Happy New Year and happy writing! Congratulations to all the women who were published in January 2020!
From Mia Nakaji Monnier‘s “Netflix’s New ‘Goop Lab’ Needs More Normal People and Less Gwyneth Paltrow” at The Lily:
It’s easy to dislike Goop.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand sells a kind of self-care that appears effortless but actually requires a lot of effort and money. The contradiction makes even browsing Goop’s Instagram account — a grid of fresh produce, lush landscapes, and happy-looking white women with loose waves — an irritating exercise.
From “Stargazer” by Alana Saltz at Yes Poetry:
I roll my eyes back
to watch my personal astronomer
make marks in my sky
with clicks and lines.
From a review of Alana‘s book of poems, The Uncertainty of Light, published in Blanket Sea:
The Uncertainty of Light explores how it feels to inhabit a body that is misunderstood. Through lenses of the natural world, astronomy, science fiction, and pop culture, this evocative collection captures snapshots of a life with chronic illness while tapping into universal experiences of searching for meaning, seeking acceptance, and falling in love.
From Sakae Manning‘s “Michiko’s Waltz” at Blood Orange Review:
I knew about people touching me without asking long before the dry lipped, gap-toothed lizard man swooped around the corner of Coalman and Edgewater in a blue El Camino, all chrome and shine. I’d nearly cleared the half-way mark to the sidewalk. Two blocks from the market. A half block from home. He wanted directions and beckoned me to step closer on account of he couldn’t hear me over the engine. I scooted closer, hugging the carton of cold milk perspiring in my arms. He set his claws into my crotch and held on tight.
From Kate Maruyama‘s “The Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Power of Narrative and Community Amid Chaos” at Entropy:
There is no good way to open this. I can only try to make sense of the summer of 2017 when my mother lost her mind and the country seemed to lose its. And the stories we told ourselves to find our way through.
*
“I think everyone’s really sad and feeling weird because of Trump. Like everyone I talk to is weird.” The argument was sound, but a little strange for my mom. She was worried, afraid. Not like herself.
From Ava Homa‘s “For Me, There’s No Escaping Iran: A Toronto Novelist on Terror, the Pain of the Ukraine Plane Crash and Glimpses of Defiance” at The Star:
The plane crash was only one of the incidents in a chain of events that have demoralized those of us who can’t find solace or prospect. We are aware that a dramatic change is not plausible or desirable, but a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel could help since day after day we receive tragic or terrifying news.
Congratulations to Margo McCall whose piece, “Into the Heart of the Storm,” was published at Blank Spaces!