Choice Words Read online

  Julie Kane is the co-editor with Grace Bauer of Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse (Lost Horse Press, 2017). Her latest poetry collection is Mothers of Ireland (LSU Press, 2020). She is a former National Poetry Series winner, Fulbright Scholar, and Louisiana Poet Laureate.

  Pratibha Kelapure is a real person who lives in an imaginary world of words that she built by founding the online journal The Literary Nest. The poem in this collection is inspired by several tragic stories of abortion in cultures where women lack any rights.

  Kenyan Teenagers Six hundred fourteen young people in Nairobi spoke with researchers about how unplanned pregnancy was handled among their friends. Their school textbooks and exams teach that abortion is wrong and harmful. Sixty-three percent of them said they attend Christian or Muslim religious services once a week. Their average age is sixteen.

  Lauren R. Korn is an MA student of creative writing at the University of New Brunswick and the director of content for Adroit Journal. In her poem, “And There Is This Edge,” anthologized here, the phrase “there is this edge” is borrowed from Joy Harjo’s “Call It Fear.”

  Myrna Lamb (1935–2017) wrote sixteen plays and five screenplays. Her short plays, including What Have You Done for Me Lately? were produced at the New Feminist Theater, and Joseph Papp’s Public Theater produced her feminist musicals Mod Donna (1970) and Apple Pie. Her awards include NEA and Guggenheim grants.

  Joan Larkin’s books include Blue Hanuman, My Body: New and Selected Poems, and Cold River, among others. She has edited several anthologies, including Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time with Carl Morse, and has been a lifelong teacher, most recently at Smith College. Her honors include the Shelley Memorial Award and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship.

  Jenna Le authored Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2018), which won second place in the Elgin Awards. She was selected by Marilyn Nelson as winner of Poetry by the Sea’s inaugural sonnet competition. Her poetry appears in Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, and West Branch. jennalewriting.com

  Violette Leduc (1907–1972) was the author of La Bâtarde, which was published in 1964 and earned her the acclaim of Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. A film about her life, Violette, was produced in 2013.

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018), author of The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Dispossessed (1974) among other novels, short stories, essays, children’s books, poetry, and translations, was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014.

  Dana Levin’s fourth book is Banana Palace. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, New York Times, POETRY, and American Poetry Review. A grateful recipient of honors from the Rona Jaffe, Whiting, and Guggenheim Foundations, Levin serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis.

  Amy Levy (1861–1889) was a British poet, novelist, and essayist. In 1879, she became the second Jewish woman to enroll in Cambridge University and the first Jewish woman to enroll at Newnham College, which she left two years later after publishing her first poetry collection, Xantippe and Other Verses. Her other works include two more collections of poetry and three novels.

  Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Crossing the Peninsula received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Awarded the Multiethnic Literatures of the United States Lifetime Achievement Award, she’s published ten poetry collections, six books of fiction, and The Shirley Lim Collection. Her memoir Among the White Moon Faces and anthology The Forbidden Stitch received American Book Awards.

  Audre Lorde (1934–1992), a Black lesbian feminist poet, writer, essayist, critic, and activist, pioneered Black and lesbian feminism and intersectional theory. Her eighteen books include the poetry collections Coal and The Black Unicorn, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, The Cancer Journals, and the memoir Zami: A New Spelling of My Name.

  Busisiwe Mahlangu is the author of Surviving Loss, produced at South African State Theatre, and founder of Lwazilubanzi Project. She’s received poetry and slam awards from the National Library of South Africa and Mzansi Poetry Academy. She designs jewelry through Busi Designs and studies creative writing at the University of South Africa.

  Deborah Maia worked full-time in microbiological research before changing her focus to herbal medicine and childbirth education. She developed a system of “ritual massage,” incorporating ritual with body work, and wrote Self-Ritual for Invoking Release of Spirit Life in the Womb, published in 1989 by Mother Spirit Press.

  Shikha Malaviya is a South Asian poet and writer. She is a cofounder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a mentorship-model press publishing voices from India and the Indian diaspora. She has been a TEDx speaker and AWP mentor, and was selected as Poet Laureate of San Ramon, California (2016).

  Kate Manning is the author of the novels Whitegirl and My Notorious Life, which is based on the true story of an infamous Victorian midwife. A former documentary television producer, she has won two Emmy Awards and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Guardian.

  Angie Masters is a pansexual feminist Guatemalan teacher, sociology student, and poet. She is a founder of the Tz’unun Mobile Library Collective, member of the Atrapados en Azul Collective, and a human rights activist dedicated to the eradication of violence against women and to using art for grassroots social transformation.

  Caitlin Grace McDonnell is a poet/writer/teacher/mother who lives in Brooklyn. Her poems and essays have been published widely and she has a book, Looking for Small Animals (nauset press), and a chapbook, Dreaming the Tree (belladonna). She is at work on an autobiographical novel.

  Leslie Monsour, author of two poetry collections and recipient of five Pushcart Prize nominations as well as an NEA fellowship, has had poems, essays, and translations appear in numerous publications. She passionately believes reproductive choice is an essential right for women. The choice is not easy, but the freedom to make it is essential.

  Yesenia Montilla is an Afro-Latina poet and a daughter of immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, and other publications. She received her MFA from Drew University and is a CantoMundo graduate fellow. Her first collection, The Pink Box, was longlisted for a PEN award in 2016.

  Mary Morris received the Rita Dove Award and is the author of a book of poems, Enter Water, Swimmer. Her work appears in POETRY, Poetry Daily, Arts & Letters, Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, and numerous other fine literary journals. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. [email protected]

  Thylias Moss, sixty-five, has published fourteen books and won a MacArthur Genius Grant and nominations for the National Book Critics Circle Award, but she is most proud of falling in love with spoken-word artist and collaborator Bob Holman, seventy-one.

  Carol Muske-Dukes’s ninth book of poems is Blue Rose (Penguin, 2018), which made the Pulitzer long list. She is a professor at University of Southern California, where she founded the PhD program in creative writing/literature. Former Poet Laureate of California, she is also a novelist, essayist, playwright, and recipient of many awards.

  Burleigh Mutén lives in the woods of western Massachusetts, where hawks soar, owls glide, and the moonlight dapples the forest floor. She is the author of the verse novel about Emily Dickinson Miss Emily as well as several other children’s books.

  Zofia Nałkowska (1884–1954) was a Polish feminist and author of thirteen novels and novellas, a memoir, essays, and five plays. She is best known for her books Granica (Boundary) (1935), Węzły Życia (1948), and the short story collection Medaliony (1947). She served as executive member of the Polish Academy of Literature.

  Vi Khi Nao is the author of The Old Philosopher (winner of the Nightboat Prize), the short story collection A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), and the novel Fish in Exile. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University.

 
; Gloria Naylor (1950–2016) was the author of the novels The Women of Brewster Place, which won the American Book Award and National Book Award and was adapted for television by Oprah Winfrey, Linden Hills, Mama Day, Bailey’s Cafe, and The Men of Brewster Place, as well as the fictionalized memoir 1996.

  Hanna Neuschwander is a science communicator and essay writer. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two living daughters.

  Joyce Carol Oates is the author of fifty-eight novels, including The Gravedigger’s Daughter, We Were the Mulvaneys, Them, and Blonde. Her story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is the basis for the movie Smooth Talk. She has won many awards including the Norman Mailer Prize and the National Book Award.

  Frank O’Hara (1926–1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. He is considered an original member of the New York School. His first volume of poetry was A City Winter and Other Poems, and The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, the first of several posthumous collections, shared the 1972 National Book Award for Poetry.

  Sharon Olds is the author of twelve books of intensely honest and personal poetry. Her books include Satan Says, The Dead and The Living, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, Stag’s Leap, which received the Pulitzer Prize, and Odes. She taught for forty years at New York University.

  Ginette Paris is emeritus professor of jungian and archetypal psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California. She teaches and lectures in the US, Canada, and Europe. She is a psychologist, therapist, and author of many books, including The Psychology of Abortion, originally published as The Sacrament of Abortion.

  Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) was an American poet, writer, and critic, and a founding member of the famed Algonquin Round Table. Her books include the poetry collections Enough Rope and Sunset Guns and the books of fiction Laments for the Living and Here Lies. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1959.

  Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst and six other collections of poetry, cofounded Poetry in Motion on New York City’s subways. Also the author of The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, Peacock is featured in the documentary about child-free women, My So-Called Selfish Life.

  Cristina Peri Rossi is a Uruguayan novelist, poet, translator, and author of short stories and more than thirty-seven works including La nave de los locos (1984). Exiled from Uruguay in 1972 and living in Spain, she is known for her outspoken defense of civil liberties and freedom of expression.

  Marge Piercy has written nineteen volumes of poetry, including The Moon Is Always Female, The Art of Blessing the Day, and Circles on the Water; seventeen novels, including Braided Lives and Woman on the Edge of Time; and a memoir, Sleeping with Cats. The recipient of four honorary doctorates, she is active in antiwar, feminist, and environmental causes.

  Katha Pollitt is an American poet, essayist, and critic whose work focuses on abortion, racism, feminism, and welfare reform, from a left-leaning perspective. Pollitt’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, Mother Jones, Harper’s, the Nation, and the London Review of Books. Her latest book is Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights.

  Alexis Quinlan is a writer and teacher in New York City. Her most recent chapbook is titled an admission, as a warning against the value of our conclusions (Operating System, 2014).

  Sylvia Ramos Cruz’s work is rooted in art, women’s lives, and everyday injustices, informed by her life in Puerto Rico, New York, and New Mexico. Her award-winning work appears in print and online publications. Her poem here was inspired by a newspaper article that touched her as a surgeon and a feminist.

  Susan Rich is the author of four collections of poems, including, most recently, Cloud Pharmacy. Her poetry appears in the Antioch Review, Harvard Review, New England Review, and O Magazine. Awards include a PEN USA Award and a Times Literary Supplement Award (London). She lives in Seattle.

  Ana Gabriela Rivera is a Honduran poet, environmental engineer, feminist, and founder of the Colectiva Matria and La Línea Segura Hn. She is dedicating her life to studying and sharing intersectional feminism, including fighting for the right to abortion without restrictions.

  Angelique Imani Rodriguez is a Bronx-Boricua with work in The James Franco Review. A three-time VONA fellow, she is currently editing Fried Eggs and Rice: An Anthology by Writers of Color on Food and running her online book club, the Boricongo Book Gang. She hopes “Not Yours” will encourage women to stand in their truth.

  Alida Rol worked for almost three decades as an obstetrician-gynecologist. Her career was informed by the belief that women should have as much voice in their health care decisions as possible, including the right to terminate a pregnancy safely. She lives and writes in Eugene, Oregon.

  Cin Salach has collaborated with musicians, painters, photographers, and most recently chefs and scientists, for over thirty years. Her belief that poetry can change lives has led her to create her business poemgrown, helping people mark the most important occasions in their lives with poetry. And there is no occasion more important to mark than a woman’s right to choose.

  Saniyya Saleh (1935–1985) was a Syrian poet and the author of al-Ghobar (The Dust), al Zaman al-Daiq (The Tight Time), Hiber al-Idaam (The Assassination Ink), Qasaed (Poems), and Zacar al-Ward (The Male Rose).

  Jacqueline Saphra is a poet and playwright. Her second full-length collection, All My Mad Mothers (Nine Arches Press), was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize 2017. Her collection Dad, Remember You Are Dead was also published by Nine Arches.

  Anne Sexton (1928–1974) was the author of ten collections of poetry including To Bedlam and Part Way Back, Live or Die, retellings of fairy tales called Transformations, and The Awful Rowing Towards God. A pioneer of confessional poetry, she won many awards including the Shelley Memorial Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

  Purvi Shah won the inaugural SONY South Asian Social Service Excellence Award for her leadership fighting violence against women. She is the author of Terrain Tracks and Miracle Marks. Her favorite art practices are her sparkly eyeshadow, raucous laughter, and seeking justice—including reproductive justice. @PurviPoets, purvipoets.net

  Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) was a renowned playwright, poet, and novelist. She wrote and performed in the Obie Award–winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, for which she invented the term “choreopoem” (combination of poetry, dance, and music). Her novels include Betsey Brown and Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo.

  Manisha Sharma, an Indian, writes across genres about social issues. Her work is a 2019 semifinalist for the American Short(er) Fiction Contest. An AWP mentee in poetry, She has been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is a lecturer of English and teacher of yoga-meditation at New River Community College in Virginia.

  Larissa Shmailo is a poet, novelist, translator, editor, and critic. Her most recent novel is Sly Bang and collection of poetry is Medusa’s Country. She is grateful abortion was legal for her and wants to keep it safe, free, and legal for all women forever.

  Leslie Marmon Silko is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Grant (1981) and the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award (1994). Her books include Almanac of the Dead, Storyteller, Ceremony, and Gardens in the Dunes.

  Agnes Smedley (1892–1950) was an American journalist and writer and an activist for women’s rights, birth control, and children’s welfare. She is believed to have been a spy for communists in India, Russia, and China. Her six published works include books about Chinese communism and the influential novel Daughter of Earth.

  Ellen McGrath Smith teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. Her books include The Dog Makes His Rounds; Scatter, Feed; and Nobody’s Jackknife (West End Press, 2015). Her work has won Orlando and Rainmaker awards, and has appeared in the New York Times, American Poetry Review, and other journals. ellenmcgrathsmith.com.

  Edith Södergran (1892–1923) was a Swedish-spea
king Finnish poet. She released four volumes of poetry during her lifetime. Landet som icke är (The Land Which Is Not) was published after her death.

  Starhawk is an author, activist, permaculture designer and teacher, and a prominent voice in modern earth-based spirituality and ecofeminism. She is the author or coauthor of thirteen books, including The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess and the ecotopian novels The Fifth Sacred Thing and City of Refuge.

  Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Alabama. She is the author of the poetry collection Stories to Read Aloud to Your Fetus (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize. She is president of the Alabama State Poetry Society.

  Gloria Steinem is a feminist activist and author of several bestselling books, including Revolution from Within and the memoir My Life on the Road. A founder of The National Women’s Political Caucus and The Women’s Media Center and founding editor of Ms. Magazine, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

  Ellen Stone is the author of The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). Stone writes about abortion for her younger self, her three daughters, and the strong women in her family.

  Amy Tan’s novels include The Joy Luck Club, which spent forty weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, and five other New York Times bestsellers. She has also written a memoir, screenplays, and two children’s books. Her essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and her work has been translated into thirty-five languages.

  Ann Townsend is the author of three collections of poetry, Dear Delinquent (2019), The Coronary Garden (2005), and Dime Store Erotics (1998), and co-editor (with David Baker) of Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry (2007). Professor of English at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, she is the cofounder of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.

  Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body) (forthcoming, Madhouse Press, 2019), and the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault.