Excerpts:

"Give any character time in the right doses and they can win the reader over." — Joan Li, Issue 7: In Opposition

"The night I write about was so unusual in me and my father's relationship. I was always afraid of sounding too sentimental; of making us sound less complex than we were. Then he died, and a few months later I found myself wanting to get down all the stories about us that I had felt were integral to our relationship. By the time I wrote this piece, I had been pre-writing it in my head for years, and thus managed to get most of the first draft down in one sitting." — Michelle Chikaonda, Issue 10: What We Lose.

"I wrote an essay about family member A and didn’t mention family member B, who was present but not the focus of the story. Person A loves it and is very touched. B is strangely distant and then erupts: 'Why didn’t you include me? I was there. I want to be a part of the piece. Ask the publisher if you can resubmit a new version with me in it.' I then wrote a play and included an experience that B told me, with names changed. B detonates: ‘I forbid you to write about me again!’" — Eve Lederman, Issue 3: Who Gets to Belong?

"How I overcame this specific obstacle was by alchemizing my rage and pain into the urgency to write this down, to tell people about it. To attempt to include one small correction against the tide of pieces in the media on the topic, pieces that have somehow diluted the vastness of this network of barely-dormant domestic terrorists and failed to situate them in a decades-long pattern of aggrieved men committing mass murder with misogynist motivations. Instead, each case was chalked up to a crazy lone wolf. I want to ask, how many lone wolves until it’s a pack?" — Sarah Madges, Issue 8: Power And.

If you know of someone else who could use a source of inspiration, we're offering 2 books for $50. You can have both shipped to you, or enter in a separate shipping address for the second individual.

Note: this is a recently added item, and some of the functionality is still pending, so if you don't see the second shipping field, please email us at [email protected].