A gathering of the best pieces by women we've read this week. Rebecca Solnit's "The Faraway Nearby" on Guernica I love Rebecca Solnit's writing for its ability to render the intangible graspable without losing a sense of wonder, a whiff of the ethereal. She is a writer you want to read for the pleasure of inhabiting her brain, listening to her think on the page. ... [Continue Reading]
Interview with Vela’s Featured Writer: Amy Butcher
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You and I met a little over a year ago at Colgate University, when I was the out-going Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Nonfiction and you were the incoming. I remember that when I was packing up I had this deep fear that I might never again have so much validation and support as a writer, given the odds and the academic job market and all of those factors. But what ... [Continue Reading]
A Pro/Creative Life: Writing as a Mother
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I was offered my first book contract five weeks before my first child was due to be born. I had written the final touches of the proposal in a New York hotel between AWP panels. In my queen-sized hotel bed, propped upright by pillows and my eight-month abdomen, I had felt inflamed with conviction that my twinned longings for both a baby and a book were not at odds, that I ... [Continue Reading]
Women We Read This Week
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This has been a seriously amazing week for women's writing on the web, so we've got a healthy list of links for you today. And we've welcomed a new voice to the mix -- Alice Driver, our soon-to-be new staff writer! Paige Williams' "The Ghost," a Byliner Original I've had this Byliner Original on my To Read list for the better part of a year. I loaded it onto my ... [Continue Reading]
Women We Read This Week
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Rafia Zakaria's "The Tragedies of Other Places" in Guernica A resident of Watertown, MA, was quoted in this week's Harper's Weekly Review saying, “I can’t imagine how people in other parts of the world live like this..with all the bombs, guns, and uncertainty.” This kind of insight is rare during American tragedies, and it seems at best insensitive to point out ... [Continue Reading]
Women We Read This Week
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A gathering of some of the best pieces by women we've read this week. Caty Enders' "There Are No Pythons Here," in Outside When the Florida Wildlife Commission announced the Florida Python Challenge, a month-long free-for-all in which participants vied for a cash prize for the most Burmese pythons (an invasive species) killed, Outside's Caty Enders jumped on a ... [Continue Reading]
Two Essential Feminist Reads
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Deborah Copaken Kogan's "My So-Called 'Post-Feminist' Life in Arts and Letters" in The Nation I remember sitting in my Craft of Memoir course in college, listening to a zealous-eyed classmate give a book report (is it possible we had book reports in college?). She was presenting a memoir by a female war photographer who'd amassed some crazy intense stories from all over ... [Continue Reading]
Between Bliss and Burnout
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Our $17 room in Oaxaca had a soaring ceiling, easily thirty feet high, though lacking in that imposing baritone importance of high ceilings. Instead, it had an old, shabby southern feel, of concrete and peeling paint and idleness, a ceiling to contemplate in late afternoon with a belly full of spice and the sidewalks outside quiet with heat. In the ceiling was a small ... [Continue Reading]
Featured Writer: Miranda Ward
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1. You just wrote your first book, F**k the Radio, We've Got Apple Juice: Essays on a Rock n' Roll Band. Can you tell me a little about it, and your process in writing and publishing it? The book is ostensibly about music and musicians, but really it's about trying to make a living doing something you love, or trying to find a way to strike a balance between making a ... [Continue Reading]