Choice Words Read online

  Leila Aboulela is the author of the novels The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator (longlisted for the Orange Prize), Minaret, and Lyrics Alley, which was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Saltire Literary Prize. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages, and she is the first-ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing.

  Kathy Acker (1948–1997) was a postmodernist writer and performance artist whose books include Blood and Guts in High School; Don Quixote; Literal Madness; Empire of the Senseless; In Memoriam to Identity; My Mother: Demonology; Pussy, King of the Pirates; Portrait of an Eye; and Rip- Off Red, Girl Detective.

  Ai (1947–2010) was an American poet and educator. Her ten books of poetry include Cruelty, Sin, and Greed. Her work is known for its innovative use of dramatic monologue to explore the shadow side of human nature. She won numerous awards including the National Book Award for Vice: New and Selected Poems.

  Josette Akresh-Gonzales was a finalist in the 2017 Split Lip Chapbook Contest and has been Pushcart nominated; her poems are in The Pinch, Breakwater, [PANK] Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and two boys and bikes to work at a nonprofit medical publisher. @Vivakresh

  Lauren K. Alleyne, author of Honeyfish and Difficult Fruit, is a poet and educator. Her award-winning work appears in venues such as the Atlantic, New York Times, Tin House, and Ms. Muse. She is assistant director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University.

  Lisa Alvarado Chicana. Jew. Poet. Inside agitator. Eldest daughter of an eldest daughter. “New World Order” was written as a cautionary tale. It is now news. lisaalvarado.net

  Amy Alvarez’s poems have appeared in Sugar House Review, Rattle, New Guard Review, and elsewhere. Her poem “Alternative Classroom Senryu” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is an alumna of the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. She teaches at West Virginia University.

  Claressinka Anderson lives and works in Los Angeles. Originally from London, she founded Marine Projects, which presents an adaptable model for engaging with contemporary art. Some of her writing can be found at Autre Magazine, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, Artillery Magazine and The Chiron Review.

  Anonymous balladeers in the Scottish border country are believed by scholars to have been mostly women. They passed their ballads on orally over centuries, so the words exist in many different versions. The earliest reference to “Tam Lin” occurs in 1549, but the ballad itself may be far older.

  Judith Arcana writes poems, stories, essays, and books—including Grace Paley’s Life Stories, a Literary/Political Biography; Announcements from the Planetarium, a recent poetry collection; and, coming soon, Hello. This Is Jane is a collection of linked fictional stories seeded by Judith’s pre-Roe underground abortion work in Chicago. juditharcana.com

  Linda Ashok is a poet from India. Author of whorelight (Hawakal, 2017), she runs the annual RL Poetry Award, directs RLFPA Editions, and edits the Best Indian Poetry series. For more about her published works, fellowships, press, and media, visit lindaashok.com.

  Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays, including The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize, and The Robber Bride, Cat’s Eye, and The Handmaid’s Tale. She is the winner of the National Book Critics Circle and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards.

  Sylvia Beato is a writer and educator whose poems have appeared in Split This Rock, Calyx Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Allegiances, is available from Ghostbird Press.

  Melody Bee is an advocate and facilitator for both the lived and liminal experiences of having a womb. She works for grassroots reproductive knowledge and culture reclamation as an operative to reimagine the dominant paradigm. She lives with her family on Arakwal Country in Northern NSW, Australia.

  Tara Betts is the author of Break the Habit and Arc & Hue. She’s a co-editor of The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives about Being Mixed Race in the Twenty-First Century and editor of the critical edition of Philippa Duke Schuyler’s memoir Adventures in Black and White.

  Ana Blandiana has published fourteen books of poetry, two books of short stories, nine books of essays, and one novel. Her work has been translated into twenty-four languages and published in fifty-eight books of poetry and prose to date. She was awarded the European Poet of Freedom Prize for her book of poems My Native Land A4.

  Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) authored many books of poetry, including Annie Allen, A Street in Bronzeville, and The Bean Eaters, and two volumes of memoir. Poet Laureate of Illinois for thirty-two years and the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, she was honored on a US postage stamp.

  Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of the Sneaky Pie Brown series; the Sister Jane series; the Runnymede novels, including Six of One and Cakewalk; as well as the Mags Rogers novels, including A Nose for Justice and Murder Unleashed; Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day, and many other books. She is a poet and an Emmy-nominated screenwriter.

  Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, organizer, and educator. She is author of Woke Baby, Black Girl Magic, Kissing Caskets, Dear Twitter, and the forthcoming Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice. Artistic director of Urban Word NYC, Browne has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Poets House, and Rauschenberg. She resides in Brooklyn.

  Debra Bruce’s most recent book is Survivors’ Picnic. She has published several poems on the subject of unwanted pregnancy and abortion in Evansville Review, Salamander, Shenandoah, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. “(Amber)” first appeared in Mezzo Cammin: An Online Journal of Formal Poetry by Women. debrabrucepoet.com

  Sue D. Burton is author of BOX (Two Sylvias Press Prize, 2018) and Little Steel (Fomite, 2018). Her heroic crown “Box Set” (sections 1–5 in Choice Words) was awarded Fourth Genre’s Steinberg Prize. She apprenticed as a physician’s assistant at the Vermont Women’s Health Center, and worked as a physician’s assistant for over twenty-five years.

  Cathleen Calbert’s writing has appeared in many publications, including Ms. Magazine, New Republic, New York Times, and Paris Review. She is the author of four books of poetry: Lessons in Space, Bad Judgment, Sleeping with a Famous Poet, and The Afflicted Girls.

  Emily Carr’s newest book, Whosoever Has Let a Minotaur Enter Them, Or a Sonnet—, is available from McSweeney’s. It inspired a beer of the same name, now available at the Ale Apothecary. Carr’s tarot romance, Name Your Bird Without a Gun, is forthcoming from Spork.

  Wendy Chin-Tanner is the author of Turn, which was an Oregon Book Awards finalist, and Anyone Will Tell You. She serves as poetry editor at The Nervous Breakdown and is published at such journals as the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, RHINO, Denver Quarterly, and The Rumpus.

  Lucille Clifton (1936–2010), author of Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir (1987), Next (1987), and Two-Headed Woman (1980), among others, served as Poet Laureate of Maryland, was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and won numerous poetry awards including the National Book Award, Ruth Lilly Prize, and Frost Medal.

  Lisa Coffman has published two collections of poetry: Likely and Less Obvious Gods. Her poems and articles have been featured in Writer’s Almanac, Oxford American, BBC News, Village Voice, and numerous literary journals. Coffman has earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

  Jane Hardwicke Collings is an Australian midwife, writer, and teacher. Founder of the School of Shamanic Womancraft, she gives workshops internationally on sacred and shamanic dimensions of pregnancy, birth, and menopause. Her books include Thirteen Moons: How to Chart Your Menstrual Cycle and Ten Moons: The Inner Journey of Pregnancy.

  Julia Conrad is a writer from Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and her essays are published in Massachusetts Review, Vol. 1. Brooklyn, and Revista Nexos, among others. She believes in countering shame with humor, pastrami sandwiches, and unswerving love.


  Desiree Cooper is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist, and the award-winning author of the flash-fiction collection Know the Mother. Her short film based upon “The Choice” won awards at the Berlin Flash Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Best Short Film Festival. She resides in coastal Virginia.

  T. Thorn Coyle is the author of multiple spirituality books—including Evolutionary Witchcraft and Kissing the Limitless—and two contemporary fantasy series—The Witches of Portland and The Panther Chronicles. As a genderqueer person, they want to remind us that reproductive justice affects everyone: cis, trans, and nonbinary.

  Teri Cross Davis’s poetry collection Haint (Gival Press) won the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and journals including Not Without Our Laughter: Poems of Joy, Humor, and Sexuality, Poetry Ireland Review, and Tin House. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

  Dymphna Cusack (1902–1981) wrote twelve novels, numerous plays, and children’s books and was a founder of the Australian Society of Authors. An antinuclear and peace activist, she willed her estate to the Communist party. Come in Spinner was produced as a television series by the Australian Broadcasting Company.

  Katy Day is a literary arts administrator and single mother in Washington, DC. Her poetry has appeared in The Rumpus, [PANK] Magazine, Barrelhouse Magazine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize and awarded the Exceptional Manuscript Scholarship from Sierra Nevada College.

  Emily DeDakis is a writer, producer, and dramaturg based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, working with Accidental (an artist-led workspace and theatre) and Fighting Words Belfast (a creative writing center for young people). Her writing has appeared in Dead Housekeeping, Vacuum, Ulster Tatler, and Yellow Nib and on the BBC.

  Lynne DeSilva-Johnson is a multimodal creator and scholar, addressing intersections between persons, language, technology, and system change. Recent features include Big Echo, Matters of Feminist Practice, and The Exponential Festival. Sweet and Low is forthcoming from Lark Books. They teach at Pratt Institute and are founder/creative director of The Operating System.

  Diane di Prima’s forty books include Loba, Memoirs of a Beatnik, and Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years. She co-edited The Floating Bear with Amiri Baraka, cofounded Poets Press, New York Poets Theatre, and San Francisco Institute of Magical and Healing Arts, and was San Francisco Poet Laureate.

  Sharon Doubiago is the author of Hard Country, South America Mi Hija, named the Best Book of the Year by the LA Weekly, and Psyche Drives the Coast, which won the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her prose books include El Niño and The Book of Seeing with One’s Eyes.

  Margaret Drabble is the author of nineteen novels. Her third, The Millstone (1965), received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. She has also written a screenplay, stories, biographies, and literary history and received the Golden PEN Award for her lifetime’s service to literature. She is the sister of novelist A. S. Byatt.

  Minerva Earthschild is a Reclaiming-initiated witch, ordained Zen priest, and an attorney, mediator, and children’s advocate. She has facilitated workshops and rituals for women healing from abortion, and she has taught magic and yoga. She is a recent widow and is currently doing grief work, which encompasses healing from all forms of loss.

  Mariana Enriquez is an Argentine writer. She wrote the novels Bajar es lo peor and Cómo desaparecer completamente as well as a novella and two story collections. Her work has been anthologized in Spain, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, and Germany.

  Annie Ernaux’s most recent work, The Years, has received the Françoise-Mauriac Prize, the Marguerite Duras Prize, the Strega European Prize, the French Language Prize, the Télégramme Readers Prize, and the 31st Annual French-American Translation Prize, and is shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Her next book will be out from Seven Stories in 2020.

  Pat Falk is an award-winning author of five books of poetry and prose, most recently A Common Violence. Her work has appeared in literary journals including New York Times Book Review and Creative Nonfiction. A professor at SUNY’s Nassau Community College, she maintains a website atpatfalk.net.

  Camonghne Felix is a poet, political strategist, media junkie, and cultural worker. Her debut full-length collection of poems, Build Yourself a Boat (Haymarket Books, 2019), is longlisted for the National Book Award.

  Annie Finch is a poet, writer, teacher, and performer. Her books include The Ghost of Meter, Calendars, A Poet’s Craft, Spells: New and Selected Poems, and a book-length poem about abortion entitled Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams.

  Anne Finger has published several novels, short stories, and a memoir, including Call Me Ahab and Past Due: A Story of Disability, Pregnancy, and Birth. A polio survivor, she is an activist for the disabled and former president of the Society for Disability Studies and AXIS Dance Company.

  Daisy Fried is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Women’s Poetry: Poems and Advice. She is the poetry editor of the literary resistance journal Scoundrel Time, and is a member of the faculty of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.

  SeSe Geddes lives in Santa Cruz, California, where she teaches belly dance and creative journal writing. She believes abortion needs to be safe, legal, and de-stigmatized. Additionally, she believes in creating a society that offers support for women who choose to have children. Pro-choice and pro-family go hand in hand.

  Kristen R. Ghodsee is an award-winning author, ethnographer, and professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has written nine books, and her articles have been translated into over a dozen languages and published in Foreign Affairs, Dissent, New Republic, Washington Post, and New York Times.

  Jennifer Goldwasser was born in 1977 in San Francisco. An artist and craftsperson, she works independently with fibers and other mediums, occasionally writing poems, songs, and letters. She is passionate about natural healing, spirituality, and environmental ecology. She is a single parent of two young children.

  Valley Haggard is a writer, teacher, and reiki master. The founder of small press and online journal Lifein10minutes.com, Valley is the author of The Halfway House for Writers and Surrender Your Weapons: Writing to Heal. She lives in Richmond, Virginia, with two cats, a bearded dragon, a husband, a son, and a hound.

  Jennifer Hanratty is a woman and mother living in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Women and health care providers in Northern Ireland face up to life in prison for ending a pregnancy, even in cases of rape or fatal fetal anomaly.

  Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostafavi is an Iranian poet, translator, and freelance journalist. She has translated editions of selected poems of T. S. Eliot, Federico García Lorca, Marina Tsvetaeva, Iaroslav Seifert, Khalil Gibran, and Blaga Dimitrova. The Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry is her newest work.

  Deborah Hauser is a poet, feminist, activist, women’s health clinic escort, certified ennui therapist, fairy tale revisionist, and author of Ennui: From the Diagnostic and Statistical Field Guide of Feminine Disorders. She leads a double life on Long Island, where she works in the insurance industry.

  Bobbie Louise Hawkins (1930–2018), author of One Small Saga (1984) and My Own Alphabet (1989), wrote more than twenty books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and performance monologues. She performed her work in New York City and San Francisco, as well as in Canada, England, Germany, Japan, and Holland.

  Langston Hughes (1901–1967) was the author of The Weary Blues, published in 1926. Among his awards and honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rosenwald Fellowship, and a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was the author of more than thirty-five books, including poetry, short stories, novels, an autobiography, musicals, essays, and plays.

  Ulrica Hume is the author of An Uncertain Age, a spiritual mystery novel, and House of Miracles, a collection of interrelated tales about love, one of which
was selected by PEN and broadcast on NPR. Her lyrical flash pieces appear online and in anthologies. She is a labyrinth guide. ulricahume.com

  Colette Inez (1931–2018) was the author of ten books of poetry including The Woman Who Loved Worms, a memoir, the libretto for an opera on Mary Shelley, and the text of the award-winning song cycle Miz Inez Sez. She received Guggenheim and NEA awards and taught widely including at Columbia University.

  Florence James (1902–1993) was a New Zealand–born writer, editor, and literary agent. With Dymphna Cusack, she wrote a children’s book and the prize-winning novel Come in Spinner. She worked for two decades in London and was active as a pacifist and member of the Religious Society of Friends in Australia.

  Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1927–2013) wrote several novels and short stories, and in collaboration with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, she won two Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay (for Howards End and A Room with a View). She won the Booker Prize in 1975 for Heat and Dust.

  Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880–1966) was an African American poet and playwright. She was the author of a syndicated newspaper column and published four collections of poetry: The Heart of a Woman, Bronze, An Autumn Love Cycle, and Share My World.

  Leyla Josephine is a poet, performance artist, screenwriter, and theater maker from Glasgow, Scotland. She has been featured on Guardian, BBC, Upworthy, and BuzzFeed. She has won many poetry slams including the UK National Poetry Slam. Her first book, Hopeless, was published by Speculative Books.

  Soniah Kamal’s novel, Unmarriageable: Pride & Prejudice in Pakistan, is a Financial Times Readers’ Best Book of 2019. Her debut novel, An Isolated Incident, was a finalist for the Townsend Award for Fiction. Her TEDx Talk is about second chances. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Atlantic, and more.

  Paula Kamen, based in Evanston, Illinois, is a playwright and the author of four nonfiction feminist books, including All in My Head, about women and chronic pain. Her commentaries and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, McSweeney’s, Washington Post, Salon, and Ms. paulakamen.com