In this world the dead / are labeled ‘victory.’ / The dead and one / upright man akimbo and another / releasing a bayonet and what / looks like a small grenade.”
“PLANT SITTER” by Shannon Pulusan
ALOCASIA | 2024
This poem begins, “At the center of your life, / you’re creating forest air / in a friend’s apartment. / You place a ceramic bowl / beside each plant pot / & pour water.”
“What Happened to the Body” by Sally Rosen Kindred
West Trestle Review | 2024
This poem begins, “After hex, after ice through the lip, after diagnosis, / I had to carry my head before me in a clear bowl.”
“A Bureaucratic and Feminine Mind: The Right’s Misogyny Politics” by Becca Rothfeld
The Drift | 2025
This essay begins, “In the video, posted last year, a group of twentysomething women stand in a circle in an open-plan office, the sort of blandly unassuming place that can be found…”
Sabr Tooth Tiger Magazine | 2025
The poem “Springtime of our Lives” begins, “We drove down Da Vinci today / To see if the Magnolias were in bloom. / Speeding down the hill, I hold my breath—”
Wellspringwords | 2025
Issue 3 of Wellspringwords features poetry, fiction, personal narrative, experimental writing, and visual art by tina scott lassiter, Ashlea Faith Haney, La’Rue Swann, and more.
“Elective Hysterectomy as Treatment, with Complete Notes” by Ava Serra
Arkana | 2025
This hybrid work begins, “In the United States, any woman¹ of or above the legal age of consent² / can technically agree to³ a hysterectomy.”
The Cincinnati Review | 2025
This story begins, “One of these days, my soul is going to walk out on me. I’m sure of it. That damn soul is going to go someplace else.”
“Prelude: A Lump of Pure Sound” by Emily Skillings
Epiphany | 2025
This poem begins, “As I set out to write—as I wrote—I asked myself, am I stupid? The thought appeared like a gold leap, it rushed from somewhere only to sit in tissue. It festered there.”
“The Woman State” by Tracy K. Smith
Adi Magazine | 2019
This poem begins, “There are those who, predictably, hate the woman state. / Envy fevers the face. How they’re dying to taste the woman state.”
“Uses for the Handkerchief” by Sabrina Spence
Southern Humanities Review | 2025
This poem begins, “In case the gates are rusted shut. / In case the streets are brass instead of gold. / In case the robes are wrinkled and the halos dim.”
Arkana | 2025
This work begins, “Sometimes I imagine myself as a fish, half-swallowed by my mother. Let me start over. I saw a video of fishermen plucking scales out of something hulking and dead.”
Three Poems by Steph Sundermann-Zinger
The Apple Valley Review | 2025
The poem “Ars Poetica at Wegmans” begins, “You know how it is. You go in hopeful, / focused, needing only the things / you’ve written down—”
The Hopkins Review | 2026
In this interview, Jane Lewty and Volume 19 cover artist Jackie Milad discuss creating art using antiquities, making the viewer uncomfortable, breaking artistic rules, and more.
“[all the continuity a name imposes]” by Zoe Tuck
Strange Hymnal | 2025
This poem begins, “and I still felt discontinuous. Posthumous? I remembered my life—it was on / the other side. Of a two-way mirror? A shower curtain?”
New England Review | 2025
This story begins, “The first thought I have, as he waves from a distance, is fine, even after December, he still makes me feel some way.”
Southeast Review | 2025
This essay begins, “The first thing girls are taught about God is that a woman ate and man fell. That her appetite doomed us.”
Women’s History Month Playlist 2026
Shō Poetry Journal
This playlist for Women’s History Month features audio recordings and contextual notes from fourteen poets published in Shō Poetry Journal, including Whitney Koo, Alison Pelegrin, Meg Reynolds, and Jessica Q. Stark.
“Zinnias in the Graveyard” by Annie Zaidi
The Hudson Review | 2025
This story begins, “It wasn’t at all like the movies. In movie graveyards, the prospect of the dead coming back loomed large. Moonlit headstones cracking open and so on.”
