The Familiar Path

By Cathy Lambert, TIWP Women’s Writing Program Walking down that oh-so-familiar path, surrounded by familiar sounds, familiar sights and familiar smells, I hear the blue jays and woodpecker’s overhead, boat motors in the distance, the gentle rhythm of the creek whirling over the stones it’s been polishing for hundreds of years, the steady rhythmic snapping […]

The Blue Heron

By Elizabeth Kaur, TIWP Women’s Writing Program We stopped to pick up the blue heron. It was waiting for us in that California-ware shop at Duncan’s Landing, near the end of the road that leaves Guerneville, the road that hugs the Russian River, winds through coastal redwoods, past the tin hut movie house in Monte […]

Kitchen Witch

By Scarlett Mosher, TIWP Student Oddly enough, people tend to assume that kitchen witches are always women. While the feet that pace the cobblestone floor may belong to my mother and sisters and friends stopping by for a cup of tea, I pace the kitchen as well, sifting flour and balancing too many eggs in […]

Social Media

By Libby Hawkins, TIWP Student It’s hard to be positive when social media is portraying how you should look and feel and be. How am I supposed to learn to love myself when all I see are a few types of people and all I am told is that I need to be like them, […]

Natsukashii*

By Zoe Moga, TIWP Student *Natsukashii originates from the Japanese language (なつかしい) and refers to a kind of idealized nostalgia, dreaming of a perfect time that never was. When I looked up in the stars, I used to see hope. I used to understand that there was more out there. I used to like that […]

Volkov and I (An Excerpt)

By Reese Whipple, TIWP Student It was minutes before sunrise when I was geared up beside my friends and ordered by our Verkande Leader to send a quiet, religious farm town to fiery hell. God’s Hidden Valley was one of the largest towns in all of The New Californian Empire, yet held a rather small […]

Twelve

By Ariele Taylor-McManus, TIWP Women’s Writing Program Twelve rides her bike into town, as she does sometimes on Saturdays when her mom is working. Normally, she and Lida would go together, but today Lida has a softball game. When Twelve was younger, even as recently as a year ago, she used to stop for a […]

Middle School Madness

By Cathy Lambert, TIWP Women’s Writing Program What did I do? What did I say? Did I wear the wrong cloths or my hair the wrong way? We’ve been friends for so long, and I wanted to stay. But they all stopped talking to me; they wouldn’t even look my way. I was no longer […]

Let the Girl Go

By Libby Hawkins, TIWP Student “I have a right to collaborate with creativity. I’m on a mission of artistic liberation, so let the girl go.”  ― Elizabeth Gilbert Let the little girl go. Let the older girl go. Let the girl (who was almost a woman) go. Let the little boy go. Let the older […]