On the darkest dark night of winter, one small light marks the start of the festival.
This darkest night is the longest night, too. In winter, in Maine, daylight can last maybe eight hours—if you’re lucky. And as the moon of the month of Kislev wanes from quarter, to sliver, to new, the Chanukah festival begins.
The first night is marked by blessings and the lighting of the first candle. The first blessing on this and every night of Chanukah praises God, or Adonai, or Creator, or the Spirit, who makes us holy by commanding or obligating us to kindle this light of Chanukah. The second blessing goes on to praise the one who performed miracles for our ancestors in their days at this season.
And on the first night, like on first nights of other festivals, an added blessing is offered, the Shechecheyanu, which praises God for granting life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this moment.
The addition of one light each night—one candle, one ner—the darkest nights are made brighter. Indeed, the light increases. A symbol and ritual of hope.
There is something physical about the experience of lighting Chanukah candles. By necessity, the family stands close to each other, so that each of us may reach and light their shamash “helper” candle first and, following the blessings, light the night’s candles in each of our respective menorahs. This is one time, more than any time or place throughout the year, when donning my identity of Jewish Mama, I make sure everyone’s head is covered with a kippah.
There is a basket in a small cabinet in the living room where we store kippot. Sometimes the collection grows large, overflowing, unruly, and then I will sort and sift to make a reasonable assortment again. Some are interesting, others meaningful, many beautiful, or gifts, remembrances of a family wedding, or a bar or bat mitzvah.
The eldest and only daughter, I had always liked being alone with a book in my hands, and my bedroom door closed. If the chaos of my three younger brothers seeped into my imagination at work, I’d lock the door. My mother called it my retreat from the noise but often would disrupt it herself with chores or babysitting for me since I was the right hand she turned to when she was overwhelmed. Growing up, I heard my mother yell my name from afar more than I heard it any other way.
It’s been seventy-two days.
I manage to get the dog out this morning and the kids some breakfast, but then crawl right back under the covers. I don’t have it today. I am exhausted and my body hurts though I have barely moved in days.
The slight rise and fall of my chest is the only evidence that I am not dead. Long pauses between breaths; my breathing is shallow and slow. Cradled by the foam liner of the mattress, my limbs are heavy and still. Staring at the wall, I barely even blink, hopeful that time will pass around me and leave me overlooked in the safety of our bed. Maybe if I remain still, the kids will forget that I am here? Maybe they won’t need me for anything?
I thought about writing this story as fiction: two women, a later-in-life, larger-than-life friendship that changes both of them, a sudden fatal illness. Fiction can fix the broken, prevent the disaster, turn around the inevitable. The child can be saved. The bad guys can be caught. The terminal patient can beat all odds. By choosing fiction, I could change the ending of our story, Diana’s and mine. I could keep her alive. But no. If I did that, it wouldn’t be our story anymore.
When Weezie came to pick me up for our road trip to the mountains, six months after her husband Emmanuel was diagnosed, she looked excited. But it felt forced, like a child who no longer believes in Santa but pretends to believe so they may feel the old tingle of anticipation. What I saw was grief.
On a clear late summer afternoon along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Sandbar slid off its foundation and washed into the Atlantic Ocean, the footage so dramatic, it went viral on social media and made the national news. The house was now called Dolphin’s Point, but for my friends and me, it would always be Sandbar. I thought about how the owners must have felt watching something they loved drift away from them, as they stood helpless, knowing they would never see it again.
Is it possible to feel the loss of something if you never had it to begin with? I don’t mean desire, because to desire something doesn’t necessarily mean a palpable sense of missing it. I mean, rather, to feel a defined and tangible absence, like that of a phantom limb, but for one never possessed in the first place.
I’m sorry I couldn’t go to your wedding and that my explanation was vague and seemed rude. My doctor wouldn’t let me fly. I couldn’t find the words. I worried that mentioning pregnancy loss would cloud the conversation of your celebration.
On the day after Thanksgiving 2022, I dragged my husband to a thrift shop outside Boston to look for a book I'd donated nearly twenty years ago. It started as a Twitter dare the week before. I was chatting with some pals about a book an ex-boyfriend gave me when I was twenty and we were at the height of a love affair that lasted seven years. My ex died in February, and I was having a hard time talking about it; most people didn't seem to understand why I was so upset about the death of a guy I broke up with so long ago. The easiest thing to do, sometimes, was to play it for laughs; at least that way I got to talk about it a little, with strangers who didn't know me well. "Why don't you go look for it?" someone said. "You never know, and it'll be a great story if you find it."
My mother’s eyes registered my arrival, but without her dependable smile. The bones of her face were sharp and craggy, her nose slightly humped from a childhood fall, her eyes blue and deeply set. Tita, who cared for her, had dressed her in her brightest blouse and hung a necklace round her neck. Mom was crooked in her chair and not pretending, while a cheerful string of rainbow-colored letters on the mantle shouted happy birthday for her eighty-ninth and last.
“Dear Poo, I’m sorry I’m writing this in a letter, I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you face to face…”
We’d been in our new house just a couple of weeks when my dad—Da—left a letter and, with it, left us. He was gone. And none of us knew what gone meant. Mom couldn’t tell me where he went or why. She called Grandma to try to decipher his note. Whatever sense they made of it wasn’t shared.
When my ex-husband told me his father was dead, he said it casually. The way you'd mention an alma mater, or that you'd lived abroad for a while.
"My dad died five years ago," he said. We were at work, in a courtroom with no privacy, dressed in our lawyer suits. He reached down to tug up his socks when he said it. I remember searching for significance in how he announced his tragedy while adjusting his outfit. It made me wonder if his father's death was an easy thing to bear. Or if it were so painful he needed to reveal it in the bright bustle of a courtroom, with busied hands. He usually seemed so guarded.
The platter was lovely. It was a vintage looking black and white interpretation of a sea turtle on melamine. The species was a Kemp’s Ridley. Despite being the rarest and most endangered sea turtle in the world, it is the most common turtle to see stranded on the beaches of Cape Cod.
My daughter’s fortieth birthday is soon, and I’m looking for something special for her. It’s a tradition in our family. At particular milestones, the mother gifts the celebrant with a special piece of jewelry, other “heirloom” from her own life. I’m looking for a piece of my history—something of me to stay with her as she moves toward all she’s becoming. When I turned forty, my mother surprised me by crocheting a lovely blue throw that I still can snuggle under on cold nights. I don’t have time to create something, so I sort through my jewelry box, looking for just the right thing.
I’m seated in the passenger seat of my old gray Prius teaching Zahra how to drive. She is in the driver’s seat intently watching the traffic light, waiting for the moment it turns green. I sit quietly so I don’t disturb her concentration. She’s wearing a black blouse with long sleeves and black pants on this hot summer day; her headscarf is absent. I’ve known her long enough to know that she wears a headscarf only when she wants to. “It’s not for religion,” she’s told me before, stopping short of telling me why she sometimes wears it. I’m wearing a short skirt and a tank top in light colors. Despite our different appearances, I feel a strong emotional kinship with her.
I have always particularly favored our Bukharian kippot. The Bukharian Jews of central Asia, now heavily transplanted to Queens, NY, create a distinctive style of kippah that is immediately identifiable in shape and design with ornate embroidered decorations. There was a time when the four of us each had our own Bukharian kippah. The kids outgrew theirs. But for many years, David’s Bukharian kippah was his favorite, his “go-to.”
In the later years, his taste and choice of kippah grew simpler. But not just simpler, really the simplest. The most minimal. The kind that fills and has filled the bins in synagogues for generations. Black. Single layer. A mere wisp of weightless cloth to cover one’s head.
I sometimes wonder if that was a portent of his leaving us, leaving our family, our family tradition, the one where he must have so often felt the outsider.
At Chanukah, he would alternate, along with the kids, between earnest participation, sarcastic eye rolling, borderline pyromania, and worst of all—just there to appease and please me.
I don't know why “just to please Mama” should be the least valued. I suppose we want to pass along our traditions, and “success” is measured by the next generation fully embracing and practicing as we do. But perhaps “success” really is the act of doing things in order to please; whether it be your mother, father, sibling, or someone else.
On the other side of the French doors to the dining room, the food, the gifts, the singing, the spinning dreidel game, everything else awaits.
We are close, we are four close together. Each holding one lit candle, over the small table by the window. Lined with aluminum foil, always aluminum foil. Each shamash in hand flickering, struggling. In each flame, there is the potential for great light, as well as devastating destruction.
That closeness, nearness, proximity. A fleeting brush on the back or more deliberate hand on a child’s head or shoulder. Our voices, Baruch atah Adonai. We watch the light, as the ancient Rabbis instructed. We neither read by it, nor create other light. But simply gaze, look at, and observe. We bask in that glow. When the intimacy of the lighting of the chanukiahs and the brightening of the darkness is complete, we are enveloped by the quiet of the room around us. The quieting of the surrounding world.
*
When four became three, when David’s life ceased, with no preparation, abruptly severed from us and our number reduced, a darkness filled the space where a person once stood. The darkness now increased, instead of the light. The absence, David’s absence, was a painful reminder. And not only a mental reminder, but a physical, muscle, deep in my gut memory. Like a phantom limb.
The pain and sadness and emptiness and growing darkness of the first night on that first Chanukah was stronger and more penetrating than I had anticipated. If a passerby had glanced in the window that night the looks on our candle-lit faces would have been of shock, confusion, and fear.
So for our grieving family, to endure this ritual for seven more nights was too much to bear. We did not observe the other nights of Chanukah that first year.
As one year, two years, three years have come to pass, we have once again joined together, three where there once were four. Our rituals remain, we choose kippot from the basket, the meal and gifts and songs await in the next room. We stand close together and light and bless and gaze. My hand gently grazes the backs of my now adult children. And what of that dark space? I struggle with whether the space is empty or full. But of one thing I am certain; the dark space remains, and we hold this space as it holds us.
-Joy E. Krinsky
The hermit crab essay is a term originally coined by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola in their craft book Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction. Like its namesake, the hermit crab essay borrows an existing container, such as a list, set of directions, tarot card reading, or real estate listing, and makes it its own.
In this workshop, we’ll explore how different authors use the Hermit Crab Essay as a creative vehicle for approaching topics that may feel too difficult, vulnerable, or traumatic to write about directly. I’ll share writing exercises, practical tools, and techniques that you can take with you to experiment with this form and begin crafting your own next essay.
The success of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (2012) heralded a new era of domestic suspense. Most of the novels that came to define this genre featured white women narrators behaving badly. While this convention invokes the precedent of the pathologization of hysterical women, we must also consider how this convention relies on contemporary white privilege. How do Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear (2026), Alice Feeney’s My Husband’s Wife (2026), and Meagan Church’s The Mad Wife (2025) use unreliable narration to suggest that madness is a privileged state?
Women characters are still too often judged by one question: Is she likeable? That question can do a lot of damage on the page. Anger gets softened. Ambition needs an explanation. Bad decisions need a sympathetic reason behind them. A woman can be selfish, difficult, ruthless, jealous, furious, or want something she probably shouldn't, but writers often start sanding those edges down because they're afraid the reader won't like her. But liking a character and wanting to keep reading about her are two very different things. Stop Making Her Likeable is a 90-minute workshop about what actually keeps a reader invested in a complicated woman. We'll look at why readers can become completely absorbed by characters they don't approve of, what makes difficult behaviour fascinating rather than simply frustrating, and how motivation, contradiction, desire, and agency affect the way a reader responds to her. We'll also look at our own pages. Where are we explaining a woman because we're afraid she'll be judged? Where are we making her apologize for wanting something? Where have we given her a tragic reason for behaviour that we might simply allow from a male character? The goal isn't to teach writers how to create an “unlikeable female character.” It's to stop treating likeability as the price a woman has to pay to be worth reading about.
In this course, author Piper L. White will discuss feminism through the use of fairytales and how to take these beloved childhood stories and twist them into our modern writing by delving deep into the psyche of women-identifying people and their everyday horrors to craft their own prose pieces.
This product gives you access to all four weeks of the workshop. Purchase one or more drop-in sessions here.
Build a habit in 20 sessions. In this 4 week workshop that meets Mondays through Fridays from 8:00-9:00 AM CST, we will focus on generating new writing—making headway on a current project, reviving an old project that’s been gathering dust, or writing based off of the daily prompts Leigh provides.
The first 45 minutes of class are a gentle, camera-off, silent writing session. The remaining 15 minutes are an opportunity to share excerpts of our work, reflect on progress made, and set intentions for the following day. Then we will read a passage together on the writing life and close each class with a new learning about habit formation. By the end of this course we’ll have a morning writing habit that is each our own to continue and build upon.
This listing is for an individual class. To purchase access for the full 4-week workshop, click here.
Build a habit in 20 sessions. In this 4 week workshop that meets Mondays through Fridays from 8:00-9:00 AM CST, we will focus on generating new writing—making headway on a current project, reviving an old project that’s been gathering dust, or writing based off of the daily prompts Leigh provides.
The first 45 minutes of class is a gentle, camera-off, silent writing session. The remaining 15 minutes are an opportunity to share excerpts of our work, reflect on progress made, and set intentions for the following day. Then we will read a passage together on the writing life and close each class with a new learning about habit formation. By the end of this course we’ll have a morning writing habit that is each our own to continue and build upon.
Many writers feel drawn to write about their lives but struggle with uncertainty: Why this story? Why now? And who is it really for? This workshop is designed to help writers move beyond doubt and toward clarity by focusing on the deeper meaning and purpose beneath their story.
In this interactive, craft-forward session, participants will be introduced to the Memoir Compass, a practical framework that helps writers articulate their motivation (why they are writing), mission (who the story serves), and message (what meaning or insight the story carries). Through guided reflection and writing exercises, participants will begin shaping a personal narrative rooted in intention rather than overwhelm.
This workshop is ideal for writers interested in memoir or personal narrative, as well as fiction writers drawing from lived experience, who want to move forward with greater confidence, focus, and direction.
Some of the most compelling creative nonfiction begins with the feelings we are tempted to avoid: anger, resentment, shame, fear, or the sense that we have an axe to grind. In this six-week workshop, writers will explore how to follow that emotional heat toward deeper, more honest work—without sacrificing compassion, complexity, or craft. Through close readings, writing exercises, discussion, and constructive feedback, we’ll consider how to transform strong feelings into writing that reaches beyond catharsis and connects with readers.
IT’S NO SECRET THAT FEEDBACK IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS.
In fact, we argue that it might be the most important part of the process.
But it’s hard to find a writing community. It’s hard to find the people who are willing to take the time and the effort to read your work and give the feedback you really, truly deserves.
That’s where HerStry Critique Groups come in!
HerStry Critique Groups are small groups of 6 women who gather online for 6 weeks to share their writing, give constructive feedback and gain skills as writers.
Weekly online sessions last approximately ninety minutes, with three women sharing their work each week. Writers of all genres and levels are welcome and you may share both works of fiction and nonfiction.
Sessions take place on Mondays 7PM CT, Tuesdays 11AM CT, Fridays 11AM CT
WHAT’S INCLUDED IN THE HERSTRY CRITIQUE GROUPS?
Six 90 minute live workshop sessions
Three 20 minutes sessions in the “hot seat” to get you work critiqued
Written and verbal feedback from your fellow workshop participants
A weekly in depth edit and critique of your work from the group leader after each session
Weekly writing goals and accountability check ins
Full video recordings of each session to keep for your records
Say goodbye to the lonely, stuck in your head writing life!
LET’S WRITE!
From conception to submission. Let’s make summer sizzle with stories.
Writing a short story doesn’t happen in one session. It takes multiple drafts to get it exactly right, to create characters that come to life for the reader and a world they can’t stop thinking about. In this seven week course we will work on a single short story from conception to submission ready. The seven week session will include generative brainstorming sessions, short story craft talks, multiple workshops for feedback from fellow writers, and detailed line by line feedback and edits from your instructor. Plus, we’ll talk about submission venues, cover letters, and when to know if your story is ‘finished.’
IT’S NO SECRET THAT FEEDBACK IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS.
In fact, we argue that it might be the most important part of the process.
But it’s hard to find a writing community. It’s hard to find the people who are willing to take the time and the effort to read your work and give the feedback you really, truly deserves.
That’s where HerStry Critique Groups come in!
HerStry Critique Groups are small groups of 6 women who gather online for 6 weeks to share their writing, give constructive feedback and gain skills as writers.
Weekly online sessions last approximately ninety minutes, with three women sharing their work each week. Writers of all genres and levels are welcome and you may share both works of fiction and nonfiction.
Sessions take place on Mondays 7PM CT, Tuesdays 11AM CT, Fridays 11AM CT
WHAT’S INCLUDED IN THE HERSTRY CRITIQUE GROUPS?
Six 90 minute live workshop sessions
Three 20 minutes sessions in the “hot seat” to get you work critiqued
Written and verbal feedback from your fellow workshop participants
A weekly in depth edit and critique of your work from the group leader after each session
Weekly writing goals and accountability check ins
Full video recordings of each session to keep for your records
Say goodbye to the lonely, stuck in your head writing life!
January 18, 25, and February 1 at 11 AM CT
CRAFTING COMPELLING NARRATIVES FROM LIVED EXPERIENCES WRITERS ARE CONDUITS FOR THE STORIES OF OTHERS.
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.
October 7, 14, 21, 28, November 4 and 18 CT
There is no class on November 11.
WRITING THE SEX SCENE.
Writing a sex scene can be delirious fun, a harrowing challenge, a literary milestone—possibly the most important part of building your short story or book. In our six weeks together, you’ll experience just about every possible emotion as you explore the erotic in different modes: comic, tender, harrowing, soul-shattering … because it really is all about the characters’ feelings, not just the mechanics. So we’ll talk about tone. Vocabulary. Metaphor. Sensory detail. How to get big emotions on the page … and when to pull back and let the reader’s imagination go to work.
This is a course for writers who want to explore the intersection between the novel and short stories, and would like to weave their short stories into a story cycle (or collection of "linked stories" or "composite novel"). This is also a class about the interaction of form and content, and how one influences the other. We will read works of interlinked stories by writers from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, focusing on modern classics and contemporary practitioners of these hybrid forms. Weekly discussions will center on elements of craft, such as the expansion and compression of time, setting as an organizing and connecting principle, character development within and between stories, structure and plot for interconnected stories, and responding to literary influences in the same genre.
This six-week course guides writers through the literary submission process, offering insider insight and practical tools to help you get your work into the world. We’ll demystify everything from reading submission calls to writing cover letters and choosing the right journals. Along the way, we’ll workshop short bios, develop submission trackers, and build personalized plans that align with your voice and goals.
By the end of the course, you’ll walk away with a polished piece ready to send, a tailored submission list, and the confidence to navigate the lit mag world with clarity and purpose.
Ideal for writers of literary fiction, poetry, personal essay, memoir, and hybrid forms.
Joy E. Krinsky began writing in the summer of 2019, with the obituary, and later eulogy, for her husband. Since that time, she has studied healing through writing, and is currently working on a memoir, Every Little Thing. Her essay "Sacred Text" was published on July 25, 2023 on HerStry as one of the Women of Faith essays. Her memoir is described here: Following the suicide of her husband, Joy E. Krinsky embarks on a journey of self exploration and discovery. Grief is now a kaleidoscope lens through which she experiences the world. Room by room, season by season, family relations, the everyday items that make a life that has been abruptly shaken up and shifted. Through this collection of essays, she invites us on this journey, recovering the past, creating the future, and discovering the richness of the present. Joy E. Krinsky lives in Portland, Maine.
