Today’s Babe Letter is guest edited by Babes Member Mary Alice Dixon. If you’d like to guest edit the letter sign up here.

Hi Babes, my beautiful heart-strong sisters, I was born different. Born with scoliosis plus synesthesia.

Scoliosis gave me a curvy back and lopsided hips. Mean girls gave me taunts.

But synesthesia gave me a permanent neurological quirk that lets me taste words, hear plants, smell memories. I see colors in numbers: 6 is sapphire, 8 is lilac, and 2 is the hot white glow of 1 coupling with another 1. I smell deer musk in sepia photos of bucks. I hear C-sharp brass notes rise from my backyard angel trumpet vines. The rotten salmon stink in certain shades of red can make me gasp.

The good and the bad—it all feeds my writing.

For example, I love listening to the bark of trees. Then I try to translate that bark into words. One such attempt is a poem which speaks in the voice of a woman burned as a witch. This woman defies both death and the puritan patriarchy. She rises from flames, shapeshifts into a true witch, riding a wooden broom, barking truth to power. That poem, Woman Seizing Power, won me my first Pushcart nomination.

Tough feral women inspire me. From one such woman, a great aunt who was a fiery “suffragette,” came my poem Britches with Balls. This features a woman who serves up sauce and nightshade stew, if you get my drift, to the fat cats who live off the sweat of the starving.

I think many of us channel a bit of our inner bitch when we write. Dust off our claws and celebrate our flesh. And our sauce.

But I’m not all witches and bitches. I also walk in the footsteps of the strong Appalachian women in my family tree. Especially my Mountain Mama Granny, a blind seamstress.

Yes, you read that right. Granny was eye-blind but saw patterns with her hands. She embroidered landscapes on aprons, defying what people said a blind woman could do.

Isn’t that a lot like writing? Being blind, finding our way with our hands, drawing worlds with words.

And, oh, babes, isn’t writing also kin to bread baking? You need it. You knead it. Then leave it alone to rise. The final step? Shape and bake, a.k.a., “revision.” I make a crusty braided loaf I call Mother Hubbard Almond Courage Bread. It’s not to everybody’s taste. It’s nutty, not sweet, has a yeasty bite like the fruit in some dark fairy tale. Also like writing, I believe bread tastes best when there’s plenty of salt.

-Mary Alice

Mary Alice’s Writing Tips:

1. Write Something by Hand. Look at your palm. Study the lines in your flesh, how they tell a story of you. Then pick up a pen. Roll the pen between your fingers, feel the muscles in your hand. Put pen to paper. Write your name. Delight in the quirks of your signature. Then write a few lines (or more) of what you’re working on. Be sloppy. Be messy. Give it a whirl before moving to your keyboard.
   

2. Happiness Snack. Feed your inner artist by taking five minutes a day to treat yourself to something that makes you happy. For me, it can be a cup of cinnamon tea, the earthy smell in a handful of dirt, or talking to the ghosts of my two lost cats, Thomas Merton and Alice B. Toklas.
   

3. Midnight Mirror. Keep a notebook by your bed. When you wake to half-remembered dreams, fragments of faces and phrases, scribble them down, the messier, the better. Don’t turn on the light. Your deep self is showing you the raw material of your art.

Writing Process: I believe in rituals. Most mornings I start my day in my garden at sunrise where I nest in a low-curved branch of a magnolia tree. Yes, an old gal like me climbs trees. The older I grow, the freer I get. This shapes my writing.

Sitting in my magnolia, I feel the energy of roots, the generosity of lichen and moss. Then I go inside to my desk where I am surrounded by faded photos, sweet basil, and a stuffed green turtle with orange and black button eyes. Before I pick up my pen, I cradle a gray stone inset with white striations. This is the kind of rock Appalachian folklore calls a "Wishing Stone.” On it I’ve written in big block letters my favorite word: HOPE.

Next, I take three deep breaths, ring a small cracked bell, then pick up my pen and write. In summer, my hands usually hold the ginger-jasmine scent of magnolia pollen.

Currently Reading: Mountains of the Moon (2024), Irene Blair Honeycutt’s fifth poetry collection, is one I read and read and read again. Of a small stone she found, Honeycutt writes, “round as a biscuit/It feeds me/In my palm….”  So, too, her poems of rocks, talismans, and trees feed me. I promise, these poems will place you in the landscape of the divine feminine.

I can’t get enough of The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Women (2023), a treasure of oral histories recorded by high school students in the 1960s and 70s. Editor Kami Ahrens resurrects the riveting stories of strong mountain women, Cherokee, Black, and white. As Ahrens says, “Reading each interview is almost like sitting next to these women, joining them on their porches and in their homes as they take us is a journey through their childhood and adult lives.”

Write For Your Life (2022) by Anna Quindlen. Babes, you know the truth this title holds. So read it and write.

Recommended Reading: Go find Rites of Ancient Ripening (1975) by Meridel Le Sueur (1900-1996) and meet a too-little remembered poetry genius. Black-listed in the 1950s McCarthy era, friend of Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Emma Goldman, Le Sueur is a voice of resistance and remembering. Drawing on her kinship with indigenous women, La Sueur writes in Ripening’s opening poem, “I am a woman come to speak/in tongues of dust and fire…./I rise from all massacres,/I am the heat.” I still feel her heat from the dinner I shared with her decades ago in Minneapolis. You, too, will feel her delicious heat on every page. 

A similar fire burns in Mary Karr’s Lit: A Memoir—An Electrifying Story of Sobriety, Motherhood and Learning to Write with Unflinching Honesty (2009). In writing her wounds, Karr allows herself, and her readers, to find resilience in speaking the scars.

Finally, OMG, Babes, for pure fun you’ve got to read Stephen Spotswood’s Parker and Pentecost noir mysteries set in 1940s NYC. A finalist in the Lambda Literary LGBTQ mystery category, the novels feature a bisexual circus performer turned detective, Willowjean Parker, who goes by Will, and often dresses like a man. Will’s boss is Lilian Pentecost, a tough elder genius with MS who is not above bending the law to see justice done. Start with Fortune Favors the Dead (2020) and fall in love.

Invest in your writing. Join an upcoming group!

July 27 - August 31 - 7PM CT (Fundamentals of Writing - Open Genre)
July 31 - September 4 - 11AM CT (Nonfiction) - Sold out!
September 21 - October 26 - 7PM CT (Open Genre) 
September 22 - October 27 - 11AM CT (Nonfiction) 
September 25 - November 13 - 11AM CT (Fiction - 10 Weeks) 

New on HerStry:

Write for HerStry:

Micro-Memoir Contest

Mark your calendars! Our Micro-Memoir Contest is coming back for a second year. Submissions will be open from June 1 - September 1. Learn more.

It is as simple as that. What is your sadness? What are you grieving for, real or imagined? What are you carrying? Bring it here. Bring it to our table and let us help you hold your story. Submit here.

Have an essay that doesn’t fit into any of our themes? HerStry publishes personal essays every Wednesday. Personal essays are a way for our writers to tell the stories they want to tell. There are no rules. No themes. As long as the story is true and about you, we want to read it. We pay $10 per accepted piece. Learn more.

Events:

Mastering the Art of the Interview

We share in our writing the human condition, whether through compelling themes in fiction or real lived experiences in nonfiction. Both are art forms, and both often require gathering more than one’s viewpoint and experience to tell the story. Interviewing experts, witnesses, and avatars for character-building is its own art form, one many writers may find daunting. This course is designed to demystify the interview process, help writers stay organized, and develop a system that makes every step of the process a breeze. Writers will learn about ethical interview practices, how to design an interview that encourages effortless sharing, how to work with interviewees across cultures and generations, and receive tools to structure the interviews into story. This course is perfect for the fiction writer who is researching lived experiences to flesh out their characters as well as non-fiction writers who require individual stories to build a compelling narrative. Sign up now.

Babes Book Club

Missing our Craft Chats? We’re thrilled to introduce the Babes Book Club, where we’ll read a book and discuss it with the author. First up is Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker. Chelsea will join us via Zoom on Thursday, August 20 from 7-8pm CST. We’ll talk about the book, her writing process, and anything else you might want to know about her writing life. This event is exclusively for Babes Who Write members, and there is no cost to attend. Purchase your copy of the book here, and don’t forget to sign up for the chat!

Submission Opportunities:

1. HerStry: Open Submissions

2. Atlanta Review: Open Submissions

3. Cypress Review: Open Submissions

4. Dualis Literary Magazine: Open Submissions

5. The Glacier: Open Submissions

6. Gotham Literature: Open Submissions

7. Gleam: Open Submissions

8. Muzzle Magazine: Open Submissions

9. The Ampersand Quarterly: Open Submissions

10. The Hemlock Journal: Open Submissions

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